Nancy Churnin The Dallas Morning News
For many new parents, time is the enemy.
The clock hovers like a harsh taskmaster. Its hands fly when baby naps. They slow to a crawl when baby fusses. And, at the end of the day, when parents slump from exhaustion, it feels as if someone stole a few precious hours when they weren’t looking. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Jessica Melker, 28, often looks up at the clock in her Lewisville, Texas, home to keep on track, the way a careful driver checks the rearview mirror. As the mother of 8-month-old triplets, she needs the structure the clock provides to navigate the demands of her day. A schedule is key to keeping her baby girls (Hayden and Madison) and boy (Payson) happy, healthy, well-rested and well-fed, she says, talking while scrubbing and filling three bottles in preparation to wake them from a nap for a noon feeding.
“Everything has to be very efficient,” she explains. “In the first three months, I would set my alarm for 1 a.m. to start pumping the milk and cleaning and filling the bottles before the 2 a.m. feeding. They would feed until 3:30 a.m. and go down for a nap, while I would have a painfully short break before the three-hour cycle started again at 4 a.m.”
Melker’s advice on efficiency works for parents of a single child, too. If you apply her techniques, imagine how much more time you might have.
LOTS TO LEARN
But in the beginning, she says, she had a lot to learn.
“Every day, I wondered, ‘How am I going to do this?’ But somehow you make it through because the babies have to be fed and need to be put down and soothed.”
Eventually, it got easier when the babies were old enough to sleep through the night and to feed “just” four times a day and all at the same time, with the help of bottles propped up with blankets. Payson, she notes, first slept through the night on her birthday, April 24. Hayden slept through the night consistently starting on Mother’s Day, and Madison began sleeping through the night in June.
“It was wonderful,” she says.
She credits her husband, Keith, 28, for taking the night shift during the early months so she could get four to six hours of broken sleep. It helped to hire a night nurse three nights a week for three months. She appreciates her friends at Plano Area Mothers of Multiples, from whom she bought gently used clothing, toys and a triplet stroller. She’s also thankful for advice from the nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit where two of the babies, born 9 ½ weeks premature on Dec. 19, stayed for 5 ½ weeks, and the third, Madison, stayed for 6 ½ weeks.
MORE MULTIPLES
PAMOM is one of two major support groups for parents of multiples in North Texas, along with the North Dallas Mothers of Twins Club, which has been meeting in Richardson since 1967. Their ranks have been swelling, which is in keeping with a new report from the March of Dimes Foundation. The report says the overall multiple-birth ratio increased 59 percent nationwide between 1980 and 1999, from 19.3 to 30.7 multiple births per 1,000 live births.
Some experts attribute the trend to fertility drugs and procedures that are used as couples try to have children later than previous generations did. In Melker’s case, she doesn’t know whether she became pregnant with triplets because her doctor prescribed Clomid to help her ovulate or because multiple births run in her family.
But after she got over the initial surprise, while still expecting, she joined PAMOM.
One piece of advice from the other parents that she took to heart was to resist feeling overwhelmed by multiple babies and to get out and do things.
We met her in July at a PAMOM play group in Plano, where she traveled alone with her babies into a playground giddy with twins, triplets and one set of quadruplets. The week after we visited her at home, she was carting them off to a Mommy and Me yoga class. Three car seats filled the second row in her van, and mirrors helped her check on the kids without having to turn her head while driving.
“I refuse to let the fact that I have triplets slow me down completely,” she says.
Although you can’t really describe her daily routine as slowing down.
When we visit on a Friday at about 11:45 a.m., she is scrubbing bottles, then filling them and readying liquid vitamins. Payson, who awakened ahead of schedule, is sitting in an automatic swing, smiling and watching his mom.
As the noon feeding time approaches, he whimpers. He has become increasingly agitated by the time his mother finishes and goes to fetch his sisters, each of whom is sleeping in a different room so they won’t wake each other. Payson had been in his crib in the babies’ shared bedroom. Madison was in a portable crib in the guest room. And Hayden was in a portable crib in Melker’s walk-in closet.
Melker makes a note on a chart about what she is giving each child and how each is doing, then sets up three Boppy infant pillow supports in front of the fireplace, where there is a plaster mold of all three bottoms that she made for her husband for Father’s Day. She readies blankets and burp cloths.
