My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

It occurs to me that I’ve not posted any pictures for a while, so here’s a few, taken these last few weeks, all at playtime, along with some random observations from the lives of our girls.

Evie’s second tooth is really coming through now. It looks a little wonky but I’m sure it’ll straighten out once it gets company. And she’s finally taking to having them brushed, too.

Every new thing to do with her mouth seems to need a while for Evie to adjust to. I can remember bottle feeding taking over an hour for just a few ounces. For a while she worried us terribly by hardly eating a spoonful solids.

And then it was teeth cleaning. But I decided (as it’s me that does it, after their baths each night) to take things gently and it’s really paid off. I stopped if she wouldn’t open her mouth, made a big game about each and every brush stroke that touched her teeth, let her play with her toothbrush before and after, tried to respond to her reactions, and, bit by bit, she’s come to like it. Until now it’s just as easy to brush her teeth each night as her sisters’.

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Lettie loves labels. Not designer labels. At least, not just designer labels. Nope. Any old label keeps her happy for hours. Toys, clothes, bibs, tea towels, mats. Anything with a label for her to suck on is, as far as Lettie is concerned, the best thing ever. At least, until she spots another label somewhere.

Actually, Scarlett is very much back to being the happy-go-lucky, little bumblebee that she was before she first got ill back in February which is lovely. She’s so chilled out, in fact, that she got her third tooth this week without making the slightest fuss.

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And Jem… What can I say? It’s becoming clear now that when we called her Wriggler in the womb, we were right on the money. She rolls faster and further than any of her sisters, dressing her is like trying to get clothes on a hyperactive octopus, she can escape all but one of the bouncy chairs, bathing her leaves me as wet as her, and ‘nappy-off time’ becomes more high risk by the day – every time we look round she’s off the waterproof change mat we put her on and the carpet’s in danger. It’s exhausting.

She has been doing something rather exciting with all her energy, though. Last week she managed to briefly lift herself up on all fours. This week, she’s gone further. Now she can not only hold herself up for quite a while but can move backwards. Well, it’s a start.

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My girls and I recently spent our longest period apart. J and I went to visit her parents in Preston on Sunday and, while I returned to Leeds on Monday so I could be back at work the next day, she stayed on until Wednesday to get some rest. Things have been hard for her recently. Looking after the girls all day is gruelling work and I’m proud that she’s lasted this long doing it all day, all alone, week in, week out. But now she’s tired out.

If they were well, she could manage, but the fact is that at least one of them has been poorly since February. Sometimes it’s just been a cold or a bit of teething, sometimes chest infections, sometimes we have no idea what it is, but, between the coughs, sniffles, temperatures, grouchiness, lack of appetite, the lunchtime screams and night time wakefulness, there hasn’t been a moment for J or I to recover since it all began.

On top of all that, the routine has been a lot more demanding since we began the transition to solid food with all those extra meals and the preparation required to keep our freezer stocked up, and the girls continue to get harder to lift up and downn our house’s many stairs and to push in their buggy.

Ironically, with J going back to Preston, it’s actually me that’s had the opportunity to rest. Two whole nights of uninterrupted sleep doesn’t make up for the months of short nights but, wow, did it ever help.

And did it ever make me realise to what a massive extent tiredness has been a part of my life recently. It clouds everything. It makes the hard times harder and means you have no energy to appreciate the good ones. It turns the innocent questions of strangers into a barrage of repetitive intrusion.

And did it ever make me realise how much I love my little girls. My house seemed empty. My life seemed empty, too. Empty of smiles and silliness, empty of devotion and love, I found myself wandering from room to room wishing the emptiness away. I didn’t want sleep, I wanted my family returned to my home.

In light of these realisations, I am making some changes. From next month I’m taking two half-days off work a week. I need to spend time with all four of my girls. J needs me to share the burden more and I want to do it. This first year is a magical time and, hopefully, by being at home more often I’ll get to see more of it and J will be able to appreciate it more.

This weekend, I witnessed a moment that I think is the most adorable thing I have ever seen. Lying on their playmat, Evie and Jemima just happened to roll together. Not unusual, of course. With the amount of rolling that they do, collisions are commonplace.

