Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

when jasper was in the NICU, he would wriggle around and pull tubes out of his body. this practise, although encouraging to his parents, was dangerous and painful for the little man. the nurses curtailed his disturbing hobby by taking a nappy pin and clipping jasper's bandaged arms to the sheets below.

fast forward a few months, and jasper has developed a similar, similarly disturbing practise. unlike his thumb sucking sisters (pictured left: Sela), jj is a soother man. he is definitely the high maintenance baby these days, and when i put them down for naps, his sisters pop thumbs in (usually carys [2nd pic] moans for a bit and needs a bit of reassurance, while sela just needs you to stand over her crib and admire her) and are carried away to the land of nod. a huge round of applause to the girls for accomplishing this slumbering feat, because the background music is JASPER screaming with fear.

wahhh i am so scared i will never find my soother again, wahhhh the nights are darker and the cot is bigger without my soother....wahhhh this sootherless existence i am facing is devastating....

of course, the soother was in his mouth and the little rotter removed it with his hand. several times.

we have tried giving him cuddly toys to hold on to, but his meaty sweaty/drooly hands keep gravitating to his beloved soother.

although as hen friends will attest, i am a scheduling kind of mummy and have no trouble letting babies cry it out, when i head back into his room, he is waving the soother about while lamenting its loss.

10 minutes is a long time to listen to a baby cry. if one of the girls cry i usually laugh (sela, grandstanding) or sympathise and jiggle (carys). but with jasper, this is his own fault. i can't help him, he doesn't like my help. he is causing this own pain! now i know how my parents felt when i kept dating unsuitable boys during my early 20's.

i have found myself wondering how difficult it would be to pin him down again. except these days, if jasper got it into his bald crinkled head that there was a cream cheese filling in the pin, he would bite through it.

in practise, this only lasts for 10 minutes or so until his hands get so heavy he can't force his tired self to move them. but that is 10 minutes!!!! 10 minutes where everyone is quiet...except for him.

i finally stopped dating unsuitable boys when i met magnificent charles.

i hope it doesn't take jasper until his late 20's to keep his soother in his mouth.

today we talk about tertia.

she is almost a celebrity, and i might write about her in my tatler column one of these days. show her in that diaphanous dreamy dress shot that could almost substitute for a head shot and caption it...

tertia
could hurt-ya
good vocab
not in rehab
great with child
she's pretty wild
and never mild
a cool tekkie
how weird is that
even 25 weeks enciente
is not fat
many "c's" is she:
compassionate, clever,
creative,
boring? never.
a wonderful friend
ithaka's road will soon bend

and that wouldn't even touch on her wonderfulness that is HER. getting a bit naff, must stop.

i first heard of tertia when i was occasionally posting on ivfconnections. i remember she posted the day she learned she was pregnant with the quads. instead of being miserable, she said. "typical tertia!", like it was to be expected that she would have several negatives and then have four that would stick. that was a tertia thing to do.

when she posted about the loss of sweet luke, and her fight to keep ben safe within her, her fear and hopes were palatable. then ben was born, and all too soon, he died. and her honesty and agony were searing.

she has helped so many women fighting with IF learn that they are not alone with their anger and frustration. she has dared us to see the funny side of daily jabbing and the nameless/faceless people who get us pregnant (or not).

she is magnificent, she is strong, her fragility enhances her porcelain strength. funny, frank, loving and level. she is tertia, and my life is better with her in it. i am sure yours is too.

tertia, love, i am still praying daily for you all. dewla too. and now lauren and her sweet babes. would love an update.

gilt edges

some feedback regarding my first week of blogging has revealed that people are interested in my celebrity slams, but not nearly as much as they are interested in the triplet topics.

fair enough. i can accept audience feedback. so did the producers of ER. originally, the lovely julianna marguiles (carol hathaway) was meant to be on the show for one episode, commit suicide, then never be seen again. but the test audience loved her, so she stayed, and proceeded to win george's heart and ours.

if i had to feel guilty about something today, it would be that i cant carpe diem.

i spent a lot of my time not enjoying the "stage" the wee three are at. even though this is an incredibly sweet, responsive and alert stage, i am always waiting with three mental checklists of age appropriate accomplishments: tracking, rolling, grabbing, responding, etc. at each appointment the doctor runs through a huge list of things jazzy-j, see-see and carys have achieved...and its important to be accurate in my answers.

because the chances of developmental delays are so likely for sela, carys and jasper, i can't enjoy what they're doing. i worry about what they should be doing. i wish i didn't. i wish i trusted God more.

i do trust God with their lives, but i am still anxious about the fine tuning.

