Tripletville Adventures : To the angel babies...

As many of you know, I am part of a moms of triplets group on Facebook and I feel closer to some of these women who are strangers to me than I currently do to many of my friends. I guess it's because their lives are similar to mine and can understand what it's like to raise a trio of babies all at once. It is also due to the fact that I am home most days and I just don't have time to see most of my friends...haha... Anyways, every Friday we post pictures according to that week's theme to show off our babies. This week, the theme was "Angel babies". You can probably infer that this was for babies who have been lost to a lot of those women. Losing a baby, either pre or post birth, has to be one of the worst things anyone has to live through. Some of my close friends have gone through miscarriages and although they don't know it, a part of me was always in awe of the strength they must have had to live through that kind of tragedy. Some of the women on my Facebook group have had multiple losses while going through their fertility journey. Others have lost their little babies soon after birth as a multiples pregnancy isn't an easy one and some babies were just born too early to fight the fight they needed to fight. Most recently, one of my triplet mommas (that's what I call them) lost her 11 month old triplet son. She celebrated their birthday this weekend with the two surviving girls and put up a beautiful picture of blue balloons she released in the sky in Andrew's honor. To lose a soul so tiny and so beautiful doesn't seem fair to me. I am blessed to have had the pregnancy that I had. I am blessed that I went far enough in my pregnancy for my boys to be able to thrive. My fertility journey was nowhere near as difficult or heartbreaking (although it felt pretty awful at the time) as some of the women I now know or even as difficult as those of some my close friends. I never had a miscarriage, my fertility treatment worked the very first time we tried it, and my babies, though very tiny at birth, were born alive and well. I shed more tears on Friday for those lost babies than I have in a long time. The stories the women shared were heartbreaking and full of hope all at once. I hugged my boys more tightly this weekend and I counted my blessings more than once. I am one of the lucky ones. I've lived through some heartaches in my life, but I can't even imagine living through the loss of a child... unthinkable... my heart is with you and your angel babies my friends...

Sorry so blah... I know I've written a blog similar to this one before but I just needed to get some of that off my chest.

Last week I was saying that Zachary was growing his 5th tooth? Well I was lying as he was growing both his 5th AND 6th... my poor little man has been in a lot of pain lately. He's still my sooky baby but some of it can be understood now. He may even be growing more as we speak as today was not one of his happy days! He gets so sad that he'll be on his tummy on the ground, put his face down on the floor and cry as though the world was ending... for no apparent reason other than his sadness of the world. We theorized today that he may not like being around his brothers, seeing as how much they torture him and all. We put him outside of the baby cage and he roamed around the living room, crawling here and there and we even heard the occasional giggles... Later on, we took Samuel and Jacob into the kitchen first and when Gabe went to get Zachary, he was on the floor and I guess he slowly looked around him and when he realized he was alone, started happily playing with his toys... If he thinks I'm going to have a separate baby jail for him, he's dreaming! He'll just have to learn that he's now and forever one of three and he'll have to get used to being with his brothers. It's still sad to see that at his young age, he sometimes acts as though the world is out to get him...

As for his brothers... I had to take Samuel to the clinic on Monday for an all body rash. The doctor said it may be measles but he never had the fever that normally precursors the rash so she wasn't certain. She said I shouldn't worry too much about it unless he develops a fever. The rash has been slowly ebbing away but today he seems to have had a flair up and it's only certain spots around his face. He did have baby eczema as a newborn so maybe his skin is just ultra sensitive. Maybe it's a new food I've introduced? I've stopped keeping track of what I feed them now so I wouldn't even know what it may have been... I just hope it gets better.

On Tuesday, it was Jacob's turn to go to the clinic. For a few days, he had repeatedly been raising his arm so that his shoulder almost touched his ear. I thought he may have an earache and although I wasn't too worried as he didn't have a fever nor did his mood change to show signs of pain, I wanted to be safe. We all know how many babies seem to have ear infections nowadays! Again, the doctor at the clinic said that it was nothing and that he may have just been discovering parts of his body. Let's hope she was right! He hasn't been doing it too much today so here's to hoping. Surprisingly, he still isn't walking...haha... but he is still trying! On Friday, my mom turned around to see him just leaning on his learning table with his back to it and playing with Sophie with both hands. I've discovered a few more grey hairs this week! Oh yeah, and he's rediscovered his high pitch scream! That's fun!

The home health nurse came over on Wednesday and was surprised that the paediatrician advised us to switch over to whole milk. Every resource I've read on the matter seems to have a different opinion. It's just so confusing! We are taking our time with it. We'll do the best we can. They hopefully won't still be drinking formula from their bottles when they're 10... I am giving them three bottles a day and giving them milk with their meals and yogourt and cheese. I am hoping they are getting what they need and I'm not depriving them of crucial nutrition... they are still gaining weight so I must be doing something right! This first time mom thing is hard!!

Naps have been going much better this week and I hope it keeps going. They are sleeping at least 1 hour in the morning and 1 in the afternoon (which is more than the 20 minutes Sam usually gave me). I'm hoping to get them to 2 hours in the afternoon as eventually, that's what they'll be needing to sleep at daycare but they don't seem to want to go along with my plan! You would think they would understand what I'm trying to do but no... cry and cry and make mom feel bad about trying to sleep train you! Nights are great now... I think we've discovered the magic formula for night time: we need to put them to bed at the exact same time. We have one adult per baby, and we all go in their room at the same time, and put them to bed at the same time. We have been doing this now for the last two weeks and they haven't cried once. They've chatted and blah blah blahed but no crying! That's awesome! I can't really do that when I'm alone in the day for naps but they're normally good to go down, it's the waking up part that they have a hard time with. They wake up great in the morning though. I try to get up earlier now to do a workout before the babies get up (it's a new thing, don't be too awed yet) and they wake up about 30 minutes before I'm ready to get them. During that half hour they're awake, I can sometimes hear them chatting away. When I go in to get them, Jacob is either sitting up and playing with his dodo or teddy bear or standing up waiting for me, Samuel is either on his back playing with his things or standing up waiting for me also and Zachary is normally still sleeping (he's a great sleeper!). It's one of my favorite times of day. They are so happy to see me and I feel the love!

Gabe and I were lucky to have help all day Saturday to be able to finish tagging for the big Multiples Consignment Sale that's happening NEXT SATURDAY!! (BTW, they still need volunteers!!!!). My sister and my nieces came over in the morning and my in-laws took over for the afternoon. We worked like dogs sorting, creating labels, printing, cutting, tagging and re-sorting... so much work but it'll be so worth it! The last tag I printed said item #731!!! I had to throw out some tags and re-print some but that means we've tagged (with the help of my mom and sister last week as well) probably about 650 items for the sale! I'd say at 85% commission, it'll be worth it even if we sell half! That should buy us a few diapers and maybe even a hair appointment for yours truly!!

Here was tagging center. You can see the tagging gun, some of the tags, my post-its for organization and some of the filled up garbage bags full of clothes.

Ok, here are some pics of the week!