Triple-Play:  Three babies at once can be a lot of work, but also joy
By Donna Cushlanis, Triplet Mom and Contributing Writer for the Cape Cod Times.
Originally printed in March, 2004.  Reprinted with permission from the author.

Three.  I always thought I'd like to have three children. 

Be careful what you wish for.  I never played it out in my mind that I'd have them
all at once.

My husband and I tried to have children for a long time.  We endured numerous fertility
treatments.  We spent tons of money on procedures.  We got pregnant twice and miscarried
twice.  We somehow survived that.  We somehow picked ourselves up to try "just
one more time."

In February 2002, I found out I was pregnant again.  Going through fertility procedures,
you are told over and over again that multiples are a possibility, but you really
don't think it will happen to you.  We watched those shows on Discovery Channel 
about women who have multiples: four, five, six or more babies.  We used to joke
that they had a litter.  But deep down, we knew they were people just like us, people
who just so badly wanted a child.  Probably also people, like us, who thought that
multiples would never happen to them.

The Big News
In my seventh week, the nurse at the doctors' office scheduled us for an ultrasound.
Again, being pregnant before, we had had ultrasounds before.  We knew what to look
for.  A blinking light.  A little blinking light on a screen.  That's all that you
see at that point.  But that little blinking light means so much.  That light is
a heartbeat.

I saw the blinking light.  My husband saw the blinking light.  He squeezed my hand;
we smiled.  But the doctor was quiet.  Quiet is scary.  What was wrong?  What did
he know that we didn't know?

Then he spoke: "No, no need to worry, just give me a minute.  I'm just counting
heartbeats."  Okay, the room spun a little.  Counting heartbeats.  Heartbeats,
as in plural.  Then the doctor said, "Okay, I see three, three strong heartbeats.
Congratulations, you're pregnant with triplets."

Triplets.  It takes awhile for that to sink in.  To be honest, our triplets are 
now 16-months old and there are some days I still don't think it has sunk in.

Somehow, the ultrasound I had at 17 weeks of pregnancy was even more of a shock.
Again, my husband was with me.  Again, he was holding my hand.  The doctor said,
"Well, I can tell you the sexes, do you want to know?"

Yes, we wanted to know.  But they didn't have to tell me.  I mean, come on, I was
the mother-to-be.  Mothers know these things.  I knew that I was pregnant with girls.
All girls.

And then the doctor said it: "Three boys, you are having three boys." 
I swear I almost fell off the ultrasound table.

My husband looked at me and laughed.  He, of course, knew I was sure it was going
to be all girls.

"Don't worry, hon," he said.  "We'll have girls the next litter."

The Pregnancy and Birth
When people ask about the boys' birth, my usual answer is, "The birth was a
lot easier then the pregnancy."  At 25 weeks, during one of the hottest Cape
Cod summers I can remember, I was put on bed rest at home.  I was allowed up to 
use the bathroom and to shower once a day.  The rest of the time, I lived in our
bed.  I lay with the air conditioner on, a laptop computer on the pillow next to
me, books about mothering multiples piled around me and watched lots of bad daytime
television. 

As my belly continued to grow, the three babies inside kicked, elbowed, jumped, 
rolled and did every move short of break-dancing.  I am only 5', 4" tall and,
pre-pregnancy, weighed 115 pounds.  By the end of the pregnancy, my belly circumference
was only 12 inches less then my height.  I guess it was a good thing that I was 
on bed rest; I barely could walk upright anyway.

At 31 weeks, after an early-morning scare, my doctor put me on hospital bed rest.
But, after a week of eating hospital food, my trio wanted out.  Seven-and-a-half
weeks early, with 17 doctors and nurses in attendance, and my husband holding my
hand, our boys were born via C-section one minute apart.  They each weighed only
about 3 1/2 pounds.

The boys spent three weeks in the hospital, with me boarding there 'round the clock
so I could breastfeed.  (Yes, you can breastfeed triplets.  I did until they were
5-months old - not that I actually remember much of it.)

Most of the first months were a complete sleep-deprived blur.  In the beginning,
it was all about feedings and diapers.  Lots of diapers.  We went through just under
8,000 the first year.

Now that they're 16-months old - well, it's still all pretty much about feedings
and diapers.

An Early Start
At 6 a.m., my husband gets up, showers and gets dressed.  He then wakes me for my
turn for the shower and to get myself ready for the day.  I get dressed, make the
bed and get myself a cup of coffee.  By now, our triplets are awake and we can hear
them chatting to one another in their bedroom.  I pick up three sippy cups, fill
them with milk and say to my husband, "Okay, I'm going in."

I open the door to the boys' bedroom and looking back at me are three toddlers. 
Blonde hair, blue eyes, each one standing in his crib.  Each one smiling. All three
look so much alike, yet also look so different.  They see the open door, they look
towards me, their smiles get bigger and all three say the same thing... "Daddy!"

Daddy, yes, Daddy is standing behind me.  Mommy is a second-rate citizen in the 
morning.  Daddy is the one they want.  He will laugh and rough-and-tumble with them
before he leaves for work; he will lift them up high and tickle them; they will 
giggle and run away from him and then turn around and run right back to him for 
more.  Mommy, she will just want to change diapers and get them dressed, help them
brush their teeth, brush their hair - all the things to get them ready for the day.

