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Triplet Tuesday: Linus, Oliver, & Miles

By Dawn Sailors In Featured Twins

Happy Twin Tuesday! Or if you’ve already picked up on my surprise for the day from the post title, Happy Triplet Tuesday! Yep, I’m very excited to announce our first set of triplets on the blog. Linus, Oliver & Miles are the sons of Pam and George. Pam’s blog, Pyjammy’s Triplets, is her chronicle of their life raising identical triplet boys. Can you even imagine?? Seriously. (I always remember my mom saying she was so glad that me and my sister were the twins, and not our brother. That makes me think this woman must be a saint.) I’ll let Pam tell you more:

 

Are your boys identical or fraternal? (I know from your blog that your boys are identical. Can you explain identical triplets?? That seems so rare!) Do twins or multiples run in your family?
The boys are all identical, which means the egg split once, and then one of the resulting eggs split again. Wild! I have my theories about which boy came from which split, but I guess I’ll never know. It’s fun to hypothesize, but I guess we’ll never really know. They say identical triplets happen in about 1:60,000 births.

There are a couple of sets of fraternal twins in my family, since the boys are identical, it’s probably just a fluke.

 

When did you find out you were expecting triplets and what was your reaction?
We found out at my first ultrasound at 7 weeks. I was so immensely shocked, that I can’t even really remember what the ultrasound technician told me. I couldn’t see the screen while she was initially doing the ultrasound, but she did ask me if I’d had morning sickness yet. I assumed she was asking because she didn’t see a baby, but I figured out later it was because there were so many! (I did not have any morning sickness, luckily.) We do have a video of our ultrasound (it starts right after she told us) which I love to watch and hear the shock in my voice. My husband is silent, he might have fainted behind me, ha ha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY3Ureov15U

 

How did you go about picking names?
We did not find out what sex the babies were before they were born, but we did know they were all the same sex. (We didn’t know they were identical until after they were born, but I did ask the u/s tech if we had one sex or a mix.) So I had a copy of a baby name book, and I went through it and circled the names I liked. Then I handed it off to my husband and he marked the ones he liked. The overlapping names went on our master list. So we had about half a dozen names picked out for each sex. After they were born, we picked the final names (though there was a bit of a struggle over Oliver vs Ian) and I went to the NICU to assign each baby a name. Middle names are the maiden names of my mother, my mother-in-law, and myself. I assigned the names based on their in-utero personality (lots of ultrasounds will give you some hints) but as it turns out, they didn’t come out in the order we thought, so I guess I gave them the wrong names! It all worked out in the end, because I think they fit their names perfectly.

 

What is the hardest part about having triplets?
In the beginning, it was just the grind of three babies to feed, burp, change. A never-ending cycle, with only an hour or two in between. Cleaning bottles, mixing formula, laundry, on little sleep. It was just physically gruelling more than anything else. We were extremely fortunate that the boys did not have colic or any medical issues, and they came home from the hospital on a schedule. But still…three babies. That’s a lot.

Now, I think having triplets is almost easier than having one kid. They entertain each other and learn from each other. It’s so fun. But the flip side of that is the fighting over toys. And just having to do everything three times. The expense is pretty hard to manage as well. I feel bad that they probably won’t be able to participate in after school activities for a while because the expense is so great for three kids. But they each have two built-in best friends, which I think more than makes up for that.

 

What is your favorite part about having triplets?
I love that my kids will never be lonely. They will always have each other. I love the joy we bring people when we go out in public. I’ve heard of people getting really negative comments about their multiples, but I have to say, I have very rarely heard anything bad. Maybe it’s because of where we live, New Orleans.

Thanks again to Pam for taking time out of what I’m sure is a very busy schedule to answer these questions for us! And don’t forget to visit her and the boys at www.pyjammy.com to keep up with them!