Where We Sleep and Play

About 1 month after having the triplets, about 1 week after Mia was sent home from the NICU, we moved. We had been living in a townhome that we spent a year designing and almost another year waiting to be built. We finally moved in Feb '07 and found out we were expecting triplets in Dec of that year. The house and community would have been perfect for our first child, not our first 3 children. So we put our house on the market for several months but it did not sell. While I was in the hospital on bedrest, we got a private offer on our house (it was not even on the market at the time). It is amazing how some things work out. A few days before delivering the triplets, Max and I looked at houses online. Within days we had made an offer on our current home. The house is perfect. The girls and boys room were already painted. There is a room right off the living room we have turned into a playroom. The backyard is fenced (for Hayden) and their is a swing set. I never saw the house in person until after we had closed and right before we moved in. I love it!

It was crazy to move with 1 month old triplets but you would be surprised at how many other triplet families I've talked to have done it. This house is perfect for our family and I am so thankful things worked out for us. We have also been blessed with amazing neighbors who adore our dog and give him the love he deserves while we are busy with our infants.

Here is the girl's nursery. My mom and Aunt Carol made the beautiful quilts for the kids. They go perfect with the girl's nursery color.





Here is Marcus's room. We bought these cute words from Target to go on the walls in both the girls and boys room.








Here is our playroom. This is the only room in the house we have done anything to. Over the Christmas holiday Max and I painted and cubbied this room. We spend most of our day in here.



Here we are one warm winter day enjoying the backyard.


We are so blessed to have such a wonderful home and I am thankful for it everyday.

7 Months - This Must be Heaven

The kids have been a complete joy lately. They smile, laugh and entertain each other. The silliest things are funny: Josie cracked up yesterday watching Mia eat. When our dog Hayden enters the room, Marcus's whole body shakes with excitement. The other day, Mia couldn't stop gigling at a silly hat I put on my head. Baby giggles are a beautiful thing. I can take them places outside the house too. The other week we got stuck at Target in an awful storm. I had Marcus and Mia in the double stroller and was wearing Josie in the baby bjorn. I ended up buying some baby food and spoons and fed them at the Starbucks in Target waiting for the storm to pass. No one cried or caused a scene. We even went to a cocktail party to celebrate the completion of one of our rental properties last weekend. The kids sat and played on the floor for hours. They were angels. Here is Marcus with Uncle Nick enjoying the basketball game at the party.

Nights have also been wonderful. For the first time in over a year, I have nights where I sleep from 9:30 PM-4:30 AM without waking up. For over 1 month now, Josie and Marcus are officially STTN. They go to bed at 7 PM and I don't hear a peep from them till Marcus (of course) wakes up around 4-5 AM. Usually I can pat him back to sleep and go back to bed for an additional hour or two. Mia STTN about half the time. When she does wake up, it is usually around 4 AM for a very quick bottle. I have not heard a peep from Josie from 7 PM-6 AM in months. I am officially getting 7 hours of sleep most nights. Life is so much better with sleep. Sleep is a beautiful thing. Never underestimate the power of sleep!

I have heard people say that 6-9 months is a great age. I am beginning to see how people could forget the horror of the newborn stage and think about having another child. Something that was incomprehensible to me before. HELLO, NOT ME! WE ARE DONE! YES, FOR SURE!

I don't think days with the triplets will ever be easy. But, as the sickies go away, everyone sleeps, and smiles take the place of whines, life is placid.

Until we start to teeth, until rocking on all 4's and scooting turns to all out crawling, and until we catch another illness, let there be peace :)

Today During Nap Time

Marcus...sleeping soundly

Josie...sleeping soundly

Mia...

Her new nick names, monkey, trouble, crazy. Yikes, that is a cord in her hand! Time to baby-proof!

A Little Odd

I try to get out with the kids on most days. Often it is for a walk or jog on the trail by our house. Sometimes we go to the local Target, Petsmart or bookstore. Whenever we are out and about with the kids we get a little attention. Maybe a few people stop to "awe" and occasionally we get a medical person (L&D nurse, ultrasound tech, etc) to politely ask a few questions about how far we carried the babies, how long they were in the NICU and how big they were when they were born. You may be surprised that not many people ask us about fertility treatments.

