Miscellaneous

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!