Monday, June 13, 2011

She Finally Wore My Shirt!

There are a lot of things I've done over the last few weeks to make my wife proud, but let's just say that this year's birthday present wasn't one of them.  I had to make an executive decision this year and I choose to go the route of "gift of meaning," instead of "gift of desire."  It turns out that I probably should've done both, but with everything that I've been putting into the house outside of work, and the many hours I've been working into the evening, I made a decision and went with it.

Basically, I decided to get Meg a couple of "triplet mom" t-shirts.  I'm sure it seems like such a slack gift, but knowing how cute my wife is, I just thought she would look adorable in these triplet mom shirts.  Plus, I'm super-proud that she's having triplets and I want people to know the sacrifice she's making.  When she opened the gift, she had one of those, Well, these are really cute, but where's the real gift? looks on her face.  She at least tried them both on for me and, yes, she did look adorable...in my opinion, at least.  Well, they've both been relegated to sleeping shirts--not meant for public viewing.  I get it.  Really, I do.  On Saturday morning, she happened to have one of the shirts with her in her suitcase.  She knew how much I'd been wanting her to wear it so, in addition to getting to hear all three babies' heartbeats in the morning, she told me that she would wear my t-shirt through the airport and for the rest of the day as my superhero dad reward.  Personally, I think she secretly wants to wear it all of the time, but is just afraid she'll spill on it because, well, she's spilling stuff on her shirt more often these days.

I'll let you be the judge.



Dr. Quintero let us fly home on Saturday, so as quickly as possible, we bought our return flights home from the hospital room, hopped in a cab to the Miami Airport, and were able to sleep in our own bed last night.  Meg's mom and dad picked us up from the airport and we met our good friends, Sarah and Zac, for dinner.  When we arrived home, we entered our soon-to-be-old condo and noticed that we had been visited by the Onesie Fairy.  She's real, I promise. There were little onesies, grouped in threes, all around our condo.  It was a great surprise and a nice reminder of what we worked so hard to save.

Now, it's Sunday night and we're getting ready for our first follow-up ultrasound in the morning.  Dr. Gallagher is squeezing us into his schedule in the morning because we are a "VIP" pregnancy the rest of the way through.  VIP or not, I'm already trying to figure out how I can keep myself distracted from worrying about all of the hurdles we need to overcome to get these girls to a viable age.  Meg has been having small pains for the last several weeks, but she also knows that most pregnant women aren't comfortable at this stage.  Especially, women with three babies in the oven.  When we checked out of the hospital yesterday, they gave us this sheet of things to look for when trying to determine if you're going into pre-term labor.  Here's the list of things to watch out for:

- Menstrual-like Cramps
- Low Backache
- Pressure
- Abdominal Cramping
- Leaking fluid
- Feeling bad
- Contractions

So, some of these are pretty obvious, but Pressure, Backache, and Feeling Bad?  What pregnant woman doesn't feel those things from time to time.  Now, every time she feels even the slightest symptom, we're worried about whether or not we need to drive to the hospital.  For women who've had children before, you probably learn to notice the difference between what to ignore and what to pay attention to.  For a pregnant mom of triplets, who has never had children, it's actually tiring being so worried all of the time.

I know that there are a lot of people who are interested in our next round of ultrasound results, so I'll make sure to share them tomorrow when I have time.  We have to get up really early to get to the other side of town, so I'm going to wrap this up and grab some shut-eye.  I really do want to thank everyone for all of your continued prayers.  It's amazing how much relief it provides when you know that you have the equivalent of a small town behind you, pulling for your success.

5 comments:

  1. Jeremy - I wanted to let you know that I've been following your story via your blog and via Facebook Triplet Mommies. I realized early on that you and I are located close together. My triplets were the result of treatment at SGFC as well and we saw Dr. Gallagher et al. at GWMFM also (mine are all fraternal though). You couldn't possibly be seeing a better practice of perinatologists. I'm also on the board of directors of the Montgomery County Parents of Multiples, so if you need or want any resources, please feel free to reach out to me - I would love to get you set up with some other local triplet families.

    Feel free to email anytime - membership@mcpom.org or karen.e.cohen [at] gmail [dot] com

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  2. she will know when something is really off. i had preterm labor and had braxton hicks constantly but that was about it. you could just have one thing but she will know it if it happens. good luck to you two!!

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  3. It's pretty obvious how much people respect & love their physicians. You do too, esp. now. So do my girlfriend & I. Sorry for the Bad English, it's my native language, I swear! I hope that this morning finds your babies in a continuing state of health. I'll get right to it. I'm haunted. I believed the line I was fed by Han-Min Lee @ UCSF re:'anterior placenta is show-stopper.' Yeah. Your geographic location may have been a factor, we Californians are used to having everything we could possibly need close by. (I'm in what's left of "Silicon Valley", and it ain't much). I had named my boys Morgan Mark Aaron, recip. & Brian Raymond Lee (the iambic symmetry of those 2 names escaped me until after they died). I'm asking for your impressions on what can be done to avoid this happening to anyone else. Your solution is good, Don't Get it Twisted, :-) but it makes a poor default for most parents. An Internet search at the time of our diagnosis agreed with the bullshit we were told by this Charlatan. OLD INFORMATION. Did you see the GMA segment, a couple months ago? with the Ballards? Well, the hostess of GMA had this advice for the newly diagnosed: "Don't Google it...". I'll post a link to that on Gabriel's TTTS facebook group today. I think the time is damn near ideal for some kind of media initiative. Your ideas on this are welcome. May God continue to bless those babies, their Mom, and their Superhero Dad.
    Michael Ray Overby.

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  4. Tell her to watch out for the Braxton Hicks Contractions. I couldn't feel mine, the only way I knew I was having them was because my abdomen would tighten up for a short period of time. Don't wait for it to be painful to call the doctor or do something about it!

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