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What the Frack??

November 19, 2007 by chezperky

Okay, seriously, I'm exclusively breastfeeding not one, not two, but three babies. Shouldn't this give me a get-out-of-PMS-free card for a while? My babies are two months old (can you believe it??) and I'm having my second period. I have not had two consecutive periods in about ten years without medical intervention (hence, the fertility treatment). What. The. Frack??

All three babies have thrush, so guess who else has thrush? Yes, that would be me. And can I tell you how seriously uncomfortable it is to have thrush on your breasts?? Ugh!

Sam has been very needy lately… needing to be held ALL THE TIME. If he were a singleton this would be easier, but on the days where Abby also needs to be held all day long or Ellie needs to be held all day long, or both… well, then it's a bit more complicated, especially when you add in the need to feed them, pump milk, and do ANYTHING else.

My milk supply seems to be dwindling, but I'm not sure if it's just because they're nursing so much that there's not much left for pumping sessions. Regardless, it's stressing me out, which is, I'm sure, exacerbating the problem. I don't like taking herbal supplements because I have enough other problems that I never know what will interact with other medications I've got. I can't convince my doctor to give me Reglan, and Domperidone isn't available in the US. Someone told me that oatmeal improves milk production, but I hate oatmeal. I've been eating it anyway, but haven't noticed a difference. And before you suggest beer…I can't drink beer because it gives me tremendous migraines and makes me throw up violently. Yuck.

Other than those niggling things, though, things are going well. I've had mostly good days and have mostly managed to keep my sh*t together (though Jess was witness to the one night that I completely lost it). But now Ellie's crying, so it's time for me to go. More later!

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments »

Long time no post…

November 12, 2007 by chezperky

I haven’t had time to post lately…or rather, when I’ve had the time, I’ve been doing important things like washing bottles, mooing, or napping. Anyway, here’s a few points from the last week or so…

Last Monday I met a local triplet-mom-to-be. She’s 24 weeks pregnant and looks fantastic. She came here to visit… when I was 24 weeks pregnant, I was on Procardia, a Terbutaline Pump, Home Uterine Activity Monitoring, and bed rest. She had just come from her job as a personal trainer. Sheesh! She was really fantastic and I’m so glad I got to meet her. She came back the next day to lend me some things she doesn’t need yet (her double snap n’ go and some podee bottles) and I gave her a bunch of books. I’ve promised her a bunch of clothes and other things for when her babies are born. It’s really exciting to already have someone to pass things along to!

Tuesday I had to take the kids to the pediatrician. By myself. The catch was that that triplet stroller would NEVER fit through the pediatrician’s narrow hallways. Worse… I was driving a rented van because my van had been hit by a drunk driver while parked on the street Halloween night and the stupid triplet stroller wouldn’t even FIT in the rented van!! So my original plan of wheeling the stroller into the waiting room and letting the staff just help me carry babies was scrapped in favor of thinking outside the box. Ultimately what I did was wear Sam in a sling and carry the other two babies in their car seats. Man, I’ve got muscles I didn’t know I had! I practiced Monday night to make sure I really COULD carry two car seats and a baby in a sling, and it was a snap… but what I hadn’t counted on was that I also needed to carry Ellie’s monitor and the diaper bag. That made the balancing act a little more precarious. Still, I pulled it off, further reaffirming my super-mom status!

