The Triplets Odd-ysey – Part 3

I think I’m still trying to figure out the best way to attack this post.  I’d thought about adding some pictures and video from their first year birthday parties this weekend and leave it at that.  I didn’t think I had anything to say, then I spewed out 3400 words in an hour and a half and you guys are left with the cleanup effort.

Put a pot of coffee on and strap it in.

I’ve interspersed a number of pics and videos from their birthday weekend versus their time in the hospital so that you can see how they are doing today compared to how tiny they were in Part 2.

Part 1 – Was full of trials and tribulations and closed with a cliff-hanger.

Part 2 – Talked about a pregnancy cut short and all the battles our children faced in the hospital.

And now Part 3 displays my usual blatant disregard for copy editing and grammar…

I think one of the most common questions people ask is, “How do you do it?”

One step at a time.

It’s kinda like the illogical but oft-used business proverb, How do you eat an elephant?

You try to be as proactive as possible but in truth, your best skills are patience and flexibility to handle any situation.  You also need to work with your partner.  I’ve noticed that we often pick up to finish each other’s chores because you rarely get to finish a task straight through without being interrupted by a baby’s needs.  Work together and do the necessary.  I know of fathers that never feed their kids or changes diapers.  In this day and age there’s no excuse.  You’re not being macho, you’re being a fucking asshole and I’ll say it and spray it to your face.  Man up or your old lady has every right to go Lorena Bobbit on you.  Google it, I’ll wait.

Anywho…

The first baby home was Bella.  And so we had a few days to ease into one baby.  We weren’t coming in cold either.  When we visited the NICU daily, we took responsibility for feeding and changing diapers as long as they were well enough for us to handle, meaning, not undergoing any special care at the time.   Yes, for the first six weeks or so, we couldn’t even really touch the babies, but once we could we tried to take as active a role as we were medically allowed to.

Which reminds me…it is really freaking hard to change a diaper without f’ing up any of the lines, monitors and breathing apparati hooked to your baby.  Those nurses have skills.  I almost always knocked a heart rate monitor line or something off when doing it.

Having Bella home those first few nights was very scary though.  She was feeding every three hours throughout the night and we took turns for whoever had the energy to give the feed.  And Bella is not a fast eater, not even to this day.  She is far more interested in the world going on around her.  We’ve tried some neat tricks to try to distract her.  She seems to eat better when distracted.  When she falls asleep mid-feed, she sucks the whole bottle down.  I think it’s cute and funny when we give her the Sunday comics to crinkle in her hands while we feed her.

Back then we just suffered through because we didn’t know better.  They say to stop feeding your child after a half hour because there’s a net loss of calories expended after that time, which I think is f’n ridiculous but I’m not a doctor.  There’s a net loss after you feed anyway due to the baby breathing and supporting it’s internal processes.

Bella, in the early days would only eat about an ounce, maybe two in a half hour so we were doing nearly hour long feeds with her or she would starve if we listened to the doctors.  She still takes the better part of a half hour today to finish a bottle but you give her some table food and she mows it down.

Owen came home just over a week after Bella and then we had two babies to juggle every three hours for feeds and diaper changes all night.  So we got ourselves into a Zombie-like rhythm of cat naps and copious amounts of coffee.

Owen was very difficult to feed too.  He’d be fine till you burped him, but the act of breaking him from feeding seemed to disrupt his whole rhythm and he wouldn’t have anything to do with his bottle after that.

Owen still gets fussy about his bottles often today.  We adjust, or try to.  Sometimes you have to just let him play for about fifteen minutes after the first burp.  We also have tried going most or all of the bottle without a burp but when the kid’s ready, he lets you know.

And that’s the thing…I don’t think you can manage three babies with a Draconian-fixed schedule.  First of all, babies don’t understand schedule.  “Schedule” is something fucked up that us adults do, often as a measure to keep other adults in line so that they can be controlled by the system.

