triplets

4-6 Adjusted Week Growth Spurt

The past week or so has been full of fussy babies and finicky eaters, but also new facial expressions and sounds from the girls.

We were warned a big growth spurt was about to occur, and it started slightly ahead of the 4-6 week timeframe, with the girls 12 weeks old today, but 4.5 weeks adjusted.

This growth spurt is more developmental than physical and involves sight, focus, and hearing. Their vision is starting to improve, with colors a little more visible. They are starting to listen to sounds and music more intently and can focus on it. They also begin recognize our voices better, and the change is very noticeable. Such big cognitive leaps!

The girls are all starting to really smile when we talk to them and express new facial expressions. Reagan, who has always been our smiler, now smiles even more and with eye contact and in response to minimal coaxing.

Harper now enjoys the play mat a little more (or maybe she’s just tolerating it now) and is showing us new sounds and shrieks.

Emerie, our little pea pod, has started to smile in response to our voices and be much more interactive with us.

It is exciting to see the changes and I look forward to the next few weeks of growth!

First solo workweek

On Monday a friend texted me how the first solo baby day was going with Craig back at work. My one worded response of “hell” pretty much summed up day one. The girls would not sleep at all, they wouldn’t bottle prop, and there was a great deal of crying. Thank goodness the week improved from that.

Now that it’s Saturday, I look back at the work week and see how much I’ve learned on 3v1 baby days:

  1. Leave the house – going somewhere, even just to hit the McDonalds drive thru or a coffee stand, counts as leaving! Getting everyone loaded up and prepped takes a lot of time and really makes the day pass quickly. The kiddos get a little more stimulation in a changed environment and that changes their moods after a tough morning.
  2. Time your feedings – one day Craig left for work midfeed and I was up the rest of the day with cranky babies. We’ve discovered if the feed is mostly done, i.e. maybe two girls are back in bed and I’m feeding the last one, then I can actually go back to bed for an hour or two. Huge game changer.
  3. Tummy/play time – feeding three babies at once when alone is really difficult, especially if they don’t feel like cooperating. Feeding two simultaneously is manageable. If one is on a play mat within view, that seems to entertain them long enough I can feed one or even both their sisters. Helps a lot when Reagan is on the mat; she likes it a lot more than Harper does!
  4. Support – attending a multiples group with women who have multiples around the same age as mine is really great. It gives us the opportunity to have grown up conversations, hear advice from those ahead of us, and once again, to get out of the house!
  5. Prep the night before – having all the bottles washed and in the nursery, snacks in the fridge, and my pumping gear ready to go is really helpful when three babies are all screaming and hungry at the same time!
  6. Tracker – keeping the food/diaper tracker current helps with my sanity! I often can’t remember who ate what after like an hour!

The most valuable thing I learned this week was that I can do it – I can leave the house solo with three in tow and we all survive! It’s definitely time consuming, stressful, and would be a lot easier with another set of hands, but also good to know that I can do it.

Here’s to a few more weeks of solo girl time. We still have the fan for moral support too 🙂