My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

I’ve become rather accustomed to the idea that if I turn my backs, the girls will still be where I left them when I turn back. But it won’t be that way for long. Evie was the first to start learning to roll over but her sisters are also now hard at work figuring out how to get from back to front. And from there it’s just one short step to crawling.

Like so many of these things, it’s hard to imagine how difficult such a process could be until you watch someone working it out for themselves. First they’ve needed to develop enough strength to jacknife their legs, then the coordination to swing the newfound leverage this gives them to the side. Next they need to make sure the correct leg is on top and, finally, work out how to get the arm on the side they’ve rolled to underneath their body. It’s this last step that has the girls flummoxed. Getting sideways is no problem; all the way over, impossible. Not for long, though, I’m sure. A week or so ago, their friends Maddie and Harriet came over and Maddie (or was it Harriet? – sorry Jane) rolled over for the first time but despite such a clear demonstration none of them have managed to copy her move.

All of which presents one of those parenting paradoxes I’m becoming so familiar with; I want them to stay the way they are forever yet also to help them grow to their full potential. While it’s so much safer and easier if they’re immobile, they obviously can’t stay that way forever, yet the thought of them running in three different directions, towards three different dangers terrifies me.Not that that matters to them. They’ll learn these things whether I’m terrified or not. And I’ll have to learn to deal with it.

How though. Our house may not be nearly babyproofed enough but that’s fixable. The outside world, howver, is awash with dangers for three curious young explorers. I’ve seen parents in the park running around behind just one baby, hovering over them as they throw themselves into exploring their environment, ready to leap to snatch them to safety. But how do you do that with three, short of tying them together with bungee cord?

Hm. Bungee cord? As tempting as that is, I just know it would lead to two girls twanging the other round like a catapult which, as entertaining as it might be, does pose certain dangers of its own.

No. Just like with so many other parenting situations, I’ll just have to acccept that I don’t have the answers right now and make something up as the necessity demands. Still, might invest in some bungee cord. After all, it always pays to have a Plan B.

I gaze at your faces
On my computer screen,
What did I miss today?

The echo of celebrity continues to resonate through our lives. No-one’s asked for autographs yet (the girls aren’t that advanced for their age) but the crowds of grannies we attract whenever we visit the supermarket mean I now have an unexpected empathy with Daniel O’Donnel, plus we’ve twice had our photos taken by foreign tourists (once Japanese, once Indian). Groups of people whisper to one another on the street as we pass, parents excitedly point us out to their kids (unexpected empathy with the Tweenies there, too – what a strange mix of empathic connections), and, if I was being particularly vain, I might consider the lovely comments I get on this blog to be fan mail.

This weekend, however, has brought a new experience. On Saturday afternoon we were visited by a professional photographer. He set up lights, covered our sofa and floor with white sheets and had us sitting and lying all over the sofa and floor as he took pictures of me, J and the girls to run alongside the article that’ll soon be appearing about us in a national magazine. The girls were in a particularly jolly mood and all the pictures I saw looked like they’ll be great: me and J dressed unusually smartly, the girls smiling away in matching Christmas dresses, no sign of baby puke anywhere.

Not mentioning the magazine makes it all sound rather more glamourous than it actually is, however. We’re to be featured in Real Lives magazine which is, from what I understand, the true stories section you see in most women’s magazines expanded to fill an entire weekly magazine. Hardly exclusive then but we get a few hundred quid for the story, and, more importantly, we’ll finally have some pictures containing our whole family.

Six eyes stared up at my slice of marmite on toast as I lifted it, followed it up to my mouth, paused as I bit, and followed it back to my plate. Only when I let go did the girls return to looking around the room. It happened again with the next bite. And the next. And, in fact, any time J or I ate anything. Eventually we took the hint and, on Saturday, began weaning the girls.

Their first meal was to be baby rice. Baby rice is a powder similar in consistency to semolina which forms what can only be described as ‘gloop’ when mixed with baby milk.

We made their gloop thin for their first meal, spooning it in with a heavy sugaring of smiles and jollying along. Jemima was first and took to it surprisingly fast. I’d only really expected a confused dribbling on the first attempt but she managed to swallow nearly all of what we gave her. Scarlett and Evelyn followed and also managed to eat some of their food, although Evie got full quite quickly (as she does with milk). Scarlett even started opening her mouth as the spoon neared her mouth towards the end.

All in all it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it might be. We’d placed a sheet on the floor but there were no spillages at all, nor tears or confusion. I’m really proud of how they took thie new experience in their little strides.

The next day we tried again and this time it was Jemima was opening her mouth expectantly (although Scarlett seemed to have forgotten how).

J has been making up vats of pureed vegetables since then and the myriad delights that are pear, carrot, green bean and brocolli all now await the girls, each frozen in triple servings, while awaiting me are innumerable opportunities to play the aeroplane game. I can’t wait.