of the babies, (masive) jasper is ahead in a few of the physical activities. he rolls over from front to back and from back to front. carys can't roll over front to back because she doesn't weigh enough to get enough momentum to flip. all jasper has to do is lift one of his meaty legs and he's there. sela can roll over, but it isn't a big priority for her. i think she thinks she has hair, and doesn't want to mess it up.

all three babies are very alert. jasper sees a person and looks to their hands, checking if they are carrying a bowl of sweet potato that is to be spooned into his excema surrounded mouth. carys sees a person and her drooling mouth (it's typical for preemies not to have good "drool control") breaks into a heartwarming grin. sela sees a person and turns her head sideways and down, and then smiles, and looks up. if they look away, she begins trick acting so they will look and admire her again.

yet they are not opening their hands well, reaching fast enough, carys can't eat solids, her head is still tilted, they're arching their back just like the PT said they might, still have the wrong or slowed reflexes, jasper's eyes...is that sweet potato in them or is the ROP making them cloudy, carys might have CP and does have torticollus, i must watch carefully to see signs of improvement or delay to report back to the doctors....

we recently learned that sebastian is hearing impaired in his right ear. sebastian walked and talked very late in the game. at the time, i wondered why. now i realise it might have been to prepare me. so that when the wee three are delayed in reaching developmental milestones, i can look at busy, bouncing, happy, friendly, talking sebastian and realise chances are, it will be well. and if its not, as in the case of sebastian's right ear, it will still be pretty amazing.

wonderful tonight

as i may have mentioned, since carys isn't gaining weight quickly enough, she needs a midnight feed. struck with bronchialitis, stuffed up jasper isn't getting enough to eat during the day and so wakes during the night full of snot and woes.

i have learned that feeding the babeolas is easier at night. half asleep, they dont have the energy to get entranced by the ceiling fan, decide to fight the feed, or self-diagnose themselves as not needing any more milk. carys can't stop gently slurping away at her bottle to grin at me, because the lights are very dim.

last night around 11.45 jasper realised he was hungry and started bemoaning his fate. got really scared that he would never be fed again. i hauled his gro-bag encased body out of his crib and took him into my room. he finished 70 mls of his bottle in a short amount of time, and then i gave him some sweet potato, which he finished as well. jasper seems to like food more than milk. i think if i gave him a steak milkshake he would be thrilled. jasper is a bronto-burger kind of guy.

his lids started drooping and he started smiling, a sure sign he is ready to sleep. when he is food frantic he is a perfect candidate for the "before" photo in a botox commercial. he has more creases than a shar-pei.

so i popped him into bed (knowing i would be seeing him in three hours) and he rolled over on his side and laid still. (stay! good boy!)

i went over to where sweet carys was dozing, and lifted her out and into my room. she shied away from the light but took the bottle quite happily. slurp slurp, slurp..she finished about 80 mls before she decided she'd had her fill. but 80 mls is better than nothing.

although i should have shunted her back into bed, i didn't. oh i was tired, knew i had to get up soon, but wanted to be awake with carys and just hold her for a little while. i looked at her tiny veined lids and remembered the first time they opened. she was about one week old when she first opened her eyes. i smiled at her little red mouth, still new to me, as for the first two weeks of her life it was covered with a vent. her face, one side flatter than the other as a result of her torticollus, which was covered in duoderms, tubes, tape and gauze for so many weeks.

i started singing to her one of our NICU songs, eric clapton's wonderful tonight. gazing at my bald girl, i laughed at the part where the lady is brushing her long dark hair, but by the end of the song, as she turns out the light, i was crying. i wanted to hold carys all night, remembering those terrible and love-filled days in the NICU, where every minute was precious. i wanted to have more precious memories with her, like i used to. but i needed to sleep, because in 3.5 hours, i would be taking care of jasper again.

but those few moments with her, that familiar song, they were, wonderful. i got out of bed, carried carys to her room, kissed and laid her down, smoothed sela's grobag, lifted sebastian's special blanket from the floor, and pulled jasper's arm out from under him. and i went to bed, still humming the song, and i slept.

and the wonder of it all, is that you just don't realise how much i love you

at what price honesty?

you are witnessing me in the middle of an internal battle.

my father and sister are arriving for a long overdue visit on friday.

the situation: triplets, demanding. sick and not sleeping a lot. until three weeks ago they used to sleep through the night, and now only sela does. they are getting active...my dad calls them the dog pile because they are always squirming around each other and pushing and kicking. sebastian three and active and loving being read to, showing off his paintings, games he's created, or his talent of jumping off the sofa and landing on his feet then bottom.

the dilemma: should i make myself look like i rise above the demanding chaos? because if i could pull it off, i would gain so many points in the family's unwritten and understood FLAW BOOK. patience and temper and always issues for me, but appearing ethereal in all of this would definitely make me the BEST PERSON IN OUR FAMILY. EVERYONE would come to me for advice and i would hear everything first.

however, this mother would not be a person i would like. not on an integrity meaning either. but this mother would be a bit boring, i suspect floral, and unbearably naff.

and then there is the little matter of, if i pretend to be in WORSE shape than i am in, they will do more.

so, what shall it be: pride or pity?