The appointment was primarily for a weight check, but I made the appointment with the nurse practitioner who is also a lactation consultant, in hopes of working through a few of the issues we’ve been having. All the babies were bigger than they had been two weeks previous:
Sam: 6 lb, 2 oz (up from 5 lb, 4.5 oz)
Ellie: 5 lb, 12 oz (up from 5 lb, 6 oz)
Abby: 5 lb, 7 oz (up from 4 lb, 7 oz!!!)
So they all grew, but you can see that Ellie was a bit worrisome… she only grew 6 ounces in 14 days. Abby was the superstar! The rest of the appointment we focused on lactation issues. Abby has been refusing to latch on so gets only expressed milk in bottles. This works out just fine since she gets extra calories added to her expressed milk, and since she’s ONLY getting expressed milk, it’s clearly helping her grow quickly, but I really would like to limit the number of bottles I have to wash every day! Plus, she was my best breastfeeder in the NICU, so it’s beyond aggravating that she refuses to latch now!! The LC suggested I get a Supplemental Nursing System to try to get her to latch, since she wasn’t any more successful than I’d been. The other issue I’ve been having is that Ellie and Sam wouldn’t nurse without a nipple shield, which isn’t the end of the world, but it’s a pain in the rear. The LC also wasn’t successful in that session to get Sam to latch without it, but did give me some suggestions for trying to wean him (and Ellie), and also suggested that the SNS might help with them as well.

And so… I ordered that ridiculous contraption. All three of my babies hate it. Sam will latch on to the tube and not on to me. Ellie latches on to me and spits out the tube. Abby just screams. BUT! A miracle… Ellie and Sam will now latch without the stupid shield! Victory!

The rest of the week is a blur, to be honest. I can’t remember much about it, but I know there were lots of feedings, diapers, and little sleep. I spent some time worried about Ellie because she didn’t seem to be growing much more. Her pudgy cheeks stopped being pudgy. Her brother and sister outgrew a different outfit every day, but she’s still in the outfits she was in a week ago. Finally, yesterday morning I called in to the doctor’s office because she’s been on a bit of a hunger strike and she definitely didn’t seem to be growing and anyway, it may have been a Sunday, but the nurse had told me on Friday to definitely call over the weekend if I was still worried, so I called. I brought her in for a weight check and she was… 5 pounds, 11.8 oz. No change from last Tuesday. At least she hadn’t lost weight, right? I hadn’t been able to get her to eat in over six hours (what mother has this problem with an infant???), but getting her naked and sticking her on a cold, hard scale pissed her off enough that she was finally willing to eat, so I stayed at the office to nurse her and she ate and ate and ate and ate. So we weighed her afterward to see if she’d gotten any actual milk, to make sure she wasn’t just nursing in vain without actually successfully getting milk. Well, that’s not the problem, she ate FOUR ounces (she only reliably eats 3 ounces from a bottle)! The babies have another appointment on Thursday for their two-month check up (can you believe it???), so if she hasn’t grown more by then, we’ll have to talk about supplementing her, because something’s not right. Poor baby.

Taking Ellie to the pediatrician threw my whole schedule for the day off, though, because I missed a feeding at home with the other two. So I’d been planning on spending the afternoon with the DC-area bloggers, but I had to keep my visit with them short because I didn’t want to be away for too long and leave Seth with all three of them starving. But I did make it to the get-together for a little while and had a great time seeing everyone, so that was fun. It was my first time socializing just for me since the babies were born. Hooray!

Ooops, Sam is waking up to eat…time to go!

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments »

Long time no post…

November 12, 2007 by chezperky

I haven't had time to post lately…or rather, when I've had the time, I've been doing important things like washing bottles, mooing, or napping. Anyway, here's a few points from the last week or so…

Last Monday I met a local triplet-mom-to-be. She's 24 weeks pregnant and looks fantastic. She came here to visit… when I was 24 weeks pregnant, I was on Procardia, a Terbutaline Pump, Home Uterine Activity Monitoring, and bed rest. She had just come from her job as a personal trainer. Sheesh! She was really fantastic and I'm so glad I got to meet her. She came back the next day to lend me some things she doesn't need yet (her double snap n' go and some podee bottles) and I gave her a bunch of books. I've promised her a bunch of clothes and other things for when her babies are born. It's really exciting to already have someone to pass things along to!

