Changing bodies...

 

I've been thinking a lot about the human body lately.  Michelle's belly is pretty incredible and I'm amazed by the sheer capacity of her uterus, and I know this amazement will only grow over the next couple of months!  The babies have been moving more lately and I can more consistently feel the girls moving around in there and the other day Michelle said she actually saw a kick from baby C. That was a first and I've been excited to see it every since.  Well yesterday was my lucky day.  Again it was baby C coming through with the big kicks. (Maybe she'll be our little soccer or rugby player!) It is hard for me to feel baby A moving because he is so low, and on our ultrasounds lately he is usually facing Michelle's back.  But Michelle can definitely feel baby A when he is moving and it is generally not pleasant because it feels like he is kicking her pelvic floor or her cervix!  Sometimes she will just be sitting at the table and will wince and jump a bit because our little dude is kicking her.

 

Because of the ever-growing belly Michelle has really had to change her eating habits.  It is a good thing she was a rockstar about eating early on because she can't eat anywhere near 4000 calories now.  As before she has to eat frequently, but can only eat very small portions or she feels sick afterwards.  We are still adjusting to this new reality and Humphrey has gotten a few more people food treats lately, finishing off what Michelle couldn't eat.  She can eat the most in the morning but by the late afternoon evening her digestive system seems to have hit its limit.  It is hard to see her so uncomfortable and not be able to help.

 

My body has also been changing over the past few months.  I've definitely put on some sympathy pounds (somewhere around 10-15 of them!) and I'm sick of it.  This is completely unsurprising since I haven't been working out and have been eating more with Michelle's attempts to to eat enough for four!  So I've started a Couch to 5k app on my iPhone just to try to get back into the habit of working out. We'll see how it goes, but should be better once I'm officially done with school at the end of the week!

 

And I don't think I've mentioned it on the blog yet, but in an attempt to solve the "more babies than breasts" issue we are facing, I decided a few months ago that I was going to try to induce lactation.  Lots of women who adopt infants induce lactation so they can breastfeed their new babies so I thought I'd give it a shot.  A few weeks after we found out about the triplets I had a sad night realizing that with three babies, which is already one more than we'd planned on, I wouldn't ever get pregnant and carry a baby.  I was never really sure that was an experience I needed to have, but I was still a little sad about it.  I was also feeling sad about not breastfeeding because I know that it can be such a unique bonding experience.  So we did a little research and when it seemed like inducing lactation was a real possibility, decided to give it a shot.

 

For the past few months I've been following a protocol that includes taking a nausea medication that has the side effect of inducing lactation.  Six weeks before you expect the babies to arrive you are supposed to start pumping every few hours.  With an average triplet gestation of 32 weeks, we figures I should start at 26 weeks just in case.  So for the past couple of weeks I've been pumping and slowly, but surely, it is working.  I think we're pretty lucky that it is working so quickly and so well because that isn't always the case.  These babies should have quite a stash of breast milk in the freezer by the time they are born, especially if they aren't born until October!  The whole experience of pumping is kind of strange and particularly when there are no babies yet, but when I get annoyed I just think about those babies and how I would do anything for them and it doesn't seem so bad.