I need an off switch

Ugh! We're all up for the second night feeding time and I feel like a zombie. After the last feeding ended, a mere hour and a half ago, I laid in bed not sleeping for way too long. I just kep thinking and thinking. I was thinking about ideas for blog posts, about my upcoming day, and giving each passing thought some conscious time rather than letting them pass on by, which is what I should've been doing. I know that I eventually fell asleep because I woke up dreaming about running a 5k, but it wasn't enough sleep. This is why I need an off switch for my brain!

I'm thrilled that the babies are getting one longer chunk of sleep these days, but I wish it wasn't from 8:30-2ish. Because after that first long chunk we're lucky if subsequent sleeps are three hours. (Tonight it was 2 hours & 10 minutes.) Michelle and I just need to go to sleep earlier so we get to appreciate that long sleep more, but it's hard. Tonight we were in bed, lights out by 9:39/9:45, but that means we missed an hour of baby sleeping time. And while the little man, AKA our clock, slept just over two hours this last cycle, his moms only get to sneak in an hour and a half because when he's done eating, one of his sisters still needs to eat & we still pump after that feeding. :(

This week, as we continue trying to figure out how I can work more and Michelle can find enough time for schoolwork, we've experimented with getting up for the day after this feeding (sometime between 5 & 6 a.m.).  On the days when we manage this feat and don't crawl back under the covers, Michelle gets a nice quiet hour plus to do homework and I usually make breakfast, get coffee brewing & get myself ready for work.  But making that choice, especially on days (nights) like this, feels impossible sometimes...

Wednesday's breakfast-Brussels sprouts & pancetta hash with an over easy egg & grapefruit. Somehow this kind of fancy breakfast made the tough choice to get up seem much better.  But still doesn't make getting out of bed easy!

Sleep deprivation side effects

Yesterday as we were eating lunch (at 3pm!) Michelle and I were recounting some funny night time stories and crying because we were laughing so hard. I decided that chronic sleep deprivation must be like a mildly hallucinogenic drug! I thought you guys might enjoy hearing about our nighttime nonsense too.

We'll start with my ridiculousness. I am definitely the better sleeper between the two of us and I estimate I get an extra half hour to hour of sleep each night because I fall asleep faster and probably sleep through some light crying. But because I'm a good sleeper on also a wreck when being woken from a deep sleep. I have a very long history of sleep walking and talking. (just ask my parents, whose big vase I once tried to pee in!) Anyway, I guess a few weeks ago Michelle wanted me to get up and check on a baby who was stirring.  She tried just asking, no luck, then tried lightly shaking, still no luck. I wasn't responding to her, but she could see that I was doing something with my pillow. Instinctually she guessed that I was dreaming and thinking the pillow was a baby (this may or may not have happened before!), so she came over to my side of the bed and asked me what I was doing. I said, "I'm trying to get her off!" (as in unlatched-apparently dreaming that I was nursing a baby).  She then told me that all the babies were in their cribs and then patted the pillow hard and I jumped about a foot thinking she was about to knock a baby off the bed.  On other occasions Michelle has had to really raise her voice to snap me out of one of my deep sleep cycles. Last week she said "Mari, you're not listening to me" in her best stern teacher voice. :)  To top it off I don't remember any of this so Michelle has to fill me in the next morning,

Michelle has always had more trouble sleeping than me, but now that she has the hormonal "super mommy" hearing, it's even worse!  She wakes up at the slightest whimper even when we don't have the monitor on. And sometimes she wakes up to nothing but thinks it's something!  Like the other night when she sat up and turned on a light to get ready for nursing and woke me up saying "it's time." So I roused myself from sleep and then we both sat there for a few minutes and didn't hear even the slightest peep from the babies. During those few minutes Michelle woke up more and realized she'd been dreaming because she thought we'd already fed one and were on to the next baby.  We checked our phones and it really wasn't time and everyone appeared to be fast asleep, except us of course!

Now that I'm writing these anecdotes, I don't even feel like they're that funny, so maybe sleep deprivation also shares some properties with laughing gas!?! 

"Oh moms, you're so silly!"

"Whew, glad I didn't actually get knocked off the bed!"

"Mommy, did you really pee in a vase when you were little?"

Four weeks old!!!

Wow! It is really hard to believe our little bambinos are four weeks old today!  How time flies when you're not getting any sleep!  Seriously though, it really does seem crazy that we've already been home for three weeks.  We had another pediatrician visit yesterday and I am happy to report that the babies are all growing and have all surpassed their birthweight!  As usual Isaiah is leading the charge weighing in at 6lbs 5.9oz!  The way they measure length is an inexact science at best, but they marked him at 19.25 inches yesterday.  And as you can tell from all the pictures, he has a big noggin, measuring 35.5cm around.  Avery wins the award for the biggest gainer weighing in at a whopping 12oz over birthweight (5lbs 8oz) passing up Miss Ellie who weighed in at 5lbs 7oz.  The girls both measured 19 inches long and with a head size of 33.5cm.  Dr. Brink seemed please with their progress and said they all looked great.  We will continue to focus on getting more calories into Ellie and try to get her as much hind milk as possible, but we do not have to do any more supplements, which is great.  We've been gradually eliminating the supplements over the past week and everyone seems to be doing fine.  That makes our feeding process just a little less labor intensive, and therefore less time intensive too.  We are happy with their progress, but to put their size in perspective, even Isaiah is below the 5th percentile and the girls are more like the 1st percentile for their age, so we have a lot of growing to do!  Multiple visitors have commented that they look much smaller in person than they do in the pictures!

I have a bunch of little ideas for blog posts germinating in my brain, but haven't been able to flesh any of them out into something coherent.  It could be the sleep deprivation catching up with me!  Last night was actually one of our best nights recently with Michelle and I getting two straight hours of sleep a couple of times I think.  It is funny though how getting that much sleep in some ways makes the night seem harder. I think it is because we actually get into a deep sleep cycle and then have a hard time coming back up to the surface of wakefulness, whereas in nights where we don't get more than half an hour of uninterrupted sleep we never really sleep so we aren't as out of it (though we do tend to be crabbier I think!). 

Overall I think all of our little munchkins are doing really well.  I mean, really, think how advanced they are.  They shouldn't  even be born yet and here they are having to breathe, eat, poop, pee, and move against gravity!  That is a lot to manage!  It's funny actually, because each week on Tuesday or Wednesday, Michelle and I each get an email from babycenter.com telling us what that week of pregnancy is like and how the baby is developing in utero.  Seriously though, it seems like they are more alert each week and are getting more endurance for eating, which will hopefully help them keep growing big and strong.  We can tell they've gotten bigger because most of the preemie clothes are too small now, though most of the newborn things still seem a little big.

Good news...we got the final pics from the photographer! If you want to see them all you can go to this website  http://www.enjoyphotos.com, and fill in the following information: 

Username: Therrien Triplets

Password: 7401

We are very happy with how they turned out!  The hard part now is figuring out which ones to buy and print!

Here are a few pics from the past few days

                   Isaiah making silly faces

       Avery bright eyed and NOT ready for sleeping

               Ellie rockin' the froggy hat!

Hangin' on the bed in various stages of the eating/changing process

Mommy desperately trying to settle/hold off three babies at once until we were ready for the next feeding