Tuesday I had to take the kids to the pediatrician. By myself. The catch was that that triplet stroller would NEVER fit through the pediatrician's narrow hallways. Worse… I was driving a rented van because my van had been hit by a drunk driver while parked on the street Halloween night and the stupid triplet stroller wouldn't even FIT in the rented van!! So my original plan of wheeling the stroller into the waiting room and letting the staff just help me carry babies was scrapped in favor of thinking outside the box. Ultimately what I did was wear Sam in a sling and carry the other two babies in their car seats. Man, I've got muscles I didn't know I had! I practiced Monday night to make sure I really COULD carry two car seats and a baby in a sling, and it was a snap… but what I hadn't counted on was that I also needed to carry Ellie's monitor and the diaper bag. That made the balancing act a little more precarious. Still, I pulled it off, further reaffirming my super-mom status!

The appointment was primarily for a weight check, but I made the appointment with the nurse practitioner who is also a lactation consultant, in hopes of working through a few of the issues we've been having. All the babies were bigger than they had been two weeks previous:
Sam: 6 lb, 2 oz (up from 5 lb, 4.5 oz)
Ellie: 5 lb, 12 oz (up from 5 lb, 6 oz)
Abby: 5 lb, 7 oz (up from 4 lb, 7 oz!!!)
So they all grew, but you can see that Ellie was a bit worrisome… she only grew 6 ounces in 14 days. Abby was the superstar! The rest of the appointment we focused on lactation issues. Abby has been refusing to latch on so gets only expressed milk in bottles. This works out just fine since she gets extra calories added to her expressed milk, and since she's ONLY getting expressed milk, it's clearly helping her grow quickly, but I really would like to limit the number of bottles I have to wash every day! Plus, she was my best breastfeeder in the NICU, so it's beyond aggravating that she refuses to latch now!! The LC suggested I get a Supplemental Nursing System to try to get her to latch, since she wasn't any more successful than I'd been. The other issue I've been having is that Ellie and Sam wouldn't nurse without a nipple shield, which isn't the end of the world, but it's a pain in the rear. The LC also wasn't successful in that session to get Sam to latch without it, but did give me some suggestions for trying to wean him (and Ellie), and also suggested that the SNS might help with them as well.

And so… I ordered that ridiculous contraption. All three of my babies hate it. Sam will latch on to the tube and not on to me. Ellie latches on to me and spits out the tube. Abby just screams. BUT! A miracle… Ellie and Sam will now latch without the stupid shield! Victory!

The rest of the week is a blur, to be honest. I can't remember much about it, but I know there were lots of feedings, diapers, and little sleep. I spent some time worried about Ellie because she didn't seem to be growing much more. Her pudgy cheeks stopped being pudgy. Her brother and sister outgrew a different outfit every day, but she's still in the outfits she was in a week ago. Finally, yesterday morning I called in to the doctor's office because she's been on a bit of a hunger strike and she definitely didn't seem to be growing and anyway, it may have been a Sunday, but the nurse had told me on Friday to definitely call over the weekend if I was still worried, so I called. I brought her in for a weight check and she was… 5 pounds, 11.8 oz. No change from last Tuesday. At least she hadn't lost weight, right? I hadn't been able to get her to eat in over six hours (what mother has this problem with an infant???), but getting her naked and sticking her on a cold, hard scale pissed her off enough that she was finally willing to eat, so I stayed at the office to nurse her and she ate and ate and ate and ate. So we weighed her afterward to see if she'd gotten any actual milk, to make sure she wasn't just nursing in vain without actually successfully getting milk. Well, that's not the problem, she ate FOUR ounces (she only reliably eats 3 ounces from a bottle)! The babies have another appointment on Thursday for their two-month check up (can you believe it???), so if she hasn't grown more by then, we'll have to talk about supplementing her, because something's not right. Poor baby.

Taking Ellie to the pediatrician threw my whole schedule for the day off, though, because I missed a feeding at home with the other two. So I'd been planning on spending the afternoon with the DC-area bloggers, but I had to keep my visit with them short because I didn't want to be away for too long and leave Seth with all three of them starving. But I did make it to the get-together for a little while and had a great time seeing everyone, so that was fun. It was my first time socializing just for me since the babies were born. Hooray!

Ooops, Sam is waking up to eat…time to go!

