Notice the new polls!

I just figured out how to add poll questions to the blog. We want to know who the babies most resemble. To help you out, here are some recent pictures of all of us. Please vote - this will be fun!

Abby




Lucas




Zoey




Jason and Lisa

Quality Time

One of my worries as a mom of 3 at once is making sure they each get enough individual quality time with us and don't always feel like they have to be part of a set. Right now they get the most individual attention when they are fussy, which doesn't seem fair to the un-fussy one(s). We've been trying to do different one-on-one things with them, like taking just one of them for a walk in the stroller, or wearing one in the Moby or Bjorn while doing housework. The other day I took Abby to the grocery store with me and carried her in the Bjorn. She fell right asleep and we had a nice time.

Nursing is also a nice way to have quality time. A couple of weeks ago Lucas woke up later than the girls for breakfast (they were already back down for their naps), and we had such a sweet time together on the couch - he nursed, while I drank my coffee and watched the Today show. Even Mojo the cat got in on it by cuddling right up against Lucas. Times like that help me to get a glimpse of what it might be like to have just one baby at a time.

Not that I would trade all 3 for anything, of course. On Friday we had the best group cuddle ever. They were all sort of fussy, and I ended up tandem nursing Lucas and Abby, with Zoey squished in between them - all on the twin nursing pillow. Then they all fell asleep - Zoey on Lucas's tummy, Abby on Zoey's tummy, and all of them on my tummy. We all napped together that way for quite awhile. I was sad when they started to wake up - I wanted it to last longer. They always seem so happy to pile on top of each other to sleep, and they were so relaxed. Until they got fussy again, of course.

I don't have any pictures of these sweet cuddly moments, so here are some other recent pics instead...

hanging out on their boppies on the couch



Lucas relaxing on the recliner


Lucas and Abby enjoying tummy time together

2 Months Old!

As usual, it was like herding cats to get them all happy at the same time for their monthly picture. They're cute anyway!

Lucas-Zoey-Abby

 

 

 

 

And for comparison, here is their one month photo:
Zoey-Abby-Lucas

Tandem Nursing

The babies and I have met another breastfeeding goal, just in time for their 2 month birthday - we are getting better at tandem (two at a time) nursing! As with many other things, conditions have to be just right for it to work. There have to be 2 hungry babies who are still reasonably happy and willing to nurse(not hysterically hungry and demanding the instant gratification of bottles), I have to have the right pillows and seating available and have time to get it set up, and the third baby has to be sleeping or otherwise taken care of. My EZ2Nurse twin nursing pillow is coming in handy, as it holds 2 babies much better than a boppy pillow. I usually put a small throw pillow under each side of the nursing pillow for extra height (I really need a nursing stool to prop my feet up on!) and sit on the couch so I have lots of room.

The main problems I've had involve the third baby - one day I was home alone and thought Zoey was sleeping peacefully while I nursed Lucas and Abby. Well, she did not stay asleep. I had to decide whether to listen to her cry, or whether to stop nursing to get her. I decided on the 2nd option, and then had to get everyone settled again. From now on I will always make sure the 3rd baby is within reach if I'm home alone and tandem feeding! My next goal is to be able to nurse 2 while bottle feeding the third. Talk about efficiency! :)

Here is a picture of Abby and Lucas passed out and happy after tandem feeding:


The other challenge when home alone is dealing with fussy babies while I'm pumping. Again, I have to decide whether to stop pumping to deal with babies, or let them fuss for a bit. I usually end up holding whichever babies are unhappy. The other day I had to hold both Zoey and Abby. Here's a picture of how they ended up sleeping once I got up from the chair:


In sleep news, some days are still better than others. The last few days the babies have fallen into a pattern of having a late night feeding (around 11pm-12am), then one middle of the night feeding (around 3am-5am) and then a breakfast feeding (around 7-8am). They have also been ready to eat closer together, rather than spreading out their wake-up times across the night. We've worked hard on making sure they all get that late night feeding around the same time so that the remaining feedings are not as staggered as they used to be - that way I can get them all fed in a 1.5-2 hour time frame instead of being up every hour. This is a big improvement over the eating every 3 hours pattern - it used to be 11pm, 2am, 5am, 8am - and I was doing the last 3 of those so Jason could get some sleep for work. I'm hoping this trend continues - it's nice to only be up for 2 hours in the middle of the night! (and you can see how I'm using my time waiting for Abby to wake up...)

Sore toes, and other side effects of pregnancy

"They" say that your body changes in all kinds of ways during and after pregnancy, but I didn't really believe it. I had a "it won't happen to me" mentality. Surely I would be back in my regular clothes pretty quickly! Well, I have learned my lesson.

