I am no expert, I don't claim to be & don't want to insinuate that I am. I had my beautiful triplet boys at 29 weeks & 4 days gestation. They were born perfect at 3lbs 3oz, 3lbs 5oz & 3lbs 10oz, GIANT for their gestational age!!! The first born required no assistance breathing, not even oxygen. The other 2 were on cpap the day they were born & then switched to nasal cannulas with minimal oxygen. They had none of the more common preemie issues. They just needed to grow & learn to eat. I had no major issues during my pregnancy. My doctors played it safe when it came to preeclampsia & gestational diabetes. These are higher risk in multiple pregnancies. I passed my first glucose test by 1 point & failed my second by 1 point, to be safe they called it gestational diabetes & put me on a small amount of insulin. My sugar was only high first thing in the morning, go figure?!? I had reoccurring UTI's which they eventually called preeclampsia, but I didn't have high blood pressure, just protein in my urine. I started out with a cervical length of greater than 5cm (I was told that is super long) however it started to shorten early on and at 26 weeks I was admitted to the hospital with no cervical length.
Tips for during pregnancy
Tip #2. Empower yourself with knowledge, ask your doctor any and all questions you think of. Don't worry about sounding silly & write them down when you think of them so you don't forget. Don't ask your best friend who just had a baby (a single baby) what her doctor said. It doesn't apply to you! Don't rely on the books, most of that info doesn't apply to you either.
Tip #3. Follow your instincts. There were a couple of book recommended to me for expecting multiples. They explained a lot about the "kind" of multiples I was carrying, but mostly contradicted each other in the other info they gave & just reading what "they suggest" you eat made me nauseous. Ask you doctor how much extra they want you to eat & how much weight they want you to gain. (mine suggested 3000 calories & was not concerned with weight gain as long as the babies were growing) Eat what you can keep down & what you crave. Your body will tell you what it wants/needs. If it's pizza & burritos & not tofu & broccoli, so be it!!! I lived on bagels, burritos, pizza & blt's & had big healthy babies.
Tips for when your babies come home
Tip #1. Hopefully your NICU will have all your babies on a similar routine. Our fed each of our boys one after the other every 3 hours. We stuck with that routine. It worked out great for me when I was on my own with 3 babies. I held & fed each one, one at a time. It gave me the opportunity to have one on one time with each of them several times a day (& night.) During the day I fed them every 3 & eventually 4 hours whether they were awake & asking for it or not. At night, I waited for the first baby to wake on their own to start feeds, but then I woke & fed all 3.
Tip #2. Never wake a sleeping baby AT NIGHT :o) I have alway kept the boys on a pretty regular routine during the day, waking them in the early days to stay ahead of them & avoid 3 screaming babies. I never woke my boys at night. By 3 months they only woke once at night to eat. They slept from 8pm to 2am & then to 8am. By 3 1/2 months they went from 8pm to 5am & then to 9am. And by 4 months they slept ALL NIGHT, from 8pm to 8am :o)
Tip #3...