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

Too Funny

November 4, 2007 by chezperky

Back in March, I posted that I was freaked out because an online due date calculator which calculated all sorts of things from LMP to conception to IVF retrieval & transfer dates and even due dates for singletons, twins, triplets, and quads as well as dates you could have CVS, amnio, and glucose tolerance tests done had calculated my due date with triplets as September 19th. Since technically my 40 week due date was November 7, this completely freaked me out.

Hey, guess what? It was 100% correct! That’s even freakier!

Posted in fertility shmertility | 3 Comments »

Miscellaneous

November 4, 2007 by chezperky

Funny
One ridiculous thing about me is that despite having been a history major, I’m terrible with certain dates. It took me years to remember when my mother’s birthday is (September 27, but I used to mix it up with the 17th). The only reason I know when my husband’s birthday is is that it’s six days after mine. The only reason I remember mine is because it’s four days after Robert Burns’ Day (I was supposed to be born on Robert Burns’ birthday, and since I was born in Scotland, that would have been a huge deal, so my father has never let me forget it). And then there’s my anniversary. You’d think this would be one date I’d remember, right? I picked the date, after all. I was there. A year of planning went into that date. It should be emblazoned in my mind, right? But the first time I received my wedding album, the wrong date was imprinted on it, and that set a bad precedent. I have a friend who got married exactly three weeks before me and so I routinely call her and ask her whether I got married November 2nd or 3rd when I have to fill out a form that requires my anniversary date. She laughs at me every time, but she does tell me, so that’s good. Worse, I have to think really hard to figure out what YEAR even I got married. Hah. I never have to ask her that one, though, because all I had to do was figure out how long I’d been trying to get pregnant and subtract that from the current year, since we started trying immediately. Sad that my point of context is infertility…

ANYWAY, the funny part is this: This morning, my Google Calendar reminder sent me an email to remind me that today is my anniversary. Except, uh, that’s WRONG! Our anniversary was yesterday! Duh! I couldn’t even get the date right when I was setting up my calendar reminders! Sigh. Yesterday we sponsored a kiddush (small luncheon) at shul (synagogue) in honor of three things: Our fifth wedding anniversary was yesterday, today is the third anniversary of J coming to live with us permanently, and celebrating the birth of our triplets (November 7th is the triplets due date, which is coincidentally our anniversary on the Hebrew Calendar). There is much to celebrate, even if I AM terrible with dates. 🙂

I am Super-Mom
Sometimes this whole being-a-triplet-mom thing is hard, but sometimes it helps remind me that I am superwoman. For example… how many women out there can say that they’ve been able to feed THREE babies at once? Well, I can say that! Several times now, I’ve managed to nurse two babies at once, while bottle feeding a third baby propped between my knees. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but I’ve done it.

The triplets eat 6-8 times per day, depending. They eat between every 3-4 hours depending on how hungry Sam is… He’s our measuring stick… the other two don’t get hungry nearly as often as he does, so when he gets hungry, he gets fed and the other two follow, so that they all stay on close to the same schedule. We change close to 30 diapers per day. We have gone through about a case of wipes since they came home. We do about 3 loads of laundry per day, sometimes more. We sleep in chunks of 2-3 hours at a time. Occasionally, we are able to sleep for slightly longer, but it comes at a cost (if I sleep for longer, it means my boobs wake me up in agony from lack of pumping or nursing). Two of the babies are breastfeeding 85% of the time. Abby still refuses, but since she’s the little one, she gets extra calories added to her expressed breastmilk anyway, so it’s not an entirely bad thing that she gets expressed milk. Tuesday we’ll see a lactation consultant to see if she can help us figure out how to reintroduce Abby to the breast. In the NICU she was my best breast-feeder, so it’s a bit frustrating that she’s now refusing to consider it. But at least her bigger siblings are getting to be pros. They weren’t very good at all at breastfeeding in the NICU.