Babies wake up when they are ready, want a diaper change when they want it, and they will eat when they damn well please.  They will let you know this.  Sure, you can try tricks to prolong things if your kid is getting fussy an hour early.  A nice walk around the block in the triplet stroller nearly always changes the babies’ states.  But if he’s screaming for a bottle an hour early, give it to him.  He’s not acting spoiled.  He’s hungry.

Conversely, shoving a bottle down your kid’s throat at exactly the four hour mark if he isn’t hungry won’t work either.  If you can’t do your best to make eating calm and/or pleasurable for them, then the problems will just escalate.

And no, not every feed will be fun.  I can tell you most assuredly that all three of them occasionally try our patience in their very own way.  I am not a morning person…and am most certainly not a 3am in the morning person.

Owen came home on a heart-rate / breathing monitor as well because he would have these crashes that the nurses would have to coax him out of.  This monitor sounds like a fire-alarm every time it goes off and it probably went off thirty times in that first two days.  A lot of times it’d go off simply because Owen would move and the wires that were affixed to his chest would shift or fall off.  Of course, you have about five seconds to go run and reset it before it wakes up the other baby.

And Owen was on the monitor up through the holidays in 2009.

When Noah came home in late October about four weeks after Owen, then we really had a challenge.  Noah had so many stomach issues in the hospital that they sent him home on this formula called Pregestimil.  As the name suggests, it’s pre-digested, smells like rotting potatoes and goes right through your baby.

Oh, and as a sidenote, my God, he used to get so puffy and lethargic when they’d pull him off formula and stick him on IV’s for nourishment.  It was really quite frightening how much he’d blow up.  And then they’d give him stuff to try to drain out the extra fluid but they had to be careful with that as well so that he wouldn’t suffer a heart attack due to an imbalance of electrolytes and potassium.  I forgot to talk about that in Part 2.

So, poor kid, Noah was hungry every couple hours, screaming for food when we got him home.  He needed diaper changes ten or more times a day where the other two were at about six diaper changes a day.  He would get awful rashes just from constantly going to the bathroom.  It was brutal and I about bit the doctor’s head off after another sleepless night but they wouldn’t change him off the formula till we got to meet with the GI specialist nearly six weeks after he came home.

To this day, he still wakes up thunderously hungry.  I typically feed Noah on overnights and Nikki has Bella and Owen.  Owen’s been sleeping through 99% of the time for several months now, but Bella and Noah get up a couple times a week still.  For example, Sunday night, Noah got up for a bottle at 1am and 6am.  Bella got up at about 4am.

Noah screams bloody murder when he’s hungry and I have to run to get him out of the bedroom so as not to wake up the other two.  And he’s so heavy now that if I try to hold him while preparing the bottle I really feel like my bicep is going to rip away from my arm and I’m not a small guy.

So of course I have to put him down and he screams at the top of his lungs for a few minutes while I warm the bottles and get the medication drawn and put in them.

Noah actually came home on Norvasc, which is an adult blood pressure medication because he is so high strung.  They all came home on several medications a piece.  We learned very quickly that we had to develop a spreadsheet that would track the children’s feed times, the number of ounces consumed, their meds and dosages, as well as approximate times of day to administer because most of the meds had to be given several times a day.  Each kid was on at least four different medications.  We still use the spreadsheets today though they are down to two medications a piece now.

I’ve not kept perfect records for what we spend on formula or diapers a month but it’s significant.  I know that we order the boy’s formula online from diapers.com and pay about $90 a case which lasts them a week.  So we’re spending about $360 a month on that.  Bella’s we get from Target or the Grocery store so I don’t really have records on that, but I’d say that we easily spend another $100 – $150 a month on her formula, so there’s $500 there.

Then there’s diapers and wipes which I buy by the truckload from the wholesale club.  We were gung ho about using a cloth diaper service but when Noah came home the mess he did, we gave up on that idea.  I’d say we go there (the wholesale club) about twice a month and easily spend a hundred to a hundred fifty each time.