Yesterday I had to go out and buy 3 new pairs of shoes, plus a new pair of slippers. Apparently my feet have grown an entire size in the last 9 months. My toes and feet have been really sore and swollen lately, and at first I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized that all my shoes were too tight, even my slippers. It feels like I've stubbed my toes a million times (which I have, actually, with all the baby clutter we have in the house). So I now have big new sneakers and 2 other pairs of shoes (open-toed, to reduce squishing), as well as a pair of open-toed slippers. Of course now I'm still stubbing my toes due to the open shoes!

And then there are my clothes. I had to buy a bunch of new t-shirts in extra large due to (ahem) growth in a certain area. I've been wearing yoga pants almost exclusively, since none of my pants fit. I really thought that once my maternity clothes were too big, I'd at least be able to fit into the biggest sizes in my closet - the clothes I bought at the beginning of pregnancy last fall when I was bloated but not showing yet. I've lost 55 of the 60 pounds I gained during pregnancy, so I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation. Finally today I was able to suck in my belly enough to be able to button and zip a pair of size 12 pants. I really hope I can fit into some of my work pants in July. I can't afford a whole new work wardrobe too!

I'm hoping to be able to continue to lose the weight that I slowly gained before pregnancy (thanks, fertility treatments!) so that I can enjoy my wardrobe again instead of having a full closet but nothing to wear. I could seriously open up a clothing store with all the different sizes that are in my closet now.

I'm slowly getting back into exercising as my stamina increases. My goal is a daily walk with the dog and babies (pushing a double stroller uphill is hard work!) and getting to one yoga class per week. Maybe someday I'll even have the time to do some of the yoga DVDs I have at home. Being able to do housework again helps too. I love vacuuming!

Ok, enough self-indulgent talk. Let's have a couple of baby pictures to finish out this post.

Zoey and Lucas hanging out on a boppy together



Lucas and Abby on the recliner

Thanks, helpers!

Whew - we made it through another week! I was worried about this week because my mom was out of town, and neither one of us has ever had a whole day alone with the babies. Fortunately, several friends offered to come over and help. It made the week so much easier! I'm sure it's possible to take care of 3 babies all day without help, but I would have been so much more frazzled. In fact, on Thursday we even managed to go out to lunch with the babies. So, a big thank you to Bethany, Christy, and Bridget for making my week survivable and fun!

(and thank you to Jason, who attempted to "work from home" while I had to go in to work for a meeting)

Zoey graduated! and other fun things from this week

Well, it's official - Zoey is wearing newborn diapers and clothes! No more preemie stuff for her. This was prompted in part by running out of preemie diapers, and by being tired of the same old preemie clothes (except for some new ones that a friend sent to us - thanks Nicole!). :) We are so proud of our growing girl! Abby and Lucas are both inching toward size 1 diapers (the next size up from newborn) and are wearing 0-3 month clothes instead of newborn. They seem to get chubbier every day. It's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, Abby was wearing the outfit that Zoey is wearing in these pictures. Now that outfit is too small for Abby and just right for Zoey.



In Lucas news, we started giving him Zantac this week. His reflux/gas/colic/whatever wasn't improving after doing the other things the pediatrician suggested, so we wanted to go to the next step since he still seemed to be in pain. It's only been a couple of days but we're hoping to see an improvement soon. His tummy pain gets bad enough that he has what we call "spasms" in his sleep where he turns red and grunts/cries, then goes back to sleep. Very sad to watch. Last night he slept 6 hours between meals, so we're also hoping that the medicine helps him sleep better and longer.

He has developed a funny coping mechanism, which is to arch himself backwards after eating. He has pretty good muscle control and loves flopping his head around anyway, and he is strong enough that he is able to "insist" on getting into this position. It seems to make him feel better, so we let him do it.





And we can't forget Abby. She was practicing her tummy time today when Casey decided to join her. It all went well until the licking got out of hand.







Jason took this close-up of Abby. Isn't she cute??

Careful what you wish for...

Remember when I said I wished their feedings weren't quite so staggered in the middle of the night, so I wouldn't have to be awake as long? Well, I got my wish last night when all of them were screaming for their food at precisely the same time (4:11am). It was a bit of a circus for me to get each of their diapers changed, get re-swaddled, and get them fed. I settled them all in on boppies on the couch and sat on the coffee table in front of them. Then I fed 2 at a time while 1 waited. Usually it was poor Abby, who is laid back enough that she just waited quietly for me to put the bottle back in her mouth. The squeaky wheel gets the grease around here, and last night Zoey and Lucas were the squeakiest. (I may have to learn to hold a bottle with a foot!) I eventually got them all fed and burped and back in bed, but since it was hard to really take the time to soothe each one to sleepiness before putting them in their cribs, it was another 15 min at least before they were all quiet. The whole thing took an hour, whereas if I had fed them each one at a time it would have been an hour and a half.