We are slowly getting the nursery together, but there’s SO much stuff that people have given or lent us… we have clothes from all different ages that people are lending us (kids at this age outgrow things so quickly it’s not worth buying much) that I have to sort through. The babies aren’t sleeping in the nursery right now anyway… they sleep in my room in a pack n’ play next to my bed. It’s not a big deal either way, the nursery is only three steps further away than the pack n’ play, but still… Eventually it would be nice if the nursery was finished. So Seth is working on that today.

Okay, super-mom has to go now. Babies are hungry. More later!

Posted in parenting, triplet mania | 12 Comments »

Too Funny

November 4, 2007 by chezperky

Back in March, I posted that I was freaked out because an online due date calculator which calculated all sorts of things from LMP to conception to IVF retrieval & transfer dates and even due dates for singletons, twins, triplets, and quads as well as dates you could have CVS, amnio, and glucose tolerance tests done had calculated my due date with triplets as September 19th. Since technically my 40 week due date was November 7, this completely freaked me out.

Hey, guess what? It was 100% correct! That's even freakier!

Posted in fertility shmertility | 6 Comments »

Miscellaneous

November 4, 2007 by chezperky

Funny
One ridiculous thing about me is that despite having been a history major, I'm terrible with certain dates. It took me years to remember when my mother's birthday is (September 27, but I used to mix it up with the 17th). The only reason I know when my husband's birthday is is that it's six days after mine. The only reason I remember mine is because it's four days after Robert Burns' Day (I was supposed to be born on Robert Burns' birthday, and since I was born in Scotland, that would have been a huge deal, so my father has never let me forget it). And then there's my anniversary. You'd think this would be one date I'd remember, right? I picked the date, after all. I was there. A year of planning went into that date. It should be emblazoned in my mind, right? But the first time I received my wedding album, the wrong date was imprinted on it, and that set a bad precedent. I have a friend who got married exactly three weeks before me and so I routinely call her and ask her whether I got married November 2nd or 3rd when I have to fill out a form that requires my anniversary date. She laughs at me every time, but she does tell me, so that's good. Worse, I have to think really hard to figure out what YEAR even I got married. Hah. I never have to ask her that one, though, because all I had to do was figure out how long I'd been trying to get pregnant and subtract that from the current year, since we started trying immediately. Sad that my point of context is infertility…

ANYWAY, the funny part is this: This morning, my Google Calendar reminder sent me an email to remind me that today is my anniversary. Except, uh, that's WRONG! Our anniversary was yesterday! Duh! I couldn't even get the date right when I was setting up my calendar reminders! Sigh. Yesterday we sponsored a kiddush (small luncheon) at shul (synagogue) in honor of three things: Our fifth wedding anniversary was yesterday, today is the third anniversary of J coming to live with us permanently, and celebrating the birth of our triplets (November 7th is the triplets due date, which is coincidentally our anniversary on the Hebrew Calendar). There is much to celebrate, even if I AM terrible with dates. 🙂

I am Super-Mom
Sometimes this whole being-a-triplet-mom thing is hard, but sometimes it helps remind me that I am superwoman. For example… how many women out there can say that they've been able to feed THREE babies at once? Well, I can say that! Several times now, I've managed to nurse two babies at once, while bottle feeding a third baby propped between my knees. It's not the easiest thing to do, but I've done it.

The triplets eat 6-8 times per day, depending. They eat between every 3-4 hours depending on how hungry Sam is… He's our measuring stick… the other two don't get hungry nearly as often as he does, so when he gets hungry, he gets fed and the other two follow, so that they all stay on close to the same schedule. We change close to 30 diapers per day. We have gone through about a case of wipes since they came home. We do about 3 loads of laundry per day, sometimes more. We sleep in chunks of 2-3 hours at a time. Occasionally, we are able to sleep for slightly longer, but it comes at a cost (if I sleep for longer, it means my boobs wake me up in agony from lack of pumping or nursing). Two of the babies are breastfeeding 85% of the time. Abby still refuses, but since she's the little one, she gets extra calories added to her expressed breastmilk anyway, so it's not an entirely bad thing that she gets expressed milk. Tuesday we'll see a lactation consultant to see if she can help us figure out how to reintroduce Abby to the breast. In the NICU she was my best breast-feeder, so it's a bit frustrating that she's now refusing to consider it. But at least her bigger siblings are getting to be pros. They weren't very good at all at breastfeeding in the NICU.

