Our Triplet Adventure: 1 Month Old - Where is the Time Going?

This blog is a lot harder to keep up on than I thought it would be! For those of you who don't know, Lia and Ava both came home from the hospital on Saturday, February 26th after 22 days in the NICU and 6 days after Mya came home. The difference between having one baby at home and having three babies at home is beyond words. I can't believe that I ever thought that having one baby was hard :)

We are fotunate, however, that we have really good babies who pretty much sleep between every feeding...but it feels like feeding is pretty much all we ever do! They are on a self-imposed 3 hour feeding schedule for the most part...I can't wait until they start going 4 hours! At least one baby usually wakes up like clockwork at exactly 3 hours. In order to keep some sort of a schedule, once one babies wakes up to eat, we wake them all up to eat. Otherwise, we would be feeding babies around the clock and would never get any rest. It usually takes at least a good hour to feed the babies, even with two people. So, on a good day we spend 1 hour feeding and up to 2 hours pumping/sleeping/cleaning/doing laundry/washing bottles etc...then start all over again. Since Wade works nights, I have had lots of overnight help to make sure that I don't have to take care of them by myself. The days go pretty good, even when I am by myself, but the nights can be rough. I am getting better at feeding multiple babies at one time. Maybe once I get that perfected I may be able to attempt to do a night without help.

At the moment, we go through about 24 bottles every day. I was able to stay ahead on pumping until they were a month old, but the past week or so I have had to start adding some formula to their bottles. Lia and Mya are each taking 4 ounces a feed and Ava is taking 3 ounces, so they are already taking 11 total ounces every 3 hours, which is a couple more ounces than I pump on average. But, I am going to keep at it so that they get at least part of their feedings as breastmilk.

I definitely underestimated the number of diaper changes we would be doing daily. I figured a diaper change every three hours for a total of 24 diapers a day. So, we always change their diapers to kind of wake them up and get them comfortable before their bottles. However, they seem to find it amusing to let it rip during their feedings...so we usually go through more like 30 diapers a day at least.

All the feeding and diaper changes are paying off, however, because they are growing like crazy. Today's measurements are:

Ava - 5 pounds 4 ounces 17.5 inches long
Lia - 7 pounds 3 ounces 20 inches long
Mya - 7 pounds 0 ounces 19.5 inches long

Next Monday would have been their actual due date so it will be interesting to take measurements on them then! Well, I'm sure I am leaving out lots of info, but I have reached my limit of free time...the fussing has begun. Here are some recent pictures...enjoy!