Sunday, August 18, 2013

When Does It Get Easier With Triplets?

This is a post for those who love to know more about the mysterious life of multiples and not so much for those that just love to look at pictures (I'm admittedly one of those that mostly likes the pictures in the blogs I follow, gotta love eye candy!).
I guess we've read one too many books about trains because the boys are obsessed with tickets (mostly Thomas but the others are too). This is a small pile of "tickets" that Thomas made. First he either tears or cuts out pieces of paper, draws some random squiggles on them and then hands them to me so I can repeat a line from one of their favorite books "thank you sir, dinning car to the rear."
This is a section of a handout I read about how kids drawings evolve. I found it very interesting because when I first got it they where on the 'scribble stage' and now I think they are somewhere between 'shapes and intersecting lines' and 'suns.'
On the left, Eli drew a monster and on the right that same monster is now eating a snake. Eli is really into drawing monsters that eat snakes, fish and spiders. His snakes look the most realistic : )
Just a cute pic of T and I post bath time
This morning riding our bikes : )
The Secret Life of Triplets

Immediately after the boys were born I began asking any and all who had older triplets, "when does it get easier?!" Never once did I get the same answer, so I kept hoping that someday it would. So here goes my answer to that question based on my own personal experience. For those that are expecting or have babies currently, you are not going to like my answer: IT DOESN'T, IT'S JUST DIFFERENT! Ok, well not exactly, let me explain...

Personally 0-3mo were the roughest, the babies themselves were very easy. All they did was eat and sleep, at least mine did. In reality it wasn't very hard work, what made it feel hard was only getting 4 hours of sleep each night, which I should mention were interrupted because I had to get up and pump! I'd wake up feeling pretty good but shortly after my body would demand sleep and I had to put up with feeling like a zombie the rest of the day. So everything you did, change diapers, clean bottles, feed babies where just that much harder. Awful, I don't ever feel like repeating that again! 

4-12mo was still pretty rough although this is when I started getting more sleep so you at least have the energy to tackle the quickly compounding tasks that are added as the babies grow. During this period of time I fed the babies every three hours (except at night) because I was not blessed by the milk gods and that was the maximum amount of time I could go between feeds and still give my boys as much breast milk as I possibly could. Some of the new tasks include starting them on one feeding a day of solids, then later two, and then three. Mine still woke up a lot at night so I still put up with interruptions in my sleep but it was not too bad because I'd just give them a boob and we'd both be back to sleep quickly. Also naps were frequent but short so you never got enough time to finish anything. And at this point you have very active babies that you need to entertain while they are wake. They become very demanding of your attention through these ages. So actually it gets harder but at least you sleep and have energy!

1-2yrs was when we started to venture out on our own (just mama and babies) because they went from napping 3 times a day to 2 and then eventually to 1. Before this I never had enough time to change, feed and then go out to do something with enough time to be back at home for nap time. I didn't like rocking the schedule too much because nap time was so precious and still is, it was the only time I could do anything productive so I wanted to be home while they napped, no car napping for us! So with going out more brings more tasks that involve planning ahead, packing diaper bags, getting the kids in and out of the car. And the hardest part of this age is getting used to all the fighting! Constant conflict, you become a referee now too! But at least you got the big breaks at nap time and bed time, these were the golden ages for sleep. A solid 7:30pm -6:30am bedtime and 12-3pm nap time, I think back and am jealous of all the time I had!

2-3yrs Terrible two's/three's, need I say more...(I'm not there yet but most agree that 3 is worse than 2)

It might not be getting any easier but I will say this, having triplets now at the age of almost 3 is about as hard as having say three kids of separate ages under the age of 5 or 6, it's just different of course. The same in some ways, harder in different ways, and easier in other ways but in the end about the same amount of work. I have probably the same amount of laundry, the same amount of cooking and cleaning, etc. It's harder because of the conflict and fighting between kids since they all have to share EVERYTHING. And no older brother or sister to help out like re-tying someones shoe or holding a hand while walking somewhere. It's easier because everyone is on the same schedule, I don't have to juggle picking up older brother from school while the younger ones nap or having a sleepless night from baby. Also everyone has the same interests and abilities (extra plus from having BBB or GGG especially if they're identical) so it's very easy to make everyone happy when going out or picking an activity to do together. 

From what I've heard (and more consistently now) is that as triplets get older it will actually be easier than having three of different ages. I'm excited for that time to come, I envision it starting around the age of 4/5 but of course I have no idea. I'll be sure to write about it when that day actually comes, so stay tuned for part two, date TBD : )

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