Here’s Jemima, having her first ever spoonful of solids,

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Scarlett, feeling full after all the gloop she’s consumed,

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and me, trying to persuade Evie to have just one more waffer thin spoonful.

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If you have been reading the comments here on my blog, you may have come across Viscouse,then a soon-to-be triplet father, now an actual one, his babies arriving early, at 24 weeks, almost a fortnight ago.

I can remember when J was at that stage of her pregnancy clearly; we counted the days between scans, hoping top get to the next date, painfully aware of how vulnerable we were to the whims of misfortune. We were lucky, though – something I have not felt so keenly for months.

This week, Viscouse and his wife lost their son, Galen, at eleven days old.

I cannot put into words how sorry I am. Each time I have sat down to write this blog recently, all I can think of is Viscouse and his wife. Never having met another new father to triplets, I’d loved reading his blog, seeing how someone else would take the unusual turn of events I’ve been living through for the past year. Though half way across the world, I saw myself in his situation.

Yet as close as our situations may be, I can’t imagine such a loss as Viscouse has suffered. I can’t bear to contemplate losing one of my girls. I can’t imagine life without them, won’t imagine life without them. J’s miscarriage broke my heart. But that pain would be but a shadow compared to losing a child you have seen and touched. Despite being unable to appreciate what he is feeling, the reality of Viscouse’s bereavement has made me see that I have begun to take my children for granted, if only in little ways.

I am so sorry, Viscouse. If I could do anything to help you right now, I would do it in the blink of an eye. But there isn’t anything I can think of, except to tell you that my own pain, a shadow of yours, I admit, did lessen with time.

For myself, all I can do is appreciate every second I have with my own children.

The girls are a pleasure at the moment. They have taken to their new abilities of smiling and laughing with gusto and nothing beats seeing those three grinning faces looking up at me from their cots when I wake them up, the mists of tiredness burnt away in a moment by their smiles. Getting up at 6.30 really isn’t so hard when you have that to look forward to.

By the time I get back from work, the girls are often tired and giving them their baths leaves them all relaxed, too. But in the morning they’re so full of beans that it’s easy to get them smiling.

What makes them smiling even cuter is that all three have dimples. Scarlett and Jemima have one on their left cheeks, Evie on her right, which, along with the fact that Evie’s crown swirls in the opposite direction, suggests she may be what is called a ‘mirror twin’ – a twin with identical DNA but who’s dental patterns, handedness and other asymmetrical features are reversed. Except that shouldn’t be possible. From what I understand of it, mirror twins are formed when an egg splits very late, but Evie had her own placenta, which happens only when an egg splits early. I guess it’ll just have t remain a mystery for now.

Anyway, back to their newfound cheeriness. J gets it even better. No matter how much I’m making them laugh or smile, the moment she enters the room that attention is gone. They just love to watch her, and wriggle excitedly if she comes over to play with them, beaming enormous smiles and laughing with pure joy at her presence. It’s lovely.

The nicest thing, though, is when I catch them smiling at each other. A month ago, they hardly knew one another existed, now they’re always holding onto each others hands or clothes and smile and sing to each other all the time.

Despite learning to demonstrate happiness at the same time, each tends to find different stuff amusing and has their own way of expressing that amusement.

Evie particularly likes being lifted up in the air. It makes her grin in excitement. But otherwise is shyer about her smiles, often looking away a moment after smiling then looking back to check if whatever made her smile is still there. Other times she’ll be raucous with happiness… until someone she doesn’t know appears.

Jemima is changeable. Most often she’ll smile at the littlest thing, getting carried away into screams of pleasure if a game carries on for any length of time. She is unphased by strangers. But sometimes she’s the opposite: impossible to make laugh, refusing to find amusement even in her mum’s attention.

Scarlett is reliably good natured. She loves physical games such as having her arms and legs moved in time to music and wriggles and flaps her arms when she’s excited. I’ve taken to calling her Bumbles because she reminds me of a happy, little bumblebee, the kind that buzzes, noisy but harmless, about the room, banging into window panes and causing a commotion. Just like Jemima, she tends to scrram when she gets excited.

Of course, they also laugh at other things than people. Jemima, for example, found it hysterical, yesterday, when I sneezed, and, this morning, she looked up at the standard lamp and collapsed into giggles. It wasn’t even on. The pthers also laugh at inanimate objects sometimes, or even the corners of the room. And, also this morning, Scarlett was laughing at something in the dark when I came in to turn the light on.

Here’s some pics form the last few days. You can see for yourself how cute they look (and their dimples in the second one). In this first one, you can see Jemima, Evelyn and Scarlett from left to right…

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… and in this secnond one, Scarlett, Jemima and Evelyn.