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

orderly behavior

domestic update...

amazingly helpful friend lucy mentioned a book she's reading called something like

why first born children rule the world and second borns want to change it.

apparently sebastian displays all the typical first born traits.

but, i am not so sure about the wee three. can the four minutes that determine their birth order direct their personalities, or does it come down to how magnificent charles and i treat them??

we do treat carys (who was born respectively three minutes and one minute after jasper and sela) as the baby. probably because she was so fragile for so long. and, after all, she is three pounds lighter than her next sibling, and five pounds lighter than jasper.

carys' cries are softer, but gaining strength. very hoarse, like demi moore almost. (and since carys is bald, think demi moore during her GI jane phase and you have a very good visual.)

i'm sorry to bother you, but i can't stop crying until you help me!

yet jasper (the bruiser) acts like the baby. he cries the most, and is the neediest. sela and carys have assumed some alarmingly grown up traits, while jasper is guilelss and sweet, rolling over on to his tummy and then crying when he gets there because he has forgotten how to roll over again. he isn't as determined as the others, as long as his tummy is full he really isn't going to make and effort. if sebastian takes away a toy, jasper doesn't care.

i am so scared, really. i am frightened and bewildered....

sela, is demanding. but the middle child is meant to be creative and self planning! but this is a girl that begins flailing her limbs about when her siblings are getting all the attention. her cry is not a sign of distress, it is an indication of her anger. sela is either sweet or sour. while the universe revolves around her and her long lashed lids, life is good. but when the planets jasper and carys get attention, look out.

you brought me to this and to show my displeasure, all i can do is SCREAM!

i will read this child's birth order book, but at this stage in my life, having survived one child being two, i think a better book for me would be a book on orderly children.

v. v. exciting news!

let's give a huge IVF hats and knickers off to tennis great PAM SHRIVER and hubby George Lazenby (yes, the former 007) for being extremely open and honest about their IF struggles.

pam is 42 and i believe he is 65, and after IVF failed, they turned to, and were successful with donor egg. their son george was born a few months ago.

extremely classy to be so open about the donor egg option they chose.

firstly, it makes couples realise donor egg is a wonderful way to achieve the dream of having a child.

secondly, their openness suggests they do not mind the baby is not biologically hers. she carried georgie, they're changing his nappies and whispering words of love to him...how much more "theirs" can he be!

thank you et merci to this couple for sharing their story and its lovely outcome.

using science to achieve your dreams is nothing to be ashamed of. celebs, you have such influence ... share your story!!! you are used to adoration, share your story...get respect.

weight up!

after months of pretending i was too busy with the present to write about the past year and my unresolved feelings, i have started writing. and writing.

i stop every once and a while to blog off on another vein, but reliving the triplet pregnancy is sucking a lot of my emotional energy right now. magnificent charles has been gone for just over 24 hours (yes i am counting...that's 15 bottles, one sebastian tantrum and 10 nappies) and already i have called him three times to ask the pg related questions that i have forgotten the answers to.

but here is an anecdote i will share with you all:

a few weeks ago i was on the playground with sebastian and an acquaintance who also has a child came up to me and said, "if i didn't know you were infertile, i would think you were pregnant!"

i guess there is something to be said for that statement. like: YOU CRUDE COW!!!

when pregnant with sebastian i gained 18 pounds (8.5 kilos) and lost it within days. over the next years my weight didn't vary that much.

with the triplets, i gained 36 pounds in the first 24 weeks as instructed by nutritionists and the book WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING TWINS, TRIPLETS AND QUADS. charles and i were quite proud of our team effort (he tempted me, i ate).

within weeks of the triplet's birth, i had lost all the weight. my body, having not exercised for seven months was in terrible condition, but i was not heavy.

but then, my lifestyle shifted. three times a day i was visiting the NICU. i would wave sebastian off to playgroup, then hotfoot it over to the hospital. from 9.30-11.45 i would read, pray, laugh, despair, sing, try to read charts upside down, and interpret from the nurse's faces what state the babies were in.

