Our holiday photo session

On Sunday afternoon we braved some triplet temper tantrums and got some cute pictures! We integrated three of them into a Christmas card insert through Walgreens' Snapfish site. It actually turned out to be adorable.




Here's some other cute shots...

Alex...




Ty... (note the Christmas wink!)






Jacen... (He's saying "Aw, presents for me? You shouldn't have!")

Of Triplets and Turkeys

It's been eons since Jody and Matt last posted--chalk it up to the holiday season and the impending move to Bloomington, Indiana, where Jody will begin teaching at Indiana University School of Law in January. The move is scheduled for December 14, and then the five of us will hop in our two cars for the convoy from Boston out to Indiana. Matt will drive the Rav-4 with our dogs, and I'll drive the van. We'll get as far as we can as fast as we can! It will be a zoo--there's no escaping it--and we hope that we have good weather for the drive.


But meanwhile we have been having triple the fun as usual, and have lots of pictures to show for it!

Here's Ty, packaged and wrapped for loving...

Ty wearing his bib as a hat...

And Ty in his bumbo seat...

Jacen sitting in the bumbo...

Alex sitting in the bumbo!

Someone's peeping out from underneath a towel!!

Jacen's eyeing that turkey drumstick on Thanksgiving...



Aunt Lynne gave us 3 pea-in-a-pod costumes...Jacen proudly models one, but looks like he's "bean" martyred...



Matt and Ty hanging out together...



One of the cutest things that happened Thanksgiving weekend was that Alex and Jacen finally discovered each other when they were on the play gym together! They stared into each other's eyes and kicked their legs madly. Quite cute!



Grandma Madeira with Ty.



All three snuggled in the arms of Grandpa, Aunt Beth, and Grandma.



Aunt Beth with the trio...



Grandpa gives all three a squeeze!



Ty in his swing, looking rather bored...

In the Middle of a Triplet Mess!

We're learning that nothing clutters up a house like triplets! Here's Jody in the middle of the triplet mess, with the three excuses for a messy house:



On the other hand, these guys are seriously cute, and give us many laughs as well as sleeplessness. All three are gaining weight at an incredible rate...we have to take tons of pictures just to keep track of their growth! Here's some of the highlights of the last two weeks!

Jacen has decided he likes to do fish impressions. That's why he's now nicknamed the Big Tuna! Matt and Jody think that this picture looks like that Billy Bass singing fish that was such a disgraceful success about three years back...it's still sold at Cracker Barrel, right next to the eerie assortment of John Deere souvenirs.



The triplets also like to make goofy faces waiting for their bottles...here's Alex, Ty and Jacen hamming it up...Ty is exhibiting some very fat cheeks--the cheeks attempt a takeover of his bib every feeding.







Alex sits in his bouncy seat after supper. He looks like he doesn't have any legs. Those jokes about the men with no arms and no legs come to mind...



We continue to have fun with the boys on their Rainforest play gym every night too!





And finally Saturday night is bath night...these guys need it!

About RSV (Or, Why We Need to Take Out Stock in Purell)...

Now that Fall is upon us and Winter is right around the corner, it is RSV season. Many friends and family members have asked us what RSV is. So we wanted to post information on what RSV is and how it impacts preemies.

RSV causes respiratory tract infections in patients of all ages. It is the major cause of lower respiratory tract infection during infancy and childhood. In temperate climates like Massachusetts there is an annual epidemic during the winter months. In tropical climates, infection is most common during the rainy season. In the United States, 60% of infants are infected during their first RSV season, and nearly all children will have been infected with the virus by 2-3 years of age. Natural infection with RSV does not induce protective immunity, and thus people can be infected multiple times. Sometimes an infant can become symptomatically infected more than once even within a single RSV season.

It is very, very easy to contract RSV. It is spread by physical contact (such as shaking hands with an infected person) or thru the air (usually from sneezing or coughing). RSV can also live for several hours on surfaces, such as doorknobs, telephones, faucet handles, counters or used tissues, towels, etc. RSV infections are very common in areas where people are crowded together. In homes where there are multiple children, such as us, RSV can spread very rapidly from child to child. And older siblings can even bring the virus home from school or a friend's house.

For most people, RSV produces only mild symptoms, often indistinguishable from common colds and minor illnesses. The Centers for Disease Control consider RSV to be the "most common cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia among infants and children under 1 year of age." Infants born at less than 36 weeks gestational age are at a significantly elevated risk for severe RSV disease. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year, up to 125,000 children are hospitalized with serious RSV disease and some of these children may die from RSV complications. RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization for children under 1 year of age. And severe RSV infections may increase the risk of wheezing and asthma-like illness through childhood.

The practical implications of RSV are scary. At best, recuperation takes place at home with 2-hour breathing treatments through a nebulizer. Multiply those breathing treatments times three, and add other difficulties of having sick babies, not to mention the daily schedule that life with triplets brings, and you have a recipe for a long three weeks. But the worst part is that it would take years to repair the damage RSV does to premature lungs, including vulnerability to respiratory infection, likelihood of asthma, and continued reliance on nebulizers and steroids to clear bronchial passageways.

