The Big Topics

I'm sitting in my living room on a Saturday afternoon with three babies sleeping peacefully upstairs.  A lot has changed for the Manning babies and their parents in the last month.  We are really beginning to feel like we have this parenting thing down.  So much so that a few weekends ago Ryan went to a wedding in Kentucky and I stayed home with the babies by myself!  I was worn out at the end of the weekend, but I managed just fine.  I even took the kiddos to a small Thirty-One party at a co-worker's house and they behaved like a dream.

Ryan had to go into work yesterday morning, so I decided to take the kiddos to Target to pick up a few essentials.  As I was walking up to the cash register, I came up behind a mother who was struggling to get her baby to calm down in the cart and she was clearly getting frustrated.  As I passed, she looked over and said, "Triplets?  I guess I have no place to complain.  You seem like you've got it all together. How do you do it?"  I simply smiled and said, "It's not always like this."  Which was kind of a lie.

The truth is, we have three amazing babies.  Our children are calm, our house is orderly, and my husband and I are still madly in love.  To be honest, I'm not sure that we do anything special.  I am certain that to some degree we are just plain lucky.  The other part of that is that we never stop moving; we are working constantly.  Anyhow, people ask me all the time how we do it with three babies.  I thought I would share what our methods are concerning some of the big topics in parenting.  These are the methods that worked for us, and they're certainly not right for everyone.  There are tons of right ways to do this whole parenting thing that create all kinds of different and wonderful people.  When I was talking to my best friend Jenny while I was pregnant and exploring different parenting methodologies, she said to me, "No matter which method you choose, I'll be your biggest cheerleader."  That comment stuck with me and I think it pretty much sums up how I feel about parenting.  As long as you're not endangering your child, do it your way.


Stay-at-Home vs. Working
As most of you know, I am not a stay at home mother.  That's the case for a few reasons.  First of all, I'm active duty military so I don't really have a choice.  But most importantly, I don't really want to be one.  I love working.  I enjoy the profession that I've chosen and it contributes to making my family financially comfortable.  That being said, we decided that the appropriate child care for our family was a nanny that worked out of our home.  It's a little spendy, but it keeps our preemies safe from germs and gives them individualized attention.  The best part about being away from them during the day, is that I'm excited to see them when I get home.  I'm always refreshed and ready for play time.  


Bottle vs. Breast
This is a touchy subject for a lot of mothers.  I know that every time I hear the phrase, "Breast is best!"  I feel a little twinge of guilt.  My kids have been wholly formula fed since they were six weeks old.  Just before I had them, I had a condition known as preeclampsia which leads to retention of fluids among other symptoms.  I held out long enough in the hospital with the condition that I ended up with fluid in my lungs and swelling in my brain.  This is actually why I had to deliver the babies so very early.  After the children were born, I was given a medication called Lasix to help clear the fluid in my body.  In addition to removing fluid from the places it shouldn't be, it also effects milk supply.  While the babies were in the NICU, I pumped every 2-3 hours to provide them with as much milk as possible.  At the height of my production, I was able to get 8 oz of breast milk in a day.  In order to do this, I drank 2 gallons of water daily, made fertility cookies, took supplements, ate the foods meant to increase production and I still was unable to produce enough for even one baby by the time they were five weeks old.  When the girls came home, they were unable to latch, so I continued to pump.  As I became more sleep deprived and stressed, my production tanked.  I was spending over 2 hours a day pumping and not even feeding one child half of what they needed.  With a heavy heart, I made the decision to quit.  In retrospect, it would have been virtually impossible for me to continue the pumping regimen I would have needed to be on while I worked even if I did have the adequate supply (the babes are consuming about 80 oz a day now!).  While I know that breast milk is nutritionally superior, there are definite advantages to formula feeding.  First of all, I know exactly how much my babies are consuming and I can chart and track it.  Also, with a bottle anyone can help feed them.  That's especially nice at night when my husband and I are able to take turns getting up when it's necessary.

Schedule vs. Demand-Feed
We schedule!  It helps to keep things organized for us.  We started with a schedule immediately when they came home from the hospital.  They picked up on it relatively quickly.  Eat, play, sleep every 3 hours.  (The BabyWise method).  We also started letting them sleep as long as they wanted at night immediately.  At first, they stuck to a 3 hour schedule on their own.  Eventually they began sleeping longer at night.  Currently, Violet eats and goes to bed at 10:00 and sometimes wakes up for a small feeding between 4:00 and 5:00 am.  About half of the time she sleeps until 7:00 without that feeding.  Lincoln and Keira eat and go to bed at 7:00 and sleep until 7:00.  During the day, Violet eats every 3 hours and Lincoln and Keira eat every 4 hours.  So, our kids are on slightly different schedules.  We made the decision before they were born to treat them as individuals. They are developing at different rates, so we have to make concessions for that.

