Triplets Pregnancy

It wasn't what I would have chosen for myself... but in the end, I'm sure that I wouldn't trade it for anything once those babies are here, and I am very grateful that things are going well.

It will be challenging though... we have a lot ahead of us.

For starters, this pregnancy has definitely been different from a singleton pregnancy! Thank goodness I am fortunately blessed with good health and my body seems to handle pregnancy generally well.
With my singleton, I never got very large. I frequently jogged from point A to B while doing things and didn't feel terribly limited (just at the very end did my belly start to bump into my legs a bit if I bent over to pick stuff up, necessitating an occasional sumo-style squat). I could do any work I needed to, piling brush and such like. I mostly just slept and ate a bit more, haha. That said I had worked at a saw mill until 5mo into that pregnancy and so was in very good shape. (Less so at the onset of this one; I find it harder to be as active when I'm trying to watch a baby/toddler. That won't likely be made easier with 3 newborns!)

This time, I am feeling more of the drawbacks that are common for pregnant women, and perhaps then some. Though I can't be sure what others experience and every pregnancy and person are different. 

I became very, very large very quickly. I guess some people think I'm not as big as they would expect from a mom of triplets. I feel big though, haha. My belly sticks out nearly a foot past my chest now! I actually experienced hip pains this time around (yay for me!). I have bounced back and forth between being ravenous to miserably full, sometimes after only a few bites. The worst part was I got a kidney stone or such shortly after finding out that there were 3 babies. Then at around 32wks I experienced something similar, but I think that it may have actually been a baby pinching a ureter to a kidney. That lasted a good while, and still causes slight discomfort now and then, but I found that leaning forward lessened the pressure on my kidneys, so I ended up spending a lot of time that way in a manner that actually seems to help keep my hips aligned. Now my hip pains are pretty much nonexistent!
My current primary adversary is a lovely itch that is apparently specific to a certain few lucky pregnant women, haha. It's called PUPPPS, and is more common in women carrying large babies, or multiples.

But... here we are heading for 36wks gestation! All things considered, I have been so extremely fortunate for having a compatatively very easy triplet pregnancy (now that the hip pains are gone I'm still feeling very mobile! I just try to lie down and take it easy as much as possible, being cautious to prevent premature labor or rupture of membranes; also, ya know, I'm feeling tired more often) and it's all so worth it if we can keep going until they are able to be born at a point where they are completely ready to breathe, eat, etc on their own. No NICU/lengthy hospital stays, please!

We have been staying with my parents, primarily so that I have someone who can actively play with my daughter while I'm trying to take it easy. Tim is gone for most of the day, and when he is home he usually has a lot to do, so he usually isn't able to. I'm refraining from running around with her as much as I usually would for fear of accidentally making these babies come early. (Though goodness, I want to be doing that still and it's hard not to!)
It's also nice to have a bathroom that I don't have to go far to use, or haul water, and, the next biggest thing... it was costing us a LOT to heat that RV, running the generator 24/7 as well as the propane. It's a long story, but our setup isn't ideal and there are lots of little issues with it. It isn't the best way to go RV living in a North Idaho winter. I would have tried to fix it more if I could, but circumstances being what they are I didn't feel like I really could.

But it's warming up now, and Tim has been going back to the RV, staying there some and working on repairs with the generator, as well as other little things. I'm thinking that if things keep going well we can move back into the RV here soon! At least we ought to be able to bring our babies home there, soon... and that would be great, as I am a sort who likes my privacy.


Hopefully these babies give us some more time to get prepared, and they're all healthy and ready for this great big world when they come! :)

So many surprises...

All righty... talk about being off to a slow start.
I intended for this blog to be about our alternative lifestyle, but we have had a hard time getting started and established in this lifestyle.

The investment property, or the fourplex as we tend to refer to it, is still behind on some of those debts. We're catching up, slowly,  but we still owe a decent amount.

We still live in the RV that was lent to us. This leaves us in a very unideal situation come winter.
Finances have been rocky.
And the year of 2015 was... strange.

We had plans to start building on our land, but things went awry.
Part of the trouble was our poor execution of plans and being indecisive and disorganized.
Another part was an unplanned pregnancy...

Despite prevention, we found out we were expecting shortly after our daughter turned one. We had mixed feelings about this. We weren't ready for another... but we decided that we were lucky to be able to conceive so easily, and we felt we could make due with another. We wanted to have 2 of our own someday, anyway.
But as time went on I noticed I was getting large quickly... I finally went in to my midwives at 20wks, and they informed me that there was more than one baby.
I had been nervous about one... now there was two? But I reasoned that I had two hands, two bodily sources of nutrition for babies, I could wear two at a time now that I was more experienced at babywearing... I would make it work. Twins were doable.

My midwife set up an ultrasound at the hospital for me to make sure everything was okay, about a week later. At this appointment, different experience levels of ultrasound techs did different things. The tech doing the ultrasound confirmed the presence of twins... and then hesitated at something. Another person who had apparently been observing the pictures in the other room came in and asked if she could take over, and the first tech consented. I was left wondering what was going on.
That was when I was told that there was a third baby.
Eventually they even called the department head in just so he could join in on the fun. I guess he's worked at our smallish hospital for 10yrs without having ever seen triplets.
I was now a curiosity, entertainment.
And I was almost certainly risked out of a midwife birth... I didn't really know what might happen now.

I was in shock.

I had two hands, two breasts, not three. There isn't enough surface area on my body to easily wear three babies. My extreme attachment parenting style was going to be pushed beyond its limits. Triplets also tend to come very early and need extensive hospital care, disrupting initial bonding time and making further challenges for all of us. My poor daughter would likely have to be pushed to grow more independent very quickly... I hadn't wanted to even have one more child until she was closer to 3 and naturally more self-assured. Now this? These babies would arrive before she was even 2. And would I be able to provide the same deep love and care I gave to a single baby to all 3? And there's not enough room in the RV, and there's so much I needed and wanted to do.
And, we needed a bigger vehicle.

That's all I'm gonna say for now, since it's late...
But suffice it to say, I had very mixed feelings about this. Unfortunately, most of them weren't joyous.

But, I am determined as ever to do the best that I can do.