To illustrate, here's how RSV affects lungs (courtesy of the Synagis website). To see the pictures better, double-click on them.





Severe RSV disease is more likely to develop in babies with the following risk factors:

1. Premature birth. In infants born prematurely (ie, more than 4 weeks early), RSV can become a serious respiratory tract infection that requires hospitalization, especially early in life.
2. Being born with lung disease. Babies younger than 2 years old born with chronic lung disease who have needed medical care for it within 6 months before RSV season are at high risk.
3. Being born with heart disease. Babies younger than 2 years old born with serious heart disease may be at high risk.
4. Low birth weight. Low birth weight (less than 5½ pounds) greatly increases the risk of death from RSV.
5. Older brothers and sisters. Babies in contact with school-aged siblings can get RSV, particularly during the cold and flu season.
6. Going to daycare. Babies who go to daycare are at higher risk for getting RSV.3 (Daycare is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] as any setting outside the home where a child regularly spends ≥4 hours/week with ≥2 unrelated children.)
7. Family history of asthma. There is a higher risk for severe RSV in children with a family history of asthma.
8. Tobacco smoke and other air pollutants. You should never allow anyone to smoke around your baby. Tobacco smoke and other air pollutants can irritate your baby’s lungs and make it harder to fight RSV.
9. Multiple births. Multiple births (for example, twins) increase the risk for RSV because of low birth weight and an increased number of young siblings in the household.

Of these factors, we have several--premature birth, a baby with a mild heart condition, family history of asthma, and multiple births, at least. That makes our triplets high-risk. Even though they appear healthy, our boys' lungs are still immature, and so we have to be extra careful.

There are simple steps that we can take. Thus we ask that:

1. Visitors and family members and caregivers wash their hands with warm water and soap before touching the babies.
2. Visitors must be free of cold symptoms for five days and should delay visits if they have been in contact with someone who is sick. It is a must to avoid being around the babies if you have a cold or fever. Even if the babies don't catch anything, we could, which means that either one of us would have to care for the triplets or that the sick parent would have to constantly change clothes and wear masks.
3. Avoid exposing the babies to other children with cold symptoms.
4. Please try to get a flu shot before they run out.

In essence, we're "quarantining" the babies and ourselves as much as possible this RSV season. Unfortunately, that means that we have to miss out on a lot of fun events, and risk angering people who may not understand the seriousness of RSV. We really want to make it through the triplets' first winter without ending up in the hospital. Their lungs have come a long way. But believe it or not, they are still very fragile, at least until they are 2. Then we can all breathe a little easier!

Grumpy Pumpkins and Grandma!

The boys are doing very well! Everyone's gaining weight and growing like weeds. Jacen (4.7 lbs at birth) weighs 7 lbs 7 oz, Alex (3 lbs 7 oz at birth) weighs 6 lbs 7.5 oz, and Ty (3 lbs 13 oz at birth) weighs 6 lbs 12.5 oz). In fact, Jacen's working on his third chin and Ty and Alex are plumping up their cheeks. Everyone's getting so round that we decided to take a series of grumpy pumpkin pictures. We tried the pumpkin costumes on Alex first...

A sleepy Alex pumpkin...

Ty got stuffed in a pumpkin as well...

The pictures were so cute that we took all three outside on a warm day and planted our own pumpkin patch!

Jody's mom couldn't resist picking two of them (that's all she could hold)...

We also started putting the boys on their play gym mat.

All the boys also got new bibs, courtesy of their Grandma...

The Boys' First Week at Home...

You might wonder why we haven't updated the blog in about a week...happily, it's because the past week has been as uneventful as a week spent taking care of triplets can be. The boys eat, and sleep...then eat, and sleep, then eat, and sleep...then eat, and sleep...then eat, and sleep...then (you guessed it) eat, and sleep. That's pretty much a triplet day--six cycles of feeding and snoozing. Jacen likes to deviate a bit from that schedule to weedle on Jody or Matt now and then while he's being changed. What a life, huh?

On Saturday the triplets (dirty boys, all of them!) enjoyed their first bath. Afterwards we wrapped them in bathrobes that their Grandma Trisha had gotten them which supposedly are "newborn" sized. We probably could have fit Ty and Alex in each sleeve of the robe. What resulted were cute pictures of babies wrapped in oversize terry robes. Think of the triplets as hapless victims of the shrinking ray on the old Rick Moranis movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"--or think pint-sized Hugh Hefners.

Other than that, the pictures this week are of--yes--the triplets sleeping. We think it's cute how they will curl up together. Alex, who sleeps in the middle, has cuddled up to both Jacen and Ty. How cute!

Here's Ty wrapped up in his robe...



And lounging around on the changing table...



Here's Alex, burrowed in his robe (see how big the sleeves are!)...



Note Alex's spiky blond hair...that definitely comes from the Madeira side!



Here's Jacen in his robe...(he has his lip curled up for some reason...perhaps he's trying to look a bit snooty and spoiled!)





Here's Alex curled up to Jacen...



And Ty curled up to Alex...



And Alex asleep in his boppy...



A strong wind must blow through the nursery to blow off the triplets' hats...either that or they all have miniature geysers on the tops of their heads. This is so odd.