Triplets in the House: We’re Having Triplets!

I knew as soon as I met my husband that he would be a great father. We agreed early in our marriage that we wanted several kids (he wanted five, I wanted a more reasonable three). So six months into our post-wedding bliss we decided to start the baby-making process. At first it was fun, as you might expect. But quickly we discovered that things weren’t going to happen as we planned, and further measures than the regular old bedroom romp would be needed to produce our first baby.

We sought the expertise of a fertility specialist, which was the most emotionally draining time of our lives. The amount of needles, blood tests, ultrasounds, and the abundance of terms like “timed intercourse”, “insemination” and “ovarian hyerstimulation” were enough to ruin any marriage. Luckily, we prevailed, and finally on September 18, 2005 the home pregnancy pee stick turned POSITIVE!

Beyond thrilled, we headed into the fertility doc’s office two weeks later for our first pregnancy ultrasound! The doctor had told us it would be very early to see much, so the main goal was to see “how many” were growing in there. The treatment we had done had a risk of multiples, so they wanted to make sure there were only one or two babies growing. While we knew there was a risk for more than two, we had pushed it back in our minds and took the attitude of “we’ll deal with it if and when it happens”.

Well it happened. That day we found out we were having TRIPLETS! Seeing those three little embryos on the screen made me almost pee in my pants and my husband almost passed out. The doc warned us one would probably miscarry, but not our little ones. We prevailed and so did they!

It was a difficult pregnancy. Thirteen weeks of strict bed rest (I could only get up to use the bathroom), open surgery at twenty weeks pregnant to remove a gallbladder filled with fifty tiny stones, three hospital stays before the big one at the end when I was admitted for pre-eclampsia. Finally, on April 13, 2006 at 9:30pm baby A’s water broke and off to the ER we went.

Robert came out first weighing 3 pounds, 9 ounces. Owen followed at 4 pounds, 6 ounces, and Quinn came out last at 5 pounds 2 ounces. Three healthy boys! The doctors were amazed at how big they were for being born 7 weeks early, and I assured them (during the c-section mind you) that all the Dairy Queen I ate finally paid off!

The boys spent 2 weeks in the NICU learning how to eat, and on the first of May we brought them home. They are now a year old and what a year it has been!