It has been an eventful couple of weeks. We’ve had a baby home just long enough to get used to it, and then introduced another. That’s right, Mallory is now home. All that’s left is tiny Hannah. Then the real fun begins. Speaking of fun, let’s talk about what it’s like to have a baby.
Having a baby at home.
My hot take on having a baby right now is: “tough but manageable.” This might be because we’ve gotten into the having-three-babies mindset so much that one seems like getting off easy. Though, “easy” is kind of relative here. Taylor is still very premature. Fun fact, preemie babies tend to have some extra challenges. For example, feeding little Taylor would take 40 minutes to an hour each time until we saw a specialist. Sub-optimal. What’s more, she has pretty nasty reflux. Because of that, she would not tolerate being laid down. Like, ever. So, one of us is always awake. Always.
On night one, we put Taylor in a bassinet and attempted to get some sleep. That did not work. We both ended up all night. At the time, we didn’t know she had reflux and couldn’t understand why she would not calm down for anything. Night two, we landed on sleep shifts. Rachel does the night shift from 9:00–3:30. Then I do the morning from 3:30 to whenever Rachel wakes up. During our watch-the-baby turns, we both would make hopeful attempts at putting Taylor in her bassinet and sneaking in a nap. This rarely, if ever, works.
Needless to say, that’s not exactly sustainable, and won’t scale up to three babies. The good news is we’re making progress on her. Feeds are typically 10 minutes, thanks to various bottle and formula combinations. She’s on reflux meds, but still uncomfortable and thus squirmy and noisy. But hey, it’s a start!
Don’t worry; it’s not all crying and shoving bottles in baby faces. They sleep so much. You’ll notice a sleeping theme in the pictures because they do a bunch of that despite being fussy messes. I mean, I could effortlessly score hundreds of crying baby pictures. However, I’m opting out of that public shaming. Let’s take a look at the good times!
Having two babies home.
Having both of them at home is a lot like having the one, just more so. We’re still on our sleep shifts. Mallory has proudly taken up the slow eater cause from Taylor. They do seem to sleep well when you put them together. So, maybe they find each other comforting? Who knows. There’s isn’t much different to report on Mallory being home so far. It’s just do feeds for a while longer than before with a break before the next one. That’s when you attempt chores or hold a fussy baby.
God help you when they both meltdown. Mallory is impressively vocal about letting you know it’s time to feed her even when it isn’t time to feed her.
Anyway here are some more pictures. People like baby pictures right?
The forgotten child.
Hannah is still working on completing feeds. That’s all that’s holding her back at this point. She’s very eager and wants to finish her bottles, just a little sloppy. She’ll get a suck/swallow study today to assess her feeding challenges. I assume it’s what it sounds like; they’ll see how well she sucks on a bottle and where swallowing goes off the rails. Hopefully, we’ll be looking at a speedy discharge from there. She also has a bit of an obsession with laying on her right side. The poor kid’s ear is always folded over because of it. No amount of intervention helps with this. I’ve seen her tied to a rolled-up blanket with another blanket to keep her from getting onto that right ear, and she still finds a way.
The one plus is our hospital visits are about to get real short. With Taylor coming home first, visits weren’t any quicker. The feeding order was always Mallory, Taylor, then Hannah. So, we’d still get to the hospital at the same time to visit. There’d just be a gap to sit around and fidget with your mask between Mallory and Hannah.
Baby stats! Now that we’re like 500 words into this thing.
Mallory: Almost seven pounds.
Taylor: Over seven and a half pounds! She got big fast.
Hannah: getting closer to six pounds, still lagging a little behind.
Overall the girls are nice and healthy. They all have some level of reflux, but that’s bonkers common for preemie babies apparently. Nothing they won’t grow out of. Otherwise, it’s just pump them full of bottles and change diapers.
What else is up?
We’ve been doing the tummy time thing, though those tend to turn into supervised naps pretty fast. I also read to them every day. However, I lost interest in the book I was working on (The Stand, Mr. King is far too indulgent with that novel. I did make it to the halfway mark for what it’s worth.) Instead, I’ve supplemented reading time with my daily dose of news articles and how my PredictIt portfolio is doing (not well). Gotta keep them up to date on the goings-on, right?
I thought we were at the hospital a lot with visiting the girls already. But then throw in taking them to the pediatrician or occupational therapists? We’re officially at a point where we’re recognized and asked how the triplets are doing. Sometimes even by total randos. While I’d like to believe it’s because we’re so neato, I assume the novelty of triplets is the real driver.
Thanks to being on leave, I have absolutely no idea what day it is. With COVID, time was already kind of a blur. But now? It’s meaningless. My world is feed babies.
Oh, and baby farts are hilarious.