Kristin Reddick is rockstar mom of the month, she is a fabulous interior designer and dear friend. She currently balances working outside her home as a workplace design specialist for Haworth, wife, and mother of four (three are triplets). Needless to say, she is one busy lady! I've always been amazed at her creativity and ability to roll with the punches. She infuses all that she does with detail, color and life. When she finds time to write, I