“When you’re tired and are feeding multiple babies multiple times a day, it becomes very easy to mix up who you fed and when and who’s had regular urine or bowel movements. “Keep a log of feeding times and diaper changes for each child,” says Michelle. “This will be helpful for your peace of mind and for those helping you. “I don’t mean the cute scrapbook stuff you plan when you’re pregnant with triplets, I am talking about things you might not be able to recall with three babies screaming in the middle of the night – like who ate what and when, diaper activity, etc.,” says Colleen. I could assemble nipples to lids, mix formula and throw everything together faster than a bartender could make a cocktail (which was highly desired at the time, but not possible since I was pumping).”
We had to label bottles by kid, and it was crazy.ĭuring the day, I was a bottle-making ninja. “They were all on different formula ‘recipes,’ based on their weights. “When you’re pregnant with triplets, you don’t realize the challenge it will be to keep them on the same feeding schedule,” she says. Michelle says you grow into the routine, chaotic as it is. Forget it when we had to start mixing the formula ourselves: Does this look like one unpacked, level scoop?” “This was consistent with my approach to making bottles as well, with lots of double- and triple-checking how much was in each bottle before the baby started drinking. “We (mostly me) obsessively measured how much they ate at each feeding - like down to the drop (as if the milliliter measurements weren’t small enough!),” says Colleen. We literally moved into the living room – it was like a baby factory, and we only left to make food or shower.” “The first six weeks, I slept on the couch, my husband slept on the love seat, and the babies slept in their car seats in a little row right in front of us on the floor (I swear my pediatrician knew). “We were so confused and sleep-deprived the first couple of nights that my husband and I were constantly dozing off and then waking up startled, thinking there was a baby on top of us,” says Colleen.
I was so nervous about dropping one of those wet, slippery babies on the floor that we put the little, plastic bathtub on our living room floor and sat on the ground to bathe them.” “Like, maybe once every three weeks in the beginning, and then only when we were feeling guilty about it – usually after a conversation with a mom that was giving her baby a lovely and relaxing lavender bath each night before bed. “We barely bathed them … ever,” says Colleen.
Both moms share their sage, often funny, advice for bringing home three babies and how to cope during those first few weeks. Colleen Whalen of Sudbury, Massachusetts, has five-year-old triplets, one girl and two boys, and Michelle Feudo of Framingham, Massachusetts, has 10-year-old triplet girls.
Want to know the real deal? Here, two moms of multiples weigh in on what it’s really like to bring home not one, not two, but three newborns at once. If you’re pregnant with triplets, though, you may find that you just can’t get the advice you want from your friends and family. Most of your friends have one baby - at a time.