By 9:30 a.m., Mommy has prevailed.  The boys are clean, fed, dressed and ready for
the day.  A load of laundry and clean-up is done.  Everything is packed up and we
are ready to go.  On a nice day, we're headed to the playground in the triplet stroller.
Along the mile long walk, we stop first at the post office, then Village Store. 
It's pretzel sticks for the boys and a cup of coffee for me.  I've learned that 
when you have triplets, you can never have too much coffee.

Playtime
At the playground, the boys' goal is to each go in a different direction.  My goal
is to herd them like cows.  Herding is done at this age by chasing, picking up and
carrying back to a central location.  The slide is a great source of entertainment
until all three try to climb up the slide and won't allow any other children at 
the park to slide down.  I move them to the sandbox and hand out pails and shovels.
This is a fun game until Mommy has decided that they've eaten enough sand for it
to be considered a new food group.

From the sandbox, we move to the swings.  Swings are fun for a few minutes until
they realize that being in a baby swing means they aren't free to run.  When I give
in and take them out of the swings, they resort to their original plan of each going
in a different direction.  At this point, I do like any good mother would do to 
get them to come to me: I bribe them with cookies.

By 1 p.m., we are back home and the boys are in their cribs for a nap after we had
lunch, and did more cleaning, more changing, more laundry.  If I'm lucky, they'll
sleep for two hours.  That means two hours of time for Mommy - time alone.  Ask 
any mother the first thing she'd do if she had time to herself and I'm sure you'll
get the same answer: Go to the bathroom.  By myself.  Then, it's on to naptime chores:
pay bills, unload the dishwasher, make phone calls, run the vacuum, make snacks 
and get dinner ready.  The two hours race by. 

After naps, more playtime.  Their attention span lasts about 15 minutes, so between
snack time and dinner, just about every toy that we own - and we have a lot - has
been taken out, played with and put back away.

By 7 p.m., the day is winding down and Daddy is spending time with the boys in their
room.  Holding three sippy cups of milk, 12 hours after the day began, I open the
same door, they look at me, their smiles get bigger and they all say "Mommy!"
Yes, it's Mommy they want now.  They want to be cuddled, to be sung to, to be read
a story.  And so, I sit on the floor to sing to them, because with three on my lap,
we don't fit on a rocking chair. 

Public Comment
I've gotten a lot of comments about my triplets.  I'm sure they're not all politically
correct, but they're meant to be nice: 

* We are walking to the park and see two young guys painting a house, with an older
man standing giving them instructions in what sounds like Italian.  He looks at 
me and says in a very heavy accent, "They triplets?"  I say yes.  "They
all yours?"  I smile and say, "They sure are."  He starts shaking
his head, puts one arm up in the air and says one long sentence I don't understand.
He then says to me in English, "You must be a very good girl.  That crazy Lord
of ours, He bless you very much." 
* In Sears, a woman from Denmark tries to explain triplets to her daughter, who's
about 5-years old.  "Three babies, all born the same day, all with the same
birthday, they all look alike ..."  The little girl says, "And Mama, the
lady gave all three a different haircut so she could tell them apart."  I laugh.
My boys are all towheads, but each one's hair definitely grows in a different direction.
I didn't cut it that way, but I guess it might look like that. 
* At Stop 'n' Shop, we're spotted by a girl who's maybe in her twenties.  She's 
cute, wearing a short shirt showing off her bellybutton ring, and says very loudly
in accented English: "Uh-uh, girl, just uh-uh.  You look too damn good to have
had those three babies!"  Believe me, best compliment I've had.
* I stop at a Hyannis restaurant to get a quick bite to eat and have somewhere to
sit and feed the boys their lunch.  A couple starts to walk by us when the guy sees
me and says, "Oh, my God, just tell me that's from fertility procedures."
I say yes.  Then he says, "And, now, tell me that your husband has since had
a vasectomy."  I'm sure most people would have been offended; the woman he 
was with looked like she was going to smack him.  But this was the day after my 
husband had his vasectomy.  I just cracked up, knowing my husband was home holding
a bag of ice on himself.  I said, "Yeah, as a matter of fact, he did."

'I just do it'
Before this pregnancy, I miscarried three babies.  My husband and I have always 
felt that our boys are those same three souls that returned to us.  It seems to 
us that, for some unknown reason, we were always meant to be the parents of triplets.

It's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of joy.  We try to do the same things that
parents would do if they had three children at different ages.  At 9-months old,
the boys took swimming lessons.  On nice summer days, we went to the beach.  This
fall, we did day trips to an aquarium and zoo.  Before Christmas, we took the boys
to sit on Santa's lap and for a week-long trip to Florida.

When people ask, "How do you do it?" I say, "I just do it." 
I have to.  It's not like I can call in sick on a bad day.  The reality is that 
we don't know any different.  We never had just one baby. 

Right from the start, right from those three blinking lights on the ultrasound screen,
we've always had three.  I said I always wanted to have three children.  And, as
crazy as it sounds, I'm glad my three came to me as triplets.

(Published: January 18, 2004)