Tomorrow will mark two weeks that I have been back at work. I will celebrate by taking a three day weekend, going back for one day, and then taking Wednesday off for the babies' four-month doctor's appointment.
This also means that Joe has been home with the babies for the past two weeks. Did I mention the twins family my dental hygienist told me about at my last cleaning? She said she had a patient with two and a half year old twins whose father had never been alone with them. Can you imagine that? For two and a half years, this woman had never been able to leave the house to run an errand or even get her teeth cleaned and just leave her children home with their father.
Luckily, my situation is far different from hers. My husband actually enjoys being home with the babies. He diapers them and feeds them and chats with them all day long. AND, he vacuums! Which is not to say that it is easy for him to be home alone with three babies. It is not. They are on a good schedule now, which is great, but it also means that they all eat at the same time. Three babies, three bottles, two arms. Not a good scenario.
For the morning feeding, it's not so bad. Normally, there's a bit of Salvateenie staggering as they get up anywhere between 8:30 and ...what? I was supposed to get up? just five more minutes, Dad! That means that whoever is up first can get all of Daddy's attention for his diaper change and feeding (yes, it's almost always a "him"). Then on to the next one and then the third. But even when this staggering takes up to an hour and a half - meaning Caroline might not have finished eating until 10am - they are all still hungry at 1pm on the dot. Or sometimes a little earlier. Like 12:30. And you have to play with them and distract them WHILE changing their diapers and warming their bottles. Alone.
During the last month I was home, we started talking about hiring a mother's helper - someone who could come in for the middle of the day and help with a feeding or with little errands around the house. We figured we might be able to employ a college student with a mid-day hole in her schedule for $10-12 an hour. Of course, we didn't know where we would find this person, or the $80-$120 a week to pay her, but it was a little ray of hope that kept us thinking that maybe Joe could do it.
But we haven't needed to employ a mother's helper because we have amazing friends. Tom, the Master Baby Wrangler, has come by the house practically every day at 12:30 to help with the mid-day madness. He and Joe have tagteamed the 'teenies, exploring the world of propping up one child and holding the other two (I'm sure they keep detailed notes about who is propped to avoid scarring the sucker for life). On Thursday last week he came for the feeding and stayed to help Joe schlep the babies to their very first multiples play date, enduring the inevitable San Francisco assumptions of male partnership beyond the bonds of friendship that are immediate when you see two men and three babies walking down the street. This week he accompanied the brood to their multiples' support group meeting. And he's even come over early to help Joe bundle the babies into the car for their trips to Livermore to see the grandparents!
On Mondays, Tom's girlfriend Carla has come along with him to take a baby off their hands (or, rather, rescue one from the boppy), and the two of them regularly collect Joe and deposit him at work on the weekends, even obliging for the return trip. This past Monday, when I had an afterschool meeting that kept me on the Peninsula until after 5, Joe's sister and her friend Sabrina came to help handle the five o'clock feeding, and Lee Ann will be coming back this coming week when I've got another meeting, rearranging her work schedule so she can be here.
This evening we got a call from our friend and neighbor, Sherrie, asking Joe if he'd need any help tomorrow, but he's having visitors who are bringing him lunch and staying for the 1pm feeding. So she's offered to come Tuesday to help him out!
As soon as we found out we were having triplets, people told us we would need to accept all the offers of help we would get, and they told us that we'd find out who our real friends were when it came time to actually follow through on all those offers. I'd say they were right on both counts!
So, to all the people who brought us food, friendship, and an extra baby arm while I was home ... thank you! To all the folks who have pledged to help Joe out while I'm at work ... thank you even more!! And to Tom, an extra special heaping of THANKS!!!!!
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