Sometimes we walk to the grocery store about 1.5 miles down the road. Today was one of those days. And for some reason we got A TON of attention on this short trip. Luckily everything I needed today was down the cereal and baby aisle. However, conveniently, 5 grocery store employees needed to venture into the cereal aisle while we were there. They all stopped to ooo and awe and ask lots of questions. One 75+ year old man asked me if I used fertility drugs. Like I said, I am fairly open about my story but today I felt like I had to defend myself. I found myself telling this old man I didn't know how I used an ovulation drug that had less than 1% chance of triplets. The octuplets are getting to me.

I hate that I feel like I have to defend my use of fertility treatment. If I had needed to do IVF to get pregnant, I should have no problem admitting that. The ocutplets are getting to me darn it!

As we were checking out, an employee helped me unload my groceries and pack them back into the stroller. She said "honey, you let me know if I can help you out anytime!" The manager then came up and thanked us for shopping at his store.

Is it the octuplets or was it just one of those days?

My Babies are Growing Up!

I know my last post was a little emotional. We have had some tough days with the triplets lately and even a supermom like myself needs to vent from time to time :) As shiny and bright as our life is on most days, I like to be honest and admit some days are tough.

Today I am back to supermom. Between naps, bottles, lunch and administering Josie's breathing treatment, we managed to get the babies dressed (adorably) and do a photo shoot! There was a lot of snot wiping but we got some great pictures. Here is one of our favorite shots!

I also have been dying to get a photo of the babies using their new bath rings! Our awesome neighbor Gail (aka, our dog Hayden's surrogate mom, bless you Gail!) bought these for us (I promise we supervise the babies at all times while using these rings..I'm not trying for another controversial post ;)). The kids have always loved bath time but now it is a blast! As usual, Mia is being grabby. She loved being in the middle and pulling at her brother and sister!

Baby updates

Marcus is constantly up on all 4's rocking and has made progress on moving backwards. He hasn't figured out you need to move your arms forward to go forward.

Mia seems to actually move around more than Marcus but how is a mystery to us. She is not crawling or rolling to the other side of the room but somehow, she gets there.

Josie is not the type to be dramatic about her achievements. She is sitting like a champ, which came out of nowhere. I'm guessing some day soon we will look up and she will be daintily retrieving toys on all 4's.

Did You Hear About the Octuplets?

This is going to be a more personal post. I apologize in advance if I offend anyone. Since this past weekend, I get this question A LOT! I suppose since I have triplets people assume I can feel better knowing someone is in worse shape than me. But I don't.

I am fairly open about how I ended up with triplets. As more and more stories of sextuplets, quintuplets and octuplets appear, people are more and more curious about fertility treatments, which I wholeheartedly support. And ethics definitely come into play. I do not know the details of how a women who is designed to hold one baby at a time possibly got pregnant with eight babies, carried them to 31 weeks and plans to breastfeed them all. I can say when I hear this (especially the breastfeeding part), I can't help but roll my eyes. I do know how I ended up with triplets and have learned a bit about fertility treatments through the process. It seems like a good time to share my story again, and some more personal feelings on my pregnancy and the octuplets.

I did not ovulate. No amount of "trying" was going to result in a baby. I visited a reputable reproductive endocrinologist and we began with a very basic fertility "treatment". Clomid is often referred to as the "gateway" fertility drug. It helps women who do not ovulate, ovulate and helps regulate woman's cycles. You take the drug, which comes in varying doses for 5 days. You may be surprised at the number of women who have tried Clomid. The chances of multiples is very low; the chance of triplets was so low it was not even mentioned. We did not even know the chance was less than 1% till after we found out we had triplets. Some people who use Clomid are monitored very closely. They will go in for regular ultrasounds to see how many (if any) eggs are developing, may receive a trigger shot of hormones to trigger ovulation and then get an IUI (sperm is injected to up the chances of fertilization). All of these will increase the chances of a successful pregnancy. Some are not monitored at all yet still concieve on Clomid. I happened to be one of these. I got an ultrasound before starting treatment and had absolutely no eggs that would mature (there was no chance of me ovulating on my own). I took the lowest dose of Clomid for 5 days. The doctors prepared me for failure since most women with my condition need injectable hormones or IVF (fertilizing a woman's eggs with sperm outside the body and then reinserting the embryos back into the woman's body) to concieve. I received no further treatments. The next ultrasound I had confirmed I was pregnant...with triplets.

