Life at home

One of my helpers is here to replace dropped binkies, so I actually have a few minutes that I can update this darn thing! Hopefully. I've started to type several times and multiple babies have started screaming, so it may not work as I had hoped.

Life at home with all three is.....interesting.....to say the least. It's completely amazing to have them all here, to be able to lay them next to each other, play with them, roam about the house without having to worry about the wire from a monitor. But of course, we terribly miss all the extra hands from the hospital! Not just because they are helpers, but also because they are our friends :)

Everyone is still on a three hour feeding schedule, which is rough, but so far we are surviving. At night we do the 10PM feed together, then I do 1AM and Ethan does 4AM. Ideally we each have a five hour chunk to sleep, if everyone is quiet. But of course they are not. The leading contenders for fuss-bucket of the year are Michael and Delia for sure, but Ben has his moments, usually when he still has a burp stuck in there.

When it's only one or the other fussing, it's manageable. I can lay in the recliner with someone on my chest and we both sleep well. But when more than one fusses, it is tough to calm everyone alone. If we had an extra set of hands 24/7 and everyone could be held all the time we'd be golden. Of course that's not an option, so we have to rotate and do the best we can to get everyone quiet and happy at the same time. Much easier said than done.

By the way, have I mentioned that I have terrible hot flashes still? I guess the breastfeeding is keeping those crazy hormones running rampant. Hot flashes SUCK. Menopause is gonna be awful. But I digress.

Friday night was by far the worst we've had so far. Everyone was fussy all night long. I didn't even attempt to close my eyes until 5AM. And as the hours tick by on the clock, I start to think about how much sleep I'm not getting, and start to panic about how tired I'll be the next day, and get more worked up, which makes the baby worked up, and the vicious cycle ends with us both in tears. Arg.

It hasn't been that bad again since, just the one person fussing at a time. But it was enough to make me decide to reach out for more help. I've already got a coworker's college aged daughter coming Monday and Tuesday nights to help out, and someone from church on Thursday nights. It looks like a neighbor is going to take Sunday nights, and our niece Wednesdays. That way we'll have someone to catch us up on dishes, laundry, de-cluttering, and to make the night time bottles, help feed, etc. A third set of hands makes a huge difference, or allows one of us to get to bed earlier.

We're working on a schedule for the kids, hoping that will help with night time sleeping. It's so hard to keep them on schedule though, because if someone is extra fussy or we have visitors or a doctor appointment or anything, we start someone late and it trickles down from there. We're still trying to stick to it as much as we can, hopefully they will grow into it.

I need to start getting up every day and practicing getting the babies in the car and out the door, but I'm too tired to right now. I go back to work November 1, so I better figure something out soon :) My one day at a time mentality is not helping my motivation. Oh well.

That's about it for now, there is much more to tell but my eyes are getting terribly heavy so I'm going to attempt to sleep.

Please continue to pray for us, we need strength and patience to make this journey successful. Thank you so so much!