Only this time, instead of just rolling away from the unexpected obstruction, or one whacking the other, both stopped and just looked at each another.

Then Evie reached out and touched her sister on the cheek. Not a grab or yank, not scratch or whack, just a gentle, exploratory touch, as if seeing Jemima for the first time.

Jemima laughed. Evie joined her. She put her arm round Jemima’s shoulders. They laughed again, as if sharing a secret joke, looked expectantly at one another.

Then they kissed, laughed again, kissed another time, and, still laughing, eyes bright with happiness, they rolled away.

We made it to 3am last night before the first sounds woke me. Not crying. More the unsatisfied complaints of someone who’d woken and couldn’t get back to sleep. I waited a few minutes before going in, wondering, through the haze of half sleep, if this was the start of a whole night’s wakefulness or not.

Last night the answer was ‘not’. It was Evie awake, wedged up in the corner of her cot and horribly sniffly, two problems that seem to have been the cause of most night wakings over recent weeks. I gave her a cuddle and a sip of water, put her back down and waited back in bed, listening to her cry for a moment then begin to chatter “baa baa baa” to herself. Slowly the baas grew quieter and further apart. I relaxed, let sleep overtake me…

..almost overtake me. Sudden crying jerked me back to consciousness. I opened my eyes. Was it morning? Had I even been to sleep? Unsure, I parted the curtain and held my wrist up to the window to read the time by the orange glow of the street light outside. Three thirty. I couldn’t have slept more than five minutes. I settled back, eyes open in the darkness, seeing if she’d settle herself.

She didn’t, and I didn’t want J to be woken, so I went back to the nursery after only a minute or two. This time Evie was wedged sideways and even when I picked her up she continued to cry loudly, only stopping to draw rattling breaths through her blocked nose.

I held her close against my chest, feeling how much lighter she is than her sisters, rocking gently from foot to foot, whispering “there there” and “hush”, her fine hair silk-soft against my cheek, until her crying died off and she began to reply to my whispers with miserable “boo-oo-oo”s, crying again only when I attempted to put her back in bed.

Eventually, I tried putting her on her front and it worked. Stopping only to find her thumb, she fell straight to sleep. Still, I stayed a while, watching her sleep in the darkness, so little, so beautiful, so helpless in the face of illness. Only when her breathing deepened did I kiss her head and creep away.

Bed was cold but I didn’t care. I pulled the covers up to my cheek and was about to drift off when she started crying once more. I definitely hadn’t slept this time but, again, I waited a few minutes before hauling myself up and returning to the nursery.

Only now it was Jemima crying, like Evie wedged up into the corner of her cot. The room was dark but one LED on the baby monitor in the corner, another on the heater, and a slivver of light from over the blackout blind let me see Jemima’s face as I lifted her out. Her eyes were open; she was watching me. She stopped crying, nuzzled into my shoulder, and said “da-da”.

A long time passed before I put her down.

Has anyone seen a Jemima? Short little fella, she is, fond of stripes, cheeky grin? Only mine seems to have, at some point in the last few days, been switched.

Sure, she looks the same, this imposter we have here, but she’s – how can I put this? – wilder. Trying to change her nappy is like wrestling an anaconda, as she corkscrews and writhes in every direction but the one where you want her to be, and, when you put her down, she’s off, rolling towards the nearest danger with unerring recklessness. Even her bouncy chair won’t hold her, as she’s discovered how to jacknife her body then wriggle until she’s almost upside-down. Then there’s the shreaking. She shreaks like a rabid capuchin monkey. When she’s happy, and when she’s sad, and, well, I’m not sure why she does it sometimes. Just wildness, I expect. Nor will just one toy do for our new wild girl – of course not, you need two if you’re going to bang them together like jungle drums.

Not that her sisters are much more civilised. Evie seems set on proving that you don’t need two teeth to leave teethmarks in a human hand and has developed a rottweiler-style growl for use when she doesn’t want any more food, while Scarlett’s blocked nose keeps making me think that a warthog has wandered into the lounge when my back’s been turned.

So, perhaps you’ve seen an Evie or Lettie, too?