then home to be with sebastian, have lunch and then i would read, email or call people for support and to update them.

then i headed back to the hospital after sebastian was safely ensconsced on the playground (yes, scene of the insult) for the afternoon.

repeat morning NICU visit pasttimes. oh yes, did i mention i was also expressing eight times a day? and getting virtually nothing so i was increasing my calorie intake? i would reward myself with a salty or sweet treat on the walk home from the NICU, praying i wouldn't run into people i didn't have the strength to talk with.

after dinner, charles and i would head back to the NICU. it was great to have him there beside me, walking down those long corridors, waiting to get signed in, turning right into our babies rooms, knowing that ears other than mine were listening to the bleeping.

and then we would go home, and eat something. pump again, and watch something mindless. (i now watch reality tv!!)

i would finish off the day with a reward, a sausage, bag of crisps, piece of toast, etc. to mentally prepare myself for the next day. because waking up and coming to the slow realisation that it would be spent out of the sunshine and in the hospital was usually the toughest part of my day. remembering my reality.

and the pounds crept on, and i didn't care.

then the babies came home and if i thought i was exhausted and eating at odd times before...

eating dinner at midnight was nothing unusual to us. and i was so tired and overwhelmed that the thought of eating a meal was too much. so i picked continually at all the wrong things.

"i'll just have some parmesan cheese"

"i'll just finish off that aloo gobi. oh there's not much of that, might as well start on the masala. hmm. my plate looks almost full, that's how tired i am.."

i'm aware of it now, but believe me, my weight is not a priority. i am walking in the mornings, but cannot commit to any times, or people. or myself. that will change, but for now, that is just the weigh it goes.

old dog, new trick question and response.

knowing magnificent charles was taking another passage to india at 4pm today, i escaped from the flat this afternoon for a few hours.

being that charles is in human resources, i justified my actions in HR terms:

might as well make use of the manpower while it is available. i thought.

then i went to benevolent:

he will appreciate this bonding time with sebastian. i reasoned.

i ran into a lady and we got to chatting. she seemed nice, is from australia and these days anyone who hails from wonderful lucy's native land i am prejudiced towards anyway. she asked me about kids, and i mentioned that i had four.

how old? she inquired.

well, sebastian is almost three, and jasper, sela and carys are about eight months old.

by this time i am used to comments, "do triplets run in your family" and instead of giving the safe comment, "well, i think they usually walk first", i just gallop to the chase and say, "no they were IVF, just like sebastian."

but today, we got a new swing on a old question. diet coke, new! with lemon.

were they natural. my nice new friend asked.

trying to figure out the question, i said, "well, they were delivered by caesarean, if that is what you mean."

no, were they natural, like did you do it yourself.

i nearly said yes. because in some ways, yes, i did it myself. i injected myself every day for two weeks with ovarian stimulation drugs. after that, i charmingly applied progesterone suppositories. all on my own.
it was my stomach they drained litres of fluid from after i was hospitalized with OHSS.

but to be fair, magnificent charles was there for lots of the other stuff. rubbing my feet. tucking pillows behind my knees, making me eat when i swore i wouldn't eat another mouthful. holding my hand, praying over my swollen body. leaving me magazines to read so i wouldn't get bored while on bedrest. making charts that he put on the kitchen cupboards of the babies probable head circumference, buying me new books, listening to in-depth reports of just exactly how the positioning of jasper's head was affecting my lower bowel area.

so i responded,

"no, my husband helped me."

i miss you charles, come home soon!!!

note to spellchecker helpers.

the delightful woman responsible for kicking my considerable rump into the blogging word, TERTIA (who i will link to as soon as i figure out how....) wrote a suggestion the other day after i apologised for not being grammatically correct.

write in wp and then paste. wp will pick up your spelling errors.

nice thought, but darling, re-reading and correcting, no matter where i write it, will still take time i don't have. and wp capitalises a lot of words i no longer upper case. and leaves grammar untouched. so, no go.

right now i am holed up in my computer room/psychological cave while the lady who is looking after our cat olivia while my asthma prone daddy and sister are here sits and feeds jasper.

see how dangerous it is to enter our flat during feeding time? delivery men from park n' shop don't bring bags into the house if they know a feed is about to commence because i lure them in on the pretense of lugging the groceries to the kitchen and then bar their exit while requesting they take over feeding a baby. "oh, i'll give you the easiest feeder, sela, won't take a minute of your time. your girlfriend will be impressed."

having explained why my words must continue to be faulty, i will now return to the faulty feeders.
ciao for niao