Raising Multiples Is No Fun – How I’m coping with Caring for My Triplets
When my wife was pregnant and a scan informed us that we were to have triplets, we were so shocked that we had to go to another clinic to conduct another scan to be certain. When a second scan confirmed it, I accepted it and began to prepare for the delivery – rather anxiously.
The pregnancy period was no fun as my wife’s tummy was so big at a point that she couldn’t get up on her own from the chair nor turn on the bed when lying down. She had to close down her business as we weren’t certain when she will be able to get back to work.
Thanks to God, the delivery date came and she successfully delivered the babies – a boy and two girls. As you might expect, there was much joy and celebration. We enjoyed the euphoria of the moment, even though I was caught up with meeting the huge financial burden of taking care of the hospital bills.
A hidden cost of multiple births is that most infants are frequently delivered preterm. Parents of multiple babies born prematurely often need a lot of money to cope with a lot of huge expenses.
Major Issues with Multiple Births
The arrival of multiple babies at once presents a lot of financial, medical, emotional and logistical challenges for a family. Below are some of the major challenges to expect:
#1 Financial Challenge:
The financial impact of a multiple birth can be significant. Any cost associated with multiples for basic stuff like clothing, diapers, medication, food, car seat, etc. are always higher. You have to buy everything in multiples.
Even the costs of health care for the delivery of multiples are much higher. According to a research as reported by webmd.com “The average health care costs were over $400,000 for triplets or more, $105,000 for twins and $21,000 for singletons. That means that the costs for triplets or more were 20 times higher than for singletons. The costs included medical expenses during the 27 weeks before and up to 30 days after delivery…”
#2 Strained Relationships
While multiple births bring a lot of joy at first, it can ultimately lead to a strained relationship between couples. Multiple births can lead to such a hectic life at times that there is barely any time for the couple to spend alone, relationships can become strained.
According to the Australian Multiple Birth Association and the UK daily mail, being the parents of multiples can put a strain on relationships and finances and sometimes leads to the breakup of marriages.
For the first six months after the birth of our triplets, my wife was so occupied with the babies that the last thing I could discuss with her was my needs as a husband. There was basically no sort of romance between us because when she was not super busy, she was relaxing from exhaustion.
#3 Frequent Exhaustion
For the first three months after the birth of my babies, I could not sit still for twenty minutes without dozing off. It became public knowledge that I was always sleeping at the office and even in the church.

If I was suffering from exhaustion, then you can imagine how my wife must have felt. Frequent feeding and looking after the babies kept us awake sometimes throughout the night. When one of the babies is dozing off after some loud howling (for no reason I can understand), another is taking over. Sometimes, the three of them will all be awake at night depriving us from our needed sleep.

The next day it starts all over again. With multiple feeding, nappy changes, frequent cleaning and washing, our normal everyday life became overwhelming.

According to Twins UK “A 1983 study revealed that a mother of six-month-old-triplets expends an average of 197.5 hours per week (out of a possible 168) between herself and paid/volunteer assistance on the care of her children and home. This did not include a time allowance for mother to bathe, dress, sleep, eat, relax or talk with partner!”

#4 Isolation & Loss of Freedom
With multiple babies, the ability and freedom to just get out and about is taken away. Even if you have others helping out, it’s still very difficult to get the motivation to do things outside of the home due to exhaustion and not being able to find enough hours in the day.
As a husband, I felt isolated by all the attention to the new babies. I lost the interaction and attention of my wife. Call me selfish, but sometimes, I needed a shoulder to rest on, particularly with all the financial expenses I had to cope with.
These were my basic challenges as a man, but, if my wife was the one writing this, I’m sure she would have a thousand more things to say.

How to Cope with the Pressure of Multiple Births
A lot of families, including mine, have coped, continue to cope and even thrive in our role as parents of multiples. There are a number of steps you can take to cope with the challenges that comes with multiple births. Below are some of the most common strategies that have helped us cope.
#1 Create a Family Budget
Creating a budget and planning your expenses is the single most important thing you can do to cope with a multiple birth. A family budget is very vital in helping you prioritize your needs. From my experience, unplanned and unexpected expenses will keep coming up every day and if you don’t have an efficient financial plan to deal with it, you may find yourself in deep financial crisis.
A budget will help you to drastically cut down on your expenses and help you to manage your available resources. Always remember to budget for sudden and unexpected expenses while creating your budget.
#2 Be Financially Smart
Creating a family budget will not be enough if you are not financially smart. Some smart financial steps you can take include:
 Create additional means of income.
 Stick to your budget and spend wisely.
 Look for cheap stuff, probably second-grade clothes and stuff when shopping.
 Look for coupons and other free stuff.
 Ask for financial assistance from your friends and family – they will understand.
 Learn how to efficiently handle money.
#3 Be a Good Planner
Apart from planning your finances, you also need to plan basically every other aspect of your life. Buying supplies, keeping track of your babies feeding and medications, creating time for your other children, having time for your partner and every other thing that is part of taking care of your babies can take over your life and become overwhelming.
Learning how to plan your day will help you manage your time more effectively and get more things done quicker and with less pressure. A good plan to help you stay organized and efficient will help you to cope better.
#4 Create time to Sleep
When caring for multiple babies, sleeping is important for your sanity! The benefits of sleep include: having good mood, better concentrate, and making better informed decisions, among others.
Couples can alternate night shift to feed the babies and take turns napping.
You might also consider coordinating your babies feeding schedules by waking and feeding all the babies at the same time at night. This will help to maximize your sleeping time when you are able to get all of them back to sleep.
Also, try to sleep whenever you can, particularly when your babies are sleeping during the day. Though it will not be easy to let go of the other several things that begs for your attention, keep in mind that your well-being is vital to your ability to cater for your babies.
#5 Seek Help from Others
When caring for multiple babies, it’s essential to identify the need for additional. You can hire (if you can afford it), seek for volunteered time from extended family members, fellow parishioners, neighbors or support groups for parents of multiple births.
It’s better to plan this ahead before the arrival of the babies; so, you don’t get too overwhelmed when your babies are born. Consider the sources and types of help that would be most comfortable and appropriate for your family.
A Final Word
This report is to help you be aware of some of the basic challenges to expect parenting multiples and how to cope with them. It’s by no means a way to discourage anybody from the awesome experience of parenting multiple babies.
Despite all of the challenges, multiples also bring great rewards. You’ll get the unique chance to love several babies at once and marvel at the relationship between them, which is a very special one. And there’s a fascination surrounding multiples that is hard to deny.
Our triplets have been one of the most wonderful things that has happened to us as a family and though my kids are six years old now and the pressure has greatly reduced, it’s an experience I will treasure for life.
I’m sure if I’m to write a report on ‘the awesome experience of multiple births,’ many people will crave the opportunity to experience the Multiply Joy, Multiple Fun and Multiple Love!

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