I wasn't coherent enough to take a picture of them all lined up on the couch, so here are some daytime pics of cuddling on boppies:

Lucas and Abby

Lucas and Zoey

Sibling love

I usually like to just do one post per day, but I just couldn't wait another day to share these pictures. On Friday my mom had the brilliant idea to wheel the pack n' play out to the deck so we and the babies could hang out in the fresh air. The girls started out in it and fell asleep immediately, and when Lucas was done eating he joined them. They seemed so happy to be cuddling together, and we got some really sweet pictures. (Note - we'd never let them sleep this close together unsupervised, but we feel it's ok during naptime when we're right there)

Who needs sleep?

Snug as a bug in a swaddle


Man, this sleep deprivation thing is hard! We're functioning better than we thought we could on 5-6 hours of sleep at night, but I wouldn't trust myself to pilot an airplane right now. Since coming home from the hospital the babies had been on a pretty predictable schedule involving eating every 3 hours and sleeping in between. They would just pop awake at the 3 hour mark like they had little alarm clocks. Now they are starting to be more wakeful during the day, with less napping in the mornings but still having decent afternoon naps. And now they sometimes have longer stretches of sleep & time between meals at night. Unfortunately, these longer stretches are not happening simultaneously, so they don't translate to more sleep for us. Here's an example:

Thursday night they each went 4.5 hours between meals - Zoey went from 9pm-1:30am, Abby from 10:30pm-3am, and Lucas from 11:30pm-4am. This meant that I was up to feed each of them at those times. I did steal an hour nap from 2-3am though. And yesterday Abby went a whopping 5.5 hours between meals! Unfortunately this happened from 3pm-8:30pm, so it didn't really help us much except to make the mealtimes for the others a little less hectic.

napping in the pack n'play



And why aren't they all eating at the same times, you ask? We hear over and over the importance of having them on the same schedule, and they were on the same schedule for probably the first 6 weeks. However, they seem to be gaining weight and developing at different rates, and it's affecting their sleeping and eating schedules. We want to respect their individual biological clocks while also maintaining some sanity. So we do our best to get them to eat as close together as possible, but we also follow the rule of "never wake a sleeping baby". It seems crazy to wake someone to eat after 3 hours if they have the potential to sleep for 5! Often they eat pretty close together during the day but get gradually further apart as the night goes on. We're going to keep trying to get these 4-5 hour stretches as close together as possible so that we can get longer stretches of sleep too. Of course, as long as I'm still pumping breastmilk the longest I can really go between pumpings is 4 hours (but it's a lot better to pump and go right back to bed than it is to pump and then feed 3 babies). And honestly it is much easier to do feedings one at a time rather than having 3 screaming at once. The trade-off is less sleep, however.

daddy-daughter napping


It's a little too early to do any sort of rigid sleep training program, but we've been reading 2 sleep books and will gradually start to implement some of their ideas. The books are Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Twins and 12 Hours by 12 Weeks.

We also seem to be transitioning them to sleep in their cribs at night. They had been sleeping in an Arms Reach Co-Sleeper and a bassinet in our room, but one night they were napping in the nursery and we didn't want to move them to our room for bedtime b/c we didn't want to risk waking them, so we just left them there. We slept a little better b/c we couldn't hear every little noise, and they seemed to do just fine being apart from us. Plus both Lucas and Zoey do better when they sleep upright, since they spit up and seem uncomfortable when flat on their backs. So they often sleep in a bouncer, swing, or car seat (the pediatrician said this was ok). This arrangement is easier to pull off in the nursery than our bedroom.

Lucas napping


So...we will hope for continued progress and in the meantime will daydream about 8 consecutive hours of sleep...

Tummy Time! and other assorted photos

When we remember and have time and the babies are happy, we have them practice tummy time. (you can imagine how often those three criteria are met!). I had to take these pictures because of their outfits. Ever since the shower when we received these adorable outfits with animals on the back of the pants (thanks Cindy!), I knew I had to take a picture of all the bottoms lined up. I think they look pretty darn cute!





Lucas was the only one who practiced rolling from tummy to back. He got frustrated though because those darn sisters kept getting in the way.


Zoey preferred to nap her way through tummy time.


I put Abby down in the chair to grab something really quickly. She stayed upright in what we now call her "seated swaddle" pose.


This is what happens when I leave Jason and Peter unsupervised with the babies.


Looking gorgeous in their Mother's Day dresses (Zoey is wearing newborn size, and Abby is in 0-3!)



Playmat fun.