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We bought some handles for the girls’ bottles last week. For a while now, they’ve been grabbing at our hands as we feed them, sometimes even holding the bottle itself, which we took as a signal that perhaps they’re ready to start holding their own bottles. It’s an exciting development – their first measure of independence.

Jemima has taken to the handles well. She hasn’t the dexterity to hold the bottle in place without help but definitely grasps the idea. Evie is also able to use them to manouvre her bottle away or towards herself, if not guide it exactly to her mouth. Scarlett, however, doesn’t seem to have noticed anything different at all. If she wants to stop drinking she uses her tongue to push the bottle out, not her arms, or just turns her head aside so it spills everywhere.

It’s fascinating to watch Jemima and Evelyn’s reactions to this first experience of choice. I’ve been letting them take control of what their bottles do, and both spend long minutes pushing the bottle away then opening their mouths hungrily. I can only assume they’ve yet to make a connection between enjoying the freedom to stop and no longer having anything to eat when they do.

It’s a bit like when Jemima was both laughing and crying the other day. Not the laughing despite lingering tears you might see in someone older, actually both laughing hysterically at me making faces and crying inconsolably at the fact she was having to wait for to be fed while I finished off her sisters. It was extraordinary, as if, again, she wasn’t making the connections you or I would.

Feeding time continues to be when the girls’ are most difficult. Although all three eat more and faster than they were doing, feeding two at once is becoming increasingly difficult (and three at a time is impossible), as they seem to be distracted by the wriggling and flailing about of whoever is sharing my lap in a way they never where before. I guess it’s all part of them learning to notice the world around them.

I can’t believe how much they have grown up on only five short months. Looking at pictures of them in the early days, I’m struck by how passive they were then, gazing at the world in quiet wonder. In those days they were learning, too, of course. But then it was such elementary stuff that I couldn’t empathize. Who could imagine not understanding such things as lines, shapes, colours, perspective, people, the relationships between objects, smells and sounds.

Now when they learn, I can help, which is great. Caring for them has become more immediately rewarding. I can’t imagine what it will be like when they learn language and I can really begin to teach them.

Celebration time.
Five months of joy down,
Three lifetimes to go.

Was I really considering moving our girls back in to sleep with us? Not at 5 am on Saturday morning I wasn’t. In fact, my first words, then, were, if I can recall them through the echoing screams of a hyperactive Jemima,precisely to the contrary: “Perhaps we shouldn’t bring the girls back into our room after all”.

Of course, it’s harder to leave a baby crying when you know there’s other people being disturbed by them. At home, we have a ten minute rule during the night. That means we only go in to the babies’ room if they cry consistantly for ten minutes, which, nine times out of ten, they don’t. And even if we do go in, there’s no talking and no lights on ­- just a reassuring cuddle and a quick nappy check.

But with the thought of a packed house listening in, ten munutes felt like forever and even after it had passed Jemima hadn’t settled down herself, probably because she wasn’t used to the room or her travel cot. Of all three girls, Jemima is the most easily stimulated. But while she loves new people and new places, she also gets overwhelmed by too much of them.

I tried bringing her into bed with J and me but that didn’t work. She was wide awake by this point and although she stopped crying it was only because she’s found something else to keep her occupied – grabbing my face. Unsuprisingly enough, I was also soon wide awake, so I took her downstairs, where we sat in the kitchen for two hours while everyone else slept, her craning to investigate every corner of this interesting new environment, me trying to do su doku without my pen flying across the page.

If I’m honest, I didn’t really mind too much. I cherish moments like that, when I get to spend time alone with just one of my girls. Soon I put down the puzzle book and chatted to Jemima instead, singing quietly, letting her grab my fingers, pulling faces, rocking and cuddling, until, at the exact moment when she should have been waking, she dropped off in my arms.

Evelyn took up the baton and cried throughout the 9 am nap and all three ran relay on the lunchtime one, meaning we still hadn’t caught up on our sleep by the afternoon. If it hadn’t been for my mum taking the girls out at half three, I’m not sure I would have been able to safely drive all the way back to Leeds.

So, for now at least, I think we’ll continue giving the girls their own (screaming) space.

Otherwise, the day was fun, if hectic. As well as my immediate family and my grandparents, my Auntie Chris and Uncle Heiner were over from Switzerland and several other groups of people popped in to meet Evelyn, Jemima and Lettie. Plus there was not having been down for Christmas to make up for. Amidst the chaos, I, unfortunately, didn’t get a full set of pictures of the girls with their great grandparents. Even with three babies to go round, there was always someone else to be passed to and before I knew it, it was time to set them (and us) down for a nap. Not that they slept – all the excitement had stimulated them too much.