So, this whole escaping the rat race to be a blogger/writer thing ain’t as easy for me as it is for many other folks who have fewer family responsibilities and have done it already.

I have to admit that I think having one or two children would be a great deal easier.  Once you’re outnumbered you’re in for it.  So what’s the answer to that?

You bring in reinforcements.  During the week my wife, who is really absolutely spectacular with the children, gets some help for at least a few hours a day, most days, while I’m at work doing the 9 to 5 (really 9 – 6:30).

Many thanks to those who step in to help on a regular basis.  My sister-in-law Melissa, her sister Kim, my wife’s mother, my parents and brother, my wife’s Aunt Robin…and probably a few names I am missing, sorry.  They willingly give up a few hours of their day to help, sometimes on very short notice.  We thank them and love them very much.

So where are we now?

Ms. Bella at One Year Old

It’s amazing to watch babies develop, especially to watch as their personalities take shape.  Bella is a peanut compared to the other two.  I will have new bodyweights when we see the doctor this Friday but I estimate her to be about five pounds smaller than Noah who is by far the biggest.

You can actually see her ribs but she eats table food like a queen.  She’s just so hyper-kinetic that she burns it off real fast.

She’s extremely verbal and curious.  While the boys are often content playing with whatever they can on the floor, she ALWAYS wants what they have and she’ll crawl over to take it.

She is the undisputed Queen of the household.  She’s intensely curious and great around crowds and people.  We took her to two Buffalo Sabres professional hockey Playoff games this year and she did fantastic.  18,000 fans in a playoff atmosphere and she loved it.

I thought sure she’d be running around the house already or at least crawling before anyone as she was able to stand on her own with only a slight helping hand to balance her several months ago.  But Noah actually beat her to the punch.

I have to take a split second to thank the heavens that we qualify for Occupational and Physical therapy for all three of them due to their prematurity.  Every week we have therapists coming in to work with them.  And I wasn’t sure it was making a difference till I talked to some other parents who had full-term babies born right around the same week we had our preemies, yet on many levels, our babies have developed faster.  This is solely due to the therapy they get, and then my wife and I continue the exercises with them throughout the week.

Which brings me to a very important point.  Why the f*ck don’t they teach every parent how to work with their babies in an occupational and physical therapy manner?  How is a parent supposed to know what to do to help their baby to learn to rollover or to get from a seated position to a crawling position?  This is so important to me yet 99.99% of the parents out there are lost in the dark, as would we be if we didn’t have the benefit of observing the therapy sessions.

Anyways, Bella was the first to speak, saying Daddy and Baba, and now she working on her d’s and t’s.  She has the longest eyelashes that I’ve ever seen on a baby and the most beautiful smile.  She is so happy and energetic, yet also feisty and determined.

When she wakes up, she wants a great big hug and she wants to cuddle.  Then she has to play for a good twenty minutes or more before she’ll take a bottle.  She really has been amazing to watch as she develops.

She is every bit her mother’s daughter.

Mr. Owen at One Year’s Old

Owen is a very sweet child.  Sometimes, when the other two are going haywire (daily) we marvel about how much easier this would be if we had three Owen’s.  But where’s the fun in that, right?

He can sit there very quietly, holding a toy and just trying to figure it out for hours.  He’ll barely peep when he’s hungry or tired.  Consequently, he sometimes gets lost in the shuffle with the other two and I feel horribly about that but what can you do when two are screaming to be fed or cared for and one is content on the floor?  You go after the screamers to take care of the emergency.

For most of the first six months since he has been home he’s lagged behind developmentally from the other two.  He just didn’t take much interest in the physical therapy or anything.  He was just content to lay there.  I am embarrassed to admit that I often thought he might have more serious developmental issues but then in the last couple weeks he’s just exploded.