We are slowly getting the nursery together, but there's SO much stuff that people have given or lent us… we have clothes from all different ages that people are lending us (kids at this age outgrow things so quickly it's not worth buying much) that I have to sort through. The babies aren't sleeping in the nursery right now anyway… they sleep in my room in a pack n' play next to my bed. It's not a big deal either way, the nursery is only three steps further away than the pack n' play, but still… Eventually it would be nice if the nursery was finished. So Seth is working on that today.

Okay, super-mom has to go now. Babies are hungry. More later!

Posted in parenting, triplet mania | 13 Comments »

How’s J Doing?

November 2, 2007 by chezperky

I keep forgetting that people are asking about how J is adjusting to the three little siblings in his life. He’s actually doing really well with them. I know he spent a long time ASKING for a brother or sister, but I also know in his little mind he thought he was going to get a sibling his age to play with. I’m sure he has no idea what to think about having three little babies in his life. But he’s very affectionate toward them. He likes to “pet” the babies (e.g. caress their soft heads) and he enjoys holding them and feeding them a bottle (Abby is still getting bottles all of the time and Ellie and Sam occasionally get a bottle still, though it’s less common… but they all only get breastmilk regardless of the delivery method). I’ve never posted a picture of J, because I’ve been wary of his mother coming across this site, but at this point, I’m not sure that’s such a huge danger, so I’ll post one picture, with the caveat that it may not stay here forever:

That’s J feeding Ellie about two weeks ago. It was the first time I’d let him hold a baby (and we were RIGHT THERE balancing her) and he loved every second of it. He has a particular fondness for Sam, but adores his sisters as well. He is generally respectful of their need for quiet and peace, though he sometimes forgets, but that’s to be expected. He is very, very good with them. We are definitely seeing adjustment issues in less direct ways, of course. Our bedroom is downstairs and the babies are with us, and his bedroom is upstairs. This never bothered him before, but suddenly he gets lonely when it’s bedtime and he’s sad that no one is there to sleep with him. He’s started claiming to have more bad dreams (but he comes down complaining of the bad dreams long before he’s had a chance to fall asleep) and he makes many more claims of monsters and ghosts in his room than he used to, all in the name of stalling at bed time. He’s slightly more clingy than he used to be, and doesn’t enjoy having play time by himself the way he used to. He craves having someone to play with him, though it doesn’t have to be me or Seth… it just has to be someone. He apparently requires a little extra TLC at school and has a little more difficulty reigning in his energy levels than usual.

But basically, there’s nothing we didn’t expect. He loves the babies. He’s adjusting, but not without some bumps. He’s totally normal. We are very, very proud of him and we do our best to give him lots of extra hugs and kisses every day. He’s a very sensitive kid.

Posted in parenting, siblings | 15 Comments »

How’s J Doing?

November 2, 2007 by chezperky

I keep forgetting that people are asking about how J is adjusting to the three little siblings in his life. He's actually doing really well with them. I know he spent a long time ASKING for a brother or sister, but I also know in his little mind he thought he was going to get a sibling his age to play with. I'm sure he has no idea what to think about having three little babies in his life. But he's very affectionate toward them. He likes to "pet" the babies (e.g. caress their soft heads) and he enjoys holding them and feeding them a bottle (Abby is still getting bottles all of the time and Ellie and Sam occasionally get a bottle still, though it's less common… but they all only get breastmilk regardless of the delivery method). I've never posted a picture of J, because I've been wary of his mother coming across this site, but at this point, I'm not sure that's such a huge danger, so I'll post one picture, with the caveat that it may not stay here forever:

That's J feeding Ellie about two weeks ago. It was the first time I'd let him hold a baby (and we were RIGHT THERE balancing her) and he loved every second of it. He has a particular fondness for Sam, but adores his sisters as well. He is generally respectful of their need for quiet and peace, though he sometimes forgets, but that's to be expected. He is very, very good with them. We are definitely seeing adjustment issues in less direct ways, of course. Our bedroom is downstairs and the babies are with us, and his bedroom is upstairs. This never bothered him before, but suddenly he gets lonely when it's bedtime and he's sad that no one is there to sleep with him. He's started claiming to have more bad dreams (but he comes down complaining of the bad dreams long before he's had a chance to fall asleep) and he makes many more claims of monsters and ghosts in his room than he used to, all in the name of stalling at bed time. He's slightly more clingy than he used to be, and doesn't enjoy having play time by himself the way he used to. He craves having someone to play with him, though it doesn't have to be me or Seth… it just has to be someone. He apparently requires a little extra TLC at school and has a little more difficulty reigning in his energy levels than usual.

But basically, there's nothing we didn't expect. He loves the babies. He's adjusting, but not without some bumps. He's totally normal. We are very, very proud of him and we do our best to give him lots of extra hugs and kisses every day. He's a very sensitive kid.

Posted in parenting, siblings | 15 Comments »

Clean Bill of Health and Parenthood

October 31, 2007 by chezperky

I had my six-week post-partum appointment yesterday. I have a clean bill of health. It’s kind of sad for me, really. It feels like I’m closing a chapter of my life. I’m officially not pregnant anymore. I mean, I haven’t been pregnant for six weeks now, but something feels different and final now. And I miss it. And I’m sad that this may have been my last pregnancy. Even though I have four children now, I never wanted to have just one pregnancy (well, two, but the first one doesn’t count in this sense).. I never thought I’d have three at once. I never thought this was how I would build my family. I don’t want this to have been my last chance. And if I were a fertile myrtle, it would be easy to say, “well, okay, so if you get pregnant again, so be it, and that’ll be great.” But we all know it’s just not that easy. So I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes that I have four kids and I’m not satisfied, and some of you probably think that this is just postpartum hormones, but I don’t think it is. I’m sleep deprived, overwhelmed, can barely imagine handling another infant right now, but I long for the experience again.

Today would have been an easy day for me to say that I never want to go through this again. I was supposed to take J to school, which would have meant piling the triplets and J into the van and getting him up to school. This doesn’t sound so hard, until you consider that all the babies have to be fed, changed, and put into car seats before they can be brought out to the car. Add that to the fact that J has to be changed, fed, and clothed and his lunch had to be made. Oh, and then there’s the fact that Sam was up ALL NIGHT. He will NOT stop eating. He just keeps going and going. He woke up screaming with hunger at 2am (an hour before I expected him to wake up) and nursed from 2-4:45 when my husband took him away and gave him a bottle so that I could get some sleep. He wasn’t just using me as a pacifier either, because he was really hungry and he would scream bloody murder if he unlatched, and he wouldn’t take a regular pacifier. He was still hungry even after the bottle. He whimpered and whined for an hour and a half until he started screaming at 6:45 begging for food. So I nursed him until almost 9am when I gave up and gave him a bottle and he was STILL hungry. Meanwhile, I had three other kids to take care of, and I had decided that the four year old wasn’t going to make it to preschool since none of us were dressed, fed or ready to go.

Today is the first day I have felt completely overwhelmed. But I STILL miss pregnancy. I still want to have another baby someday, even if people think I’m greedy for saying so.

Anyway, odds are good Sam’s just going through a ginormous growth spurt. Babies apparently go through growth spurts approximately every 3 weeks, and he’s six weeks old exactly today, so it makes sense, right? Apparently this should “only” last 2-3 days. Which would be totally manageable if he were a singleton, but hey, did I mention that there are TWO OTHER BABIES and a four year old to take care of? But this shall pass, right? Oh, and a friend of mine came and picked up J and took him to preschool an hour and a half late, but he got there regardless. Thank heavens. So the day is looking up, and I can do this. Parenthood certainly has its challenges, but I can do this, right? RIGHT?

Posted in parenting, triplets? | 18 Comments »

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