Bah! Who am I kidding. It’s great to see my little girls back full of beans and taking the world on. I’ll take wildness over illness any day of the week.

Sleep. Just one little word. Five characters. Four different letters. One syllabul. So soft, easy to say; the kind of word a man could sigh as he drifts off into sleep, drowns himself in it’s sweet embrace, like a weary traveller returning to his lover’s arms.

Mmmmm… What was I saying? Oh, yes, sleep. As you may be able to tell, I am rather obsessing. It’s been a hell of a weekend; hell of a week, too, when I think about it. By Friday, I was the only well person in our house. The girls are poorly again, this time with a mystery illness that had them all feeling very sorry for themselves without any particular symptoms. Scarlett had a slight temperature one evening, Evie another. Jem woke two nights running making faces and arching her back like she was in pain. They’ve been, by turns, unusually hungry and refusing to eat at all. Scarlett threw up her supper last night and had to be fed at midnight and again at four. All of them have been unwilling to lie and play for any stretch of time, suddenly bursting into tears.

It’s so, so difficult when more than one of the girls is unwell. All they want is to be held but I can only hold two at once and they’re so heavy now, J can only really manage one, meaning the others just have to wait, and, often as not, waiting means crying.

I hadn’t realised, until this weekend, what J does all week. Sure, when the weekend came, I tried my best to muck in, to do as much more than my share as possible so J could have a rest. But she was still there. This weekend she, too, was ill. I came home on Thursday to find her white, shivvering and faint, and there was nothing for it but to send her to bed and take over.

And, wow, was it hard work. Sure, the whole experience wasn’t made any easier by the girls’ illness or by me lacking J’s intimate knowledge of the routine that rules our days, but even allowing for those, I have newfound respect for how well J has coped these last eight months. It’s non-stop. I’m sure I have new muscles just from carrying the girls up and down all the damn stairs in our ridiculously tall, thin house, from carrying loads of washing up and down between the basement kitchen and the third floor spare room where we dry it, from the dashing up and down to fetch bottles from or do chores in the kitchen or to quickly check on the girls from down there, and especially from pushing the buggy up the hills which seem to stretch in every direction from our doorstep.

But it’s not just the physical. Playing games and being cheery all day is exhausting, especially when the girls are so difficult to cheer up. The constant diversion of attention from whatever job your rushing through makes even the simplest task frustrating as you try to remember where you were before screams drew you from what you were doing as well as keeping the mountain of upcoming chores to mind so that the washer, tumble drier, steriliser and dishwasher are all made best use of, the girls get their meals on time with all necessary utensils clean and food defrosted and heated. Even when the girls sleep you can’t stop because you have to be ready for the next surge of demands. It’s tiring just describing it.

So, while I feel exhaustion down to the marrow of my bones and while every idle thought is pulled, inexorably, towards the possibility of sleep, it’s J who my sympathy goes out to, and every mum (or dad) who’s ever stayed at home looking after triplets.

Evelyn, Scarlett and Jemima really are blessed ot have been born to such a supermum.

The really funny thing is, though, that sitting here at work, I miss it. I find myself thinking, “They’ll be eating lunch now” and wondering if Evie is having enough or if Scarlett’s blocked nose is making it hard to keep up, or “10 o’clock, it’s play time” and imagining Jem making everyone laugh by screaming and pulling faces or “they’ll be going down to bed in a minute” and hoping they sleep long enough for J to get a sit down and to grab something for herself after she’s caught up with the housework, so I guess it can’t be all bad.

You may have noticed that I’ve not been recording every development the girls have made recently. I just haven’t had time to do them justice as I didn’t want to just post a list of their achievements.

Besides which, I’m finding, as I get used to being a dad of triplets, it’s increasingly difficult to grasp what things people would be interested in hearing about our family. As time passes, I find myself losing focus on what makes it so different to singleton parenthood or my past life of childlessness.

So, sod trying to carefully formulate this post or work out what I should or shouldn’t include. Here’s a rundown of all last month’s developments in brief (and no particular order).

Teeth: Holding steady at Evie 1, Scarlett 2, Jemima 2.

