Six Flags!

Triplets.  What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear this word?  Is it: wow, that’s a lot of kids, crazy, oh how cute, good luck with that, etc.?  I remember my first encounter with triplets, it was 2 girls and a boy at church when I was young.  I don’t remember their names, I don’t even remember what state we lived in at the time, but I will always remember them.  I don’t remember thinking much of anything except, “that has to be fun.”  Looking back, it had to be a lot of fun, for the kids.  For the parents I would imagine it was a different kind of “fun”.

Here we are, however many years later, and we are going to be the parents of triplets.  Wow.  It has been such an emotional roller coaster ride for us.  When we had our first ultrasound, we were told it is definitely twins with a possibility of triplets.  Triplets honestly never even crossed our thought process until that point.  It turns out after a few very interesting other ultrasounds, we are most definitely having triplets.  Today, Friday Sept 21, 2012, Emily is 21 weeks and 4 days pregnant with the trio, and it is still an emotional roller coaster.  Just imagine the biggest, scariest, most exciting, loopty loop, corkscrew, straight drops, with a little bit of water splash in your face roller coaster.  We have been on that ride for the last 5 months. 

Of course I realize that this is just the beginning, and this little ride I’m about to describe is strictly the pregnancy and the anticipation of the first few years of their life.  On this roller coaster ride so far, I feel like we are just in the beginning part of the ride, where you just have a little bit of ups and downs, and we are now climbing to the peak, you know that part of the roller coaster where if you look around at the remaining track you can see everything that is coming and you are excited, yet at the same time completely freaked out of your mind about what you can see coming up, knowing that you will go through each and every part of it.

Have you ever looked at a roller coaster and thought as you are standing in line, “that doesn’t look too bad”, then you get on the ride and think, “what in the world am I doing on this thing?”  I have kind of always had that thought about raising multiples (twins, triplets, etc), "Oh, that doesn’t look too bad."  Now that I’m on the ride, my mindset has changed a little bit.  AAAAAGGGGHHHH!  Imagine that look on your face in the photo that they take of you on the drop.  Yup, that is the feeling and the look that we have right now!  You don’t know whether to scream, laugh, cry, or shout with your arms in the air.  This is our moment, we don’t know how to react.

It feels like there have been several times throughout the pregnancy so far that we have felt, like on a roller coaster, we are so focused on the upcoming scary parts, it is hard to enjoy your current stretch of roller coaster track.  It is so difficult to focus on the enjoyable parts of raising three beautiful babies because I think that we are so focused on the stressful parts that may or may not come.  It is so easy to psych yourself out with the feedings, the diaper changes, the crying, the feedings, the diaper changes, the crying, and remember it is all multiplied by 3.  It does seem at times that our entire life is going to be consumed with the aforementioned minor things.

Now, please do not take this the wrong way.  We are SO thrilled that we have been blessed with the triplets, and I understand that they will bless our lives so tremendously.  Just like the roller coaster ride, at the end of the ride you get off and realize that those parts that looked scary actually wound up being your favorite parts!  Who knows, maybe the diaper changes will wind up being our favorite part!  Yeah, right!  Unlike a roller coaster after you have gone down it once the first thing that you usually want to do is get back in line and ride it again, this little roller coaster of ours called triplets is a one-time ride, no more roller coaster for us!  Though we will gladly encourage, and possibly try to persuade others to get on and try it out!