EAT, KICK, TURN, GAZE
She props each baby on a Boppy and gives each liquid vitamins. She then positions each bottle in a blanket and slips a nipple into each mouth. Madison gets a sock on her hand to keep her from pulling the blanket out from under the bottle. Payson, who was crying forlornly by the time he got his bottle, takes a few minutes to calm down. Madison drops her bottle, and Melker props it up. Payson drops his bottle, and she props it up. Hayden kicks Payson. Payson ignores her and turns toward Madison. Hayden kicks harder. The eating, kicking, turning and gazing continue until the babies finish eating.
One by one, Melker picks up her babies and burps them. One by one, she changes each on a changing table beside the fireplace.
Then, it’s Bumbo time. She puts each baby into a Bumbo baby seat with a toy and plays a “Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Coldplay” CD. After they grab at one another’s toys until each gets the toy he or she wants, Melker brings out a book of nursery rhymes. Their favorite rhymes, she says, involve anything about threes. And it’s true, they are transfixed when she reads “Three Little Kittens,” the three pairs of eyes drinking in the colorful pages. After the story, she turns the chairs for “circle time” so the babies can look at one another. She bounces a soft ball in the middle of the circle and encourages their outstretched hands to go after it.
Finally Melker pulls out a mobile gym with three poles and places them on their backs between the poles. They grab at the toys dangling above them and start rolling onto their stomachs. Payson rolls over first and is rewarded by Melker lifting and lowering him for a kiss as they play a flying game. He giggles. She gives each of the girls a turn but lifts them more gently, which they seem to prefer.
Then, everyone starts yawning and rubbing eyes. It’s time for another diaper change for each. One of Melker’s tips is to prepare the crib with a fitted mattress pad, then a fitted sheet, then a flat mattress pad and finally another fitted sheet. If the babies wet themselves, she can take off the top sheet and flat mattress pad and still have another sheet set on the mattress so she doesn’t have to make up the crib in the middle of the night.
Her second level of “defense” is to use an overnight diaper that’s one size larger than they usually need so they won’t leak.
She picks the babies up one by one and takes them to separate sleeping areas for a 2 p.m. nap. She turns on two baby monitors. (Monitors are sold in packages of two. Getting a third is on her to-do list). Then she gets a tuna sandwich from the refrigerator and prepares an automatic breast pump. As we leave, she is settling onto the couch with a laptop computer and a TV remote control. That way, she can check e-mail or watch television while pumping milk. She sneaks another glance at the clock to make sure she is on schedule for the next wakeup time, shortly before the 4 p.m. feeding.
It seems daunting to a visitor, but “I wouldn’t change it for the world,” she says.
IDEAS FOR NEW PARENTS
Tips from Plano Area Mothers of Multiples
Melissa Lopez, 40, The Colony, Texas, mother of Roman and Valentina, 9 months: “Watch your baby for signs of food allergies, and, if you’re nursing, change your diet if needed.”
Lopez switched to a dairy-free, gluten-free diet when her daughter Valentina was irritable and had dark circles under her eyes. Valentina improved right away.
Elizabeth Dixon, 28, McKinney, Texas, mother of Hudson, Madison, Candice and Samantha, 3 years (and Logan, 4): “Stick to your schedule. Everyone is going to want to see the kids. But you need to get the babies to sleep on time.”
Ashley Ginty, 32, Frisco, Texas, mother of Hudsen and Tate, 15 months:
“Having a good girlfriend who is going through the same thing is huge.”
Luisa Frias, 28, Sachse, Texas, mother of Dax and Mason, 13 months:
“When you have twins and like to dress them alike, if you lose one sandal, you’ll lose two whole outfits. That’s why, if we really love something, we buy three.”
Juliet Saluja, 36, Plano, Texas, mother of Jai and Sameera, 9 weeks:
“Be patient, join play groups and don’t pass up a Girls Night Out.”
Polly Harrison, 36, Wylie, Texas, mother of Nicholas and Alexander, 5 years, and Zachary, 17 months:
“Try not to get too overwhelmed about the chaos of the addition of a baby to your house. Even the messy, fussy, crazy moments are worth a giggle or two.”
Toni Cortez, 36, Frisco, Texas, mother of Jack and Caroline, 10 months:
“Always be prepared. Have drinks and food and Clorox wipes wherever you go because they will drop their toys, and you will need to clean them.”
Candace Hickey, 39, Dallas, mother of Sloane, Reese and Brooks, 18 months
“Don’t feel guilty about taking time for yourself. Even if it’s 30 minutes a day, you’ll be refreshed and better for it when you come back.”
“Listen to your body. If you need medication for postpartum depression, get it.
“Don’t turn your head away from the kids for two seconds.”
“When you find your child eating something you don’t recognize, make sure it’s from someone you know and trust.”
“Dads of multiples: Get your wife a gift!”
