pipandsqueak.com

I have a confession to make - I am addicted to reading blogs. I have a google reader account to manage all of the blogs that I follow and I currently have 39 friends and 3 family blogs that I subscribe to. There are about 5 others who will not work with the subscription service for one reason or another. That is not bad though, I know all of those people. What is bad is that I also follow the blogs of many complete strangers. I follow 29 different photographers for inspiration and 50 other blogs that interested me in some way either because they are about parenting, travel, nutrition or other cute kids.

Two of the random blogs that I have been following for a month or two are some parents of quadruplets. One of the couples, the Steeces are from my area and even graduated from A&M. They are so cute. Last night I spent more time than I wold like to admit reading blogs of several other families who have had quads or quints in the last year. It is so fascinating. If you are interested in reading about them, just go to the blogs of the Steece quads,  the Murray Crew, Billy and Monica, the Burkett Quadsquad, the Goodfellows, the Tubre quads, the Wright Five, JonZReaTom, and the Wilson Quints.

What have I learned from this time “wasted” on the internet? If I learn something, then it was not really wasted was it? I have learned that I am so thankful for what I have. These parents had much more difficult pregnancies, usually being on bedrest from about 18 or 20 weeks on. Some were even hospitalized that early. Many traveled to Phoenix to deliver with a perinatologist who specializes in high risk multiple births. I had an amazingly easy pregnancy. At 18 weeks I was barely beginning to show that I was pregnant and I was still able to work out at the gym the day before I delivered. These babies were delivered between 27 and 34 weeks. 34 weeks is about as long as a doctor will let them go. Katherine was born at 40 weeks 3 days, just past full term. As you can imagine, a baby born 3 months early has a lot of complications and has to spend a lot of extra time in the hospital. When you have 4 babies in the hospital it must be exhausting. They don’t get to come home with you and they don’t come home at the same time.

Once they are home, the adventure just begins. I sure was whiney for awhile when Katherine was crying a lot, I was trying to learn to nurse and she wold not sleep. Imagine with 4 babies how hard it would be to have any personal time and just think of how much crying there would be. The positive would be that your family is complete in one pregnancy (for most people it would be) and as they get older they are able to entertain themselves. You pretty much have your own playgroup every day.

Katherine was a huge change for my life. It has been 20 wonderful months. We want to have another someday. If we have problems getting pregnant next time around, these families will make me really evaluate whether I am up to the risk of fertility treatments. Obviously God knows what he is doing but I just hope that I don’t have quads next time around.