Upon Hearing of A Triplet Loss...

This morning, I read the breaking news on our newspaper website about a lady who had lost one of her triplets during the night.

There is a pending investigation into that baby's death as is the procedure for occurrences of this type.

I don't have all of the facts on the situation, but my heart does go out to this lady. Most people just do not have any idea what all mother's of multiples go through each day, even before our babies are born, even.

When you first find out that you are carrying triplets, one of the very first lessons that you learn is that you will never know from day to day if you will have three babies, or none at all.

At any given point something can happen to one, some or all of the babies during pregnancy. This is part of what makes carrying triplets to term such a battle.

We are each advised by our doctors that the chances aren't good for us to actually carry each and every baby to term, and that to give them a fighting chance, we must do things such as eliminate all sources of stress from our lives (whatever that might entail-it does NOT come with suggestion, however!)

Most of us are advised that we must take maternity leave if working, and go on mandatory bed rest by at least 5 months, should we make it that far.

The specialist will not even see a triplet pregnancy until the mother is at least 3 months along, to ensure that the pregnancy is going to be viable.

This is a very frightening thought to someone who is supposed to be eliminating all sources of stress from their lives!

We live each day during our pregnancy never knowing what the new day will bring. We learn to micro-manage our bodies, our lives and the lives of our families.

If we are lucky, we get the honor of actually choosing our babies birthdays and maybe, just maybe we will even make it to that date.

However, there are a vast number of us who will never get that far due to the dreaded complications or even the idea that once the babies reach a combined weight of a full term singleton, that our bodies actually will decide that they must be ready for birth and contractions begin, often unannounced.

Once we are wheeled into that delivery room, our lives change forever, and we lose that control over our babies that we had during our pregnancy. Life become super scary, as if it hadn't been before.

Our babies rarely go to the regular nursery (tis a rarity that they actually do) and will most likely be whisked away to the NICU as they are delivered by their own team of nurses and doctors to try and get them stabilized and breathing well enough to survive.

While the Mum is in recovery from the massive c-section and whatever complications she may be experiencing, her babies are usually fighting for the lives in another part of the hospital.

It may be a few days before the Mum can even visit her babies to meet them for the first time (if she had to be totally under for the birth,) and often we must rely on our husbands or signifigant others if we have them, to act as our children's advocates while we are recuperating.

That is one of the most scariest sensations, not knowing what is happening to your children and knowing you may never get to meet them at all.

I know that I had to lie there in my recovery room bed for over a day staring at those little pictures from the NICU and worrying about what was happening to my babies.

Then you have your journey through the ups and downs and the roller coaster that is the NICU. It's very confusing, and very hard to prepare yourself for prior to just having to jump in and take care of your unusually tiny newborns.

With any luck, the day will come when you are allowed to hold, bathe, and feed your babies.

Your overall goal is to get them to the point where they can finally go home and live free of all the cords and machines that they have spent so much time hooked up to.

However when that day comes, and you finally do get them all home for the first time, you are hit with the overwhelming tasks of taking care of such tiny and fragile babies all by yourself, without the aid of those NICU nurses.

Each time I put mine down for a nap after a feeding, I found myself peeping in to make sure everyone was doing okay.

This habit resulted in my husband and eye literally sleeping with one eye/ear open for months for fear something would happen to one or all of the babies. We just were not happy unelss we could hear all three little babies breathing through that monitor.

We as Mums are warned of the higher risk of things such as SIDS and RSV (if it's RSV season) and a multitude of other issues that basically make us overly vigilant Mums.

We know that our babies are happier co-bedded together at first, yet the experts warn us to remove all stuffed animals and even the baby bumpers and blankets from our babies beds to try and lower the risk of SIDS and suffocation.

There were days when I was actually comforted when I would hear Kai grunting and making his reflux induced noises because at least I could hear him and I knew that he was really okay.

Once the doctor found the right combination of medications and his grunting stopped, I found that I just could not sleep because I wondered if he was still breathing and alright in there.

I also worried that he and his commando cuddling ways might accidentally smother one or both of his siblings in their sleep, but they did alright, somehow!

Until, one day, when Vivienne finally let us know that she had enough of his cuddling and wanted to move into her own bed!

She just rolled over after being changed (we had been using her bed as a changing table until she was ready) and she went right to sleep, never to go back to co-bedding again!

We are often criticized for being too overprotective by the unknowing and uninitiated. But today's incident with that poor mum who lost one of her babies is proof positive that we are more than justified in our actions.

Even to this very day, I find myself peeping in on my tiny trio to ensure that everyone is alright and doing well and they are a whopping 19 months old.

My heart goes out to that poor Mum who has lost one of her tiny trio. I know that many just will not understand how hard we as triplet Mums have worked to even give our babies a fighting chance at life.

I really hope that she can find peace knowing that as a Mum, she has worked harder for her babies than anyone could have possibly imagined and that sometimes there just isn't anything that we as Mums can do to avoid the inevitable. My heart goes out to you and yours.