Getting up from our failed afternoon nap, I found that the chaos had also become too much for my grandparents and they’d gone home.

I have made a Flickr album of the pictures all the best I did take but here’s the two pictures I did get of Evie and Scarlett with their great granparents.

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Next time, I expect the novelty of first meeting our girls will have lessened somewhat and we will get more chance to document the event. And, at least, they have now met their great grandparents, photos or none.

We set off to London this evening. My Nanny’s eightieth birthday has prompted J and I to make the visit we were forced to put off at Christmas due to Evie’s throat infection.

I am really looking forward to introducing the girls to their great grandparents, and also to their Uncle Finn who, due to the combined demands of A levels, girlfriend and a blossoming relationship with the pub, hasn’t managed to make it up to Leeds yet. I’m the oldest of four brothers and the first to have children, so it’s great to be the one who promotes everyone to unclehood.

The thing I am most looking forward to is not what I might have expected, however. I can’t wait to sleep in the same room as the girls. Doing so when we were at J’s parents for Christmas was lovely. At some point since we moved them into their nursery, the swamp sounds have disappeared, to be replaced with the snores, sighs and throat-clearings more usual in human beings… only made infinitely cuter by the combination of high-pitch and their being in triplicate. I found it really comforting to be able to hear them whenever I woke in the night, to know they were right there, safe and at peace. Our whole family, together and at rest, was a beautiful and intimate thing.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping me moving them back into our room. Nothing except that the routine is finally allowing us to get more sleep. Sure, they don’t make the noises they once did, but they do still wake and cry during the night now and then, and, even on our improved sleep allotment, it would be too much if both of us were kept up.

I guess I’ll just save the experience for special occassions like tonight – it’ll make the long drive and late arrival worth it, I’m sure.

Just a quick post to show off some of my favourite pics from December. I’ve not written much recently because what little time I’ve had has been spent on the aricle I promised TAMBA but I’ve sent it off now so should be back blogging more regularly.

Anyway, Here’s Evie…

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…Scarlett…

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… and Jemima.

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You can really tell now, I think, that their characters have developed. When the girls were very small, I’m sure a lot of the time I was projecting my own emotions onto them but now that they can communicate better, I’m sure that their expressions are, well, them expressing themselves.

It wasn’t until I pulled out from the tight space between two other cars that I realised how icy the street was. That’s the problem with cobbled streets; they’re pretty and quaint but treacherous in the wet and snow.

The space under the car had been dry so I’d had no trouble getting traction at first but once out into the middle of the street, the wheels began spinning. Our house is on a steep hill with a busy road at the bottom where cars come swishing past at quite some speed. I’d parked facing uphill the night before but it hadn’t snowed then.

Changing down a gear I managed to get another twenty feet or so before hitting pure ice. There was no way I’d make it over so I put on the brake, hoping for a moment to consider my options, but with both J and I in the car, plus the babies, their buggy and all the baggage we need to take with us on a day trip, combined with the MPV’s already massive weight, it was too much for them. We started sliding back. I yanked on the handbrake, too, but we were still sliding. Giving up on the brakes I hit the accelerator again and finally we held in place. But the engine was screaming and giving off acrid, metallic smells. I had no idea how long we might stay like that.

I chanced a glance behind. The space we’d left would be dry enough to for he tires to find purchase but was far too small to get into while sliding, especially as the two cars defining it were Audis. My only option was to steer our slide onto the side street opposite the space. There was a car (our car in fact!) at the mouth of the side street so the angle would be hard but it was that or sliding backwards into the high-speed traffic at the base of the road.

In the back Evie began ot cry, as if sensing the danger she was in. My mind raced for another solution. There was a grit bucket at the top of the road but J would never be able to get up there and back in time to scatter it behind us. Likewise, the road was far too icy for her to get the babies out while I held it in place. What if I failed? She could be caught under the wheels. Could she get the neighbour, askhim to move his car so we could back into the safe, dry spot behind it? Again, no time.

Heart hammering, I told J what I intended, tried to put confidence into my voice. I didn’t mention the tightness of the angle or my fear that we’d end up sliding sideways, unable to pull against the slope, unable to pull out of our slide towards the junction below.

I released the handbrake. We began to slide faster. Foot pumping the brake, I let us slide back, tried desperately to keep control of our descent. The nose of our MPV swang out, inches from our neighbour’s Audi TT. I dared a little reverse power, trying to swing round fast enough to not miss the junction. The nose went further. We were sliding sideways. I waited. We had to clear the car at the side street’s entrance. And then the gap was there, I gave more gas, the wheels span then gripped. We lurched backwards. And we were safe.

Next year perhaps I should swap the MPV for a snowplough, or invest in wheel chains, or, at least, check the road before I set off into the snow with everything most precious to me in the world on board.