Having the triplets at home

So what is life like two weeks on from bringing the babies home? Well I have to say it is actually very relaxed! The triplets left the hospital in a great routine, where they were sleeping lots, feeding every three hours and didn’t need to be comforted too much, so we have kept this system going.

 

We ask visitors to come during feeding times so that they can give one of the babies their bottle and have a cuddle. This means the little ones aren’t disturbed for visitor cuddles in between feeds and can snooze while we can get a few jobs done or have a nap ourselves. It also means we can actually chat to friends and family when they drop by as we are relaxed when sitting down to feed the triplets.

 

Feeding is improving on a daily basis for the babies. When we came home, they were quite slow at taking the bottle and were often a bit sick when they did not get their wind up. Now they are sucking with more strength, are less sick and feed quicker. They also seem more awake for feeds, as previously we were struggling to keep them awake enough to get the bottle in their mouths and suck. I’d say we were waking them at least three or four times per feed.

 

At the moment, my plans to have them sleep in our room have not succeeded – having three babies through the night is noisy!  Either they all want to be fed at once and are making little high pitched cries or one is being a bit noisy as they settle after a feed. This noise means that the person trying to sleep is disturbed, therefore we have kept the babies downstairs and have been a tag team with sleeping on the settee and feeding.

 

We have progressed the overnight feeds so the lack of sleep has improved and now both of us normally get about six hours sleep throughout the night. Conor does 11pm feed, I do the 3am one and then he takes the 7am feed while I go back to sleep.

 

During the day, we either do the feeds together or sometimes we have family or friends visiting who help out, allowing one of us to make some food or do some washing. Alternatively we sometimes do the feed by ourselves to allow for the other person to go for a swim, run or to the shops. Now that Conor is back at work, my mum is staying to help me out, and my in-laws who live around the corner are also a huge support.

To take some of the pressure off, we are doing our food shopping online through Tesco. It is such a brilliant system and now I have done it a few times I have previous orders to use as a base for each shop, which allows me to be very quick when ordering.

 

 

During the two weeks Conor was on paternity leave and we had the triplets at home, we went out walking as a family a few times. The buggy we have (Trippy) really is fabulous and I have to say thank you so much to Baby Accessories Ireland for gifting it to us. I picked it out myself on their website. The company is based in Carrick-on-Shannon, and get their supply from Poland.

 

We absolutely love the Trippy because it is quite compact, considering, and it has carry cot and car seat adapters, which are brilliant. I have to say it fills the boot of the car when we are going out but is such a lovely looking buggy and very versatile with the different fixings.

 

On the breastfeeding front, I have been slightly defeated. I have expressed ever since they were born, doing three hourly feeds the whole time they were in hospital and then reducing down to roughly every four hours now. I still have the breast pump that I hired from the pharmacy – it is €95 a month so it is not cheap but it is an industrial one and is very good.

 

I had tried breastfeeding a bit in hospital but when they came home and I wanted to be sure that they were getting enough milk, I switched back to pumping. Another reason was that bottle feeding meant our visitors could help us out when they arrived during feeding times, as well as the fact it was helping me get enough sleep to survive. I intend on expressing until they are three months old. They get about two feeds per day from me now their volumes for the feeds have increased.