I wish I could say this initial news was a happy moment for us. In all honesty, the meeting in the RE's office afterward was fairly grim. He told us he did not consider our triplet pregnancy a success. He said "we do not think triplets are cute." He apologized repeatedly that "this happened". He told us "in fact, I plan to talk about the fatality of high order multiples in reproductive medicine at a conference coming up." He personally called a high risk specialist so that we could get in and see him "while there is still time to do something about it (i.e. - reduce our pregnancy to twins or a singleton)". On a posotive, he did end on a different note by saying "I am completely astounded that this happened. It seems there might be some divine intervention going on here."

We couldn't be happier with our triplets! They are a blessing and a joy. They are also SO MUCH WORK. For the past 2 months, we have had sick babies. Their immune systems are not on par with a full term infants and they are really battling with a nasty virus. Josie and Mia were both fully recovered for a few days. Then Marcus got really sick and now Josie and Mia are both sick again. I have to hear my poor darlings cough and cry all night and cannot give them any medication to relieve their symptoms besides infant Tylenol. There are nights Max is unable to make it home unexpectedly and I have to try to get 3 babies fed, medicated, dressed and into bed, fill up their humidifiers and clean up the aftermath(it looks like a tornado went through). I hate these nights because the babies are tired and hungry. I cannot work fast enough to prevent several minutes of screaming (although I found out TV helps out here). I feel so bad they have to wait to be fed and allowed to sleep. The poor darlings get very little individual attention during the day and they probably spend way too much time in their jumparoos.

I want to scream when people tell me "oops, it looks like that one just spit up a little." or "is that a spot of dried spit-up on your rug?" or my favorite "is that a stain on her clothes...using a stain stick before washing always helped me." HELLO, I'm a little busy to wipe up every tiny spit up, clean the carpets and stain stick the 40+ outfits we go through in a week. Maybe I could be doing some of those things now but I strongly believe a women needs at least an hour of personal time/day. If not, I would have gone completely mad by now.

So, I do think it is a little wild that a women who already has 6 kids at home, is bringing home another 8....and is going to have the time and supply to breastfeed them all. It kind-of makes my situation seem like a breeze. I mean if she can do that, how could triplets be a challenge? I assure you my friends, it is a challenge. 14 kids seems downright impossible. Especially if 8 are preemies, which carry many challenges alone.

I also assure you my friends that triplets are a JOY! The experience is amazing and my kids are wonderful. There are days where things go very smoothly, everyone is happy and we all get great sleep. I truly am blessed. I simply would not wish high order multiples on anybody and don't think it should be glamorized. It breaks my heart to see other triplet moms who have lost one or all of their babies hurt to hear about a women who gave birth to 8 babies. If you have had a baby recently, give them an extra hug tonight. I did. I think this story brings up lots of emotions for women struggling with infertility, for women who have multiples, and for people debating the ethics of fertility treatments. Guidelines do exist, but sometimes unexpected things happen or people act irresponsibly. I simply hope the octuplets are loved and cared for and have a wonderful life.

My long winded post has no major take home message except this:

"Yes, I have heard about the octuplets"
"No, I cannot imagine...life is challenging enough with 3"
"Be responsible, love your babies, provide the best environment for them, and cherish the moments no matter how many babies you have or how they got here."

A Weekend Away

This past weekend Max and I were able to get away! I was a little nervous I would be uneasy leaving the triplets for two nights. I actually had no problems and didn't worry a bit. Probably because they were in the best of hands. Grammy and Pop G came down and stayed with Marcus and Josie and Mia spent the weekend in Roanoke with Grammy and Grandpa P. It is really nice for the triplets to get individual attention from the grandparents since they don't get much at home with mom all day. Everyone had a blast (especially Max and I).

We spent the weekend at the Biltmore in Asheville, NC. I LOVE touring large houses so this was tons of fun for me. We also spent time at the winery, went horseback riding, and spent more time at the winery :)


Things are back to normal this week at home. Sorry kiddos, your two naps a day are back on ;) Since we have started solids, we decided it was time to get the kids their own table. Here they are eating lunch. Well, Josie and Marcus are eating lunch. Mia as usual is eating like a bird, just tasting her sweet potatoes but having fun making a mess.