May 2020 – Us Plus Three

We started the day heading to a car dealership to buy a mini-van (yeah, I know, ugh) and ended up with the babies instead.

What happened? Rachel’s water broke shortly after a test drive. A couple of hours later, we were in surgery. Well, technically, she went in surgery. I was there for the ride, and moral support or whatever.

Now we’re just sitting in a hospital room with all the time in the world. So, update time.

Baby stats

Mallory (baby A) is just over 4 pounds

Taylor (baby B) is just under 4 pounds

Hannah (baby C) just over 3 pounds

As you can see, they’re pretty little. They’re all just over 31 weeks, so that’s to be expected. Ok, pictures. See below.

Pictured from left to right: My hand, Taylor, Mallory, and I think Rachel’s hand.

Hannah doing her best and being very small.

Mallory later in the NICU all cleaned up.

They’re all looking pretty good and currently in the NICU baking. Mallory is breathing on her own without help. The others are breathing fine, but getting a little help to keep their lungs open. We don’t know how long they’ll be in. It could be weeks; it could be over a month. We’ll just have to wait and see. Apparently you know the most within the first 24-48 hours.

Rachel is fine. She’ll be attempting to walk soon and not really feeling too much pain. She’ll have to be in for about three days give or take.

I was asked at least five times if I was going to faint, or if I’ve eaten and my blood sugar was good, so I don’t faint. Apparently that’s pretty common? I don’t know. No fainting occurred.

Next steps? Recover, head home, and then just visit the babies every day until they can come home. Visits are extra limited right now, though.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got. Bye!

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to ratchet up the uncertainty of expecting triplets. We just watched Parasite today (which was a little baffling at first when you think it’s a horror movie thanks to poor categorization in Hulu), which left me with some first-rate wisdom.

A lot of this going around these days.

For now, we’re just doing our best. Honestly, we’re just fine. Rachel is on bed rest in everything but name. She also looks like she put on a comically over-sized pregnancy suite and decided wearing it every day all day would be fun. I’m remote full time. We’re both just grateful for some stability and simplicity considering the goings-on. For now, we wait, be a little bored, and hold out it’s time to pull them out.

When do things get real?

Yeah, we still don’t know. Basically, the goal is to hold out as long as possible. If we’re lucky, we make it to June. Right now, they’re at 28 weeks and surprisingly large for multiples. Also, sonograms are kind of rough at this point since they’re all squished together. Honestly, they look better live when you can see the motion—your brain kind of pieces it together. Of course, I’m now banished from all visits thanks to Covid. So, let’s all just be disappointed together on this one.

Nursery?

Finally, feeling a little urgency on that one. Turns out preparing for three babies when you’ve had zero babies, and when there’s a dang pandemic floating around is hard. We’re also both life long lovers of procrastination, so that doesn’t help. We are chipping away at it each weekend. Well, at this point, I’m doing the work, and Rachel is project managing and eating cookies, so she doesn’t strain things. We wanna make it to June, remember?

Oh hey, massive thanks to everyone that’s been flooding us with baby stuff. I’m pretty sure we are now well known to all local delivery drivers.

Our front room basically every week regardless of unboxing efforts.

Nursery in progress. While still incomplete, I think the theme is coming through. If not, it’s grey, cream, mint, and vaguely pink.

This is by no means all of it, but it is coming together. Oh, Rachel made that blanket herself. It turns out crochet is a great thing to take up when you have a lot of time and nowhere to go. By the way, those comforters are coming out of the cribs until they’re old enough. I read the warning label.

Washing and prepping baby clothes and blankets is making it clear laundry is about to be my number one hobby. I’m also supremely confident the current stock of diapers won’t even kind of cut it.

That’s all I have. Considering the lag in posting, it’s entirely possible the next one you’ll see will be “we have actual babies now,” but hey, who knows.