He copies all of the vocal inflections of Bella including pitch and tone, and he says a marvelously clear Daddy.  He also works in the occasional, “Hi.”

He’s mostly a backwards crawler but between that and rolling he gets where he needs to go…or sometimes gets stuck under the couch.

He’s a very loving boy and just a joy to sit there and cuddle with, almost meditatively, after dealing with the fireworks of the other two.

He also does phenomenally well on people food.  We’ve been trying them out on little things here and there.  My wife had pulled pork and cupcakes for the party this weekend and he did well with both.  I’ll make sure to drop in the video of them crushing cupcakes on Sunday.  Noah would just pound on it with his fist, he didn’t really know what to do with it, but Owen and Bella did terrific.

Owen is a solid 19 pounds now.  I had to take him into a specialist on Friday so he is the only baby whose weight I do know for sure right now.  I estimate that Noah is a good two pounds heavier than Owen now.  That kid is solid, so we’ll talk about him next.

Owen is every bit as introspective as his father.

Mr. Noah at One Year’s Old

Everytime I take the kids out in the triplet stroller it’s inevitable that I’ll get stopped a half dozen times or more on each walk, which I’m totally cool with.  How often do you see triplets out and about these days?  And how often to you get an opportunity to chat with strangers on the street?  It seems that folks these days get all put out when a stranger says Hi to them and that’s a real shame.

Anywho, when I get stopped, everybody always comments on two things:

• My look how long Bella and Owen’s eyelashes are and
• Geez, looks like Noah never misses a meal

The kid is totally solid and totally beautiful.  He’s also the one who’s subject to the most wild swings.  He has a freakin’ awesome laugh, and then a second and a half later it turns maniacal, followed by screaming bloody murder.  There is no real calm with him except in those rare moments that my wife and I truly cherish where he’s in a milk coma and starts…”purring” I guess I would call it.

He is a wrecking crew.  We have this kitten who’s about two months old now.  The therapist actually said now would be a good time to get young pets who can grow up with them.  She’s actually our fourth cat but the other three don’t seem to take an interest in the babies.  This kitten, named Gabby, she lies right with them.  She’s not bothered when the Noah starts pulling on her ears.  We make sure to rush over and get him off the kitten but there’s always those times when you can’t get there quick enough and she just takes it.

She likes to sit on your lap while your feeding a baby and she will lick Noah’s and Owen’s heads like she’s giving them a cleaning and the boys giggle.  It’s always a nice moment.

Noah and Bella can really get after stuff.  They belly-crawl but the can really move and so we are starting to enter that next stage where they are quite mobile and they out-number us.  I’ll let you know how that goes…

Noah doesn’t say any words yet but he sure screams so baby obscenities.  And I think the kid will still be bottling when he’s twelve but we’ll see.  I honestly think there is something wrong with his stomach, from the botched surgery I talked about in part 2 but I can’t get any doctors to take me seriously so far.  Milk soothes him.  Table food seems to make him very fussy.

But Noah has a nice large, round head with a big mouth that sports this absolutely beautiful ear to ear grin, with five teeth dotting it.

Noah is every bit…hmmm…immaculate conception?

Since I’m now setting a new Charley record for verbosity I’ll wind this post down.

Being a parent of triplets is enormously complicated and will test your very last nerve plus a few more you didn’t think you had.  But it’s so worth it.  There are moments where I think I am going to go insane and were it not for my wife, I probably would.  You feel helpless when you can’t figure out what’s wrong and you’re constantly tired because your babies NEVER nap all at the same time.  You ever try to put a baby down when it doesn’t want to?  Multiply that by three and see what that does for your nerves.

The fact is that I am so, so very thankful for my family as I write this.  Considering where we were in Parts 1 and 2, and where we are now, it really is amazing.

For the un-lived Parts 4 and beyond, the best is yet to come.

Tagged as: Babies, Triplets