Its not house arrest, its a triplet pregnancy

In our initial consultation with the high risk OB we asked about physical restrictions and the possibility of bed rest.  He said something that turned out to be so very true.  "I don't need to give you any restrictions.  Do what you feel up to doing.  Your body will tell you when it needs to slow down."  And so it did.  In the early months when my mother would tell me to slow down, I reminded her of this conversation and insisted that there would come a time when I wouldn't be able to do so much, so let me do it now.

I was fortunate.  I never went on bed rest or had any formal restrictions, though sometimes my frequent appointments felt like a restriction!  Sure enough I did slow down.  I continued to work to the very end, but pretty much went to bed as soon as I got home.  I also began to park in a reserved spot very near my building at work, rather than the lot a block away because I'd be winded, in need of a nap and having back pain before I sent

my first email of the day.  I found that I felt up to getting out and doing things, like going to my older kids' track meets and an outdoor summer movie series and things of the like, but my limited energy, the summer heat and the 18 pounds of babies, plus placenta, etc I was carrying made walking too far pretty difficult.  My close parking spot at work inspired me to inquire about temporary handicap tags for my car.

Just prior to 32 weeks I asked my OB about this and couldn't believe how easy it was.  I wish I had swallowed my pride and asked sooner.  Their office submitted all the paperwork and in less than a week the tags were mailed to my door.  This allowed me to continue to go to my kids' track meets without using up all my energy on the walk from the far side of the parking lot.  It allowed me to continue with some sense of normalcy which was really important to me for the big kids.

I'm sure the process is a little different state to state, but I urge you to look into it.  I didn't want to be thought of as handicapped but I also didn't want to be under house arrest.  The temporary handicap pass gave me some freedom to get out and about in my final weeks of this triplet pregnancy.

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If I go back and start at the very beginning, that is probably a very good place to start…  We did not find out it was a multiples pregnancy until my 20 week ultrasound.  We had the older kids with us to find out if #4 was a boy or a girl, within the first few seconds the ultrasound tech said, "There are two in there! No wait… there are 3!"  So at 20 weeks and 2 days we suddenly had a lot to do and we would soon learn, a shorter period of time to do it.

That night I googled "average length of triplet pregnancy" and found 33 weeks was fairly consistently the answer.  So we had about 3 months to prepare for babies 4,5 and 6.  Everyone we told over the phone didn't believe us initially.  I mean who has triplets?  Its just so over the top, they assumed it was a joke.  Of course those who saw the stack of ultrasound pictures were much quicker to believe.  

My mother was one who I told over the phone.  She of course wanted a call as soon as we were out of the appointment and was getting antsy because it was taking so long.  She texted and feared the reason it was taking so long was there was something wrong- not that it takes nearly 3x longer to check 3 babies!  As soon as I got in the car I called her and she initially thought it was a joke too.  Honestly I'm not sure why people would think I'd joke about this???  Anyway as soon as my mother got over her shock she hit amazon.com and bought me many books.  Some were good, some were complete duds and one was amazing.  I highly recommend it to anyone who is carrying multiples.  Its called "When You're Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads- Proven Guidelines for a Healthy Multiple Pregnancy."

Now since I was so far along when we found out I wasn't able to follow these guidelines as much as I'd have liked, but from 24 weeks to 35 weeks when the triplets were finally born, I referenced it nearly daily.  I loved the diagrams that show baby head and feet sizes over the weeks.  The visual is just such a compelling, convincing argument to do everything you can as a mother to keep those babies in there just another week.  The author feels pretty strongly that weight gain should be front loaded, which makes perfect sense to me.  By the end of my pregnancy I just didn't have the room to eat much, but the early weeks I was so hungry, I was able to really load up on the calories and the babies built up a good store. The book includes recipes, weight gain and calorie consumption guidelines and tons of other valuable advice for multiple pregnancies.  I feel very strongly that its a must read for every expecting MoM.  I really place a lot of credit on this book for my healthy 35 week triplets. 

I don't have a ton of free time and I'm not exactly looking for a hobby, but I've decided to blog...

A good friend of mine from college has a cousin who just had triplets last week, so she reached out to another friend with triplets and me to see if it'd be okay to share our contact info.  I told her I'd be happy to talk but warned that we were still in the thick of it, trying to figure it all out so I wasn't sure how helpful I'd be.  Our friend Carin, whose triplets are 3 now replied that I'd probably be more helpful in the thick of it, because her memories of the early years were spotty since you're just in survival mode.  I had been thinking of starting a triplet specific blog anyway, but Carin's words made me decide, I should get some of this down while its still fresh, assuming I can find the time to do so.  As you can imagine time is something in demand around here with 6 kids, including 4 month old triplets!  Wish me luck!