Cloth vs. Disposable
We cloth diaper our little ones.  For lots of reasons.  Health, environment, cost, etc.  If you've ever had a fleeting thought about cloth diapering, just go ahead and do it.  It's really not hard.  Just make sure you are well-informed and you have good products.  Ryan and I took an intro to cloth diapers class at a local cloth diaper store.  That really helped us choose what kind of diaper, how many, and taught us how to wash them properly.

Our cloth diaper drawer.

Co-Sleeping vs Sleeping on Their Own
From the time we brought them home from the hospital, our children have done all of their sleeping in their own cribs in their own room.  Co-sleeping wasn't really a consideration for us.  We wouldn't have felt at all safe with three medically fragile babies in our bed.  We never even put multiple babies in a crib together.  We decided that it would be easier to separate them right away instead of putting them together and separating them later.  Now they fuss and moan if we put them in a crib together.  They all like having their own space.

Baby-wearing vs Stroller
We kind of do a combination on this one.  We have a single stroller, a double stroller, a front carrier, and a back carrier.  They are still too small for the back carrier, but when we are able to wear them in it that will open up more options for us.  When I go out on my own, I take a double stroller and I wear one baby.  Usually I wear the baby that is being the neediest that day.  It changes frequently.  When I'm out with Ryan, we travel a few different ways.  We can take a double and a single stroller.  We can take a double stroller and wear one.  When we go to the store, we usually wear one, take a single stroller, and put an infant seat in the cart.  We find we get less attention when we don't take the double stroller.  As parents of triplets, we are always looking for ways to not draw attention to ourselves in public  That's probably the main reason we don't have a triple stroller.  Also, they are crazy expensive and we don't have a car large enough to accommodate one without disassembling it.  We never did get that van everyone told us we absolutely had to have.

Being parents of triplets is loaded with challenges. But, fortunately for our sanity, it's rewards are just as big.  We're having fun as often as we can and tackling the hard stuff as a team.  These little guys have made us a stronger couple than we ever realized was possible.  And now a whole bunch of pictures from the last month with guest captioner (is that a word?) Ryan Manning.

Violet plotting our demise. Good thing she has a fluffy white cat to add to the mix later on.

Violet in her sleep sack, enjoying her mom.

Me hugging the girls in their Halloween outfits.

Happy Lincoln was Raphael for Halloween.

Girls hanging out on the couch as they wait for trick or treaters.

Just another Sunday trip to the grocery.  Left to right - Keira, Lincoln, Violet.

Keira, Lincoln, and Violet cuddling in the living room.  Violet's still skeptical about this whole camera thing.

Violet's made up her mind, she doesn't like the camera.  And she's converted Lincoln.  Keira just doesn't care.

Sweet Keira, so content when there's been lots of food and sleep.

Violet getting some forced tummy/back work in.  She seems ok with it.

It's hard to get these appointments to not overlap someone's feeding time.

"I'll eat my hand if you don't feed me with a bottle… SOON!!" (Violet)

Lincoln getting his eyes checked out.

Oddly enough, this is how most play sessions end up when I'm involved.

Lincoln being cute before an outing.

Violet all prepped and ready to go out on the town.

Keira waiting patiently for her turn to be fed.  Patient... yeah, right!

Violet looking happy and hanging out.

That girl from The Exorcist has nothing on my girl Keira.

I'm wondering which one is most like daddy and will always be The ONE person in a group to ruin a picture.  Money's on Violet as a front runner.  (left to right - Keira, Lincoln, Violet)

Lincoln, too cool.  Checking out what's going on in the kitchen, and looking for a pie.

My dad (Mark) watching t.v. with Lincoln, while Violet sleeps (rare moment).

Does this feel like a bar graph to anyone else? (Left to right - Violet, Keira, Lincoln)

Who would have known that I'd be so happy to hold two little babies?  (Violet and Keira)

Reading time!  Holy crap, two someones' paying attention.  Violet… not interested. 

Lincoln cuddling with his fluffy protector, Luna.