Mobility: As it turns out, rolling is a pretty nifty way of getting around. Scarlett started rolling weeks after her sisters but within a day or two was just as mobile. I guess she just couldn’t be bothered before that. Now all three are incredibly mobile. Leaving the kitchen for a wee at the weekend, all three girls were on their playmats in the centre of the floor. By the time I got back, Jemima was wedged against the back door, Scarlett was under the kitchen table and Evie, while not having moved, was now underneath her mat.

Toys: Current favourites are stacking cups. They love whacking them together, whacking themselves, whacking their sisters. Perhaps we should just call them whacking cups? Also, last week, we introduced the girls to the teddy bears we bought them before birth only to discover they were far too big for newborns. There’s one in each of cream, beige and brown and I’ve christened them Vanille (who speaks in a French accent), Butterscotch (who – yes, you guessed it – sounds like a dodgy Mrs. Doubtfire) and Cocoa (no accent, just a deep friendly voice). The girls seem to like them. If by like you mean whack, that is.

Games: Scarlett has been very serious this week, almost impossible to make laugh. Even last week’s favourite game (bellowing “hello in there” into her tummy) elicits no more than a world-weary sigh. Running round with her held face-up in front of me singing Step In Time from Mary Poppins still illicits giggles though, as does Peekaboo. Speaking of which, Evie likes Peekaboo so much that she has learnt to play it herself, holding muslins over her face and pulling them off with an big, expectant, gummy grin.

Ilnesses: Currently everyone has nasty coughs. No signs of it slipping into being croup though, thank God. Before that, they have each had several days of just not being themselves without any notable symptoms. Poor things, I just hope the weather warming up will mean the end of these winter maladies.

Eating: Solids continue to be introduced… only now with lumps, which, apart from one terrifying chocking incident with Scarlett the other day, the girls have taken to wonderfully. And now they are much more like adult meals mushed up than the purees we were feeding the girls at first. Chicken stew and liver casserole are favourites so far. Unfortunately, Evie has decided that she hates sitting in a bouncy chair to be fed and cries, mouth clamped shut, until we pick her up, when she’ll eat happily. Not sure what to do about this yet. She’s already smaller than her sisters; I really don’t want her to fall further behind but it’s not practical to feed her like we have been doing.

Interests: Jemima likes hair, Evie eyes and Scarlett mouths. As I’m sure you can imagine, lying on the playmat with all three is becoming a dangerous pastime.

Words: None yet, I’m afraid, but Jemima has made a wonderful new development. She’s discovered every father’s favourite new consonant: “d”. Of course everything within arms reach gets called “dadadadadadada” but I still love hearing that word (ok, sound) come out of her mouth and am not below pretending she’s attaching relevance to it when she looks at me and says it.

I keep losing control.

When I walked through the door today I was fine; I was collected, calm, rational, an adult. But within seconds – bang! – there I was, completely out of control once more.

And all it took was three big grins from three little girls. In nanoseconds the sensible computer programmer of half an hour earlier had dissolved into a giddy, capering fool, singing, pulling faces, putting on silly voices, doing anything to raise a laugh.

I’m hooked, you see. I’m hooked on their smiles, their eyes brightening in excitement, and, most precious of everything, I’m hooked on the delicious arpegios of three simultaneous laughs. Nothing, nothing, in all my experience, compares to the unblemished joy of laughing with my children.

I remember reading something about fatherhood a long time ago. The writer was talking about how men always jostle for position, take the mickey out of each other, bring down any friend who show weakness or pride, like wolves in a pack… except for one exception – when a man has kids. A dad can be dressed as a clown, singing like Barry Gibb on helium and dancing like an alzheimic uncle doing a half-remembered timewarp, and no-one can say a word.

I can only assume he’s been in my shoes.

Seriously, though, he does have a point, and quite an interesting one at that. The kind of love and devotion that allows you to throw aside the contrivances of being grown up is something to be proud of. It’s a mark of having found something more important than appearances.

I may look like a lunatic when I’m trying to get my kids to smile but I’m not a lunatic, I’m in love, and, as we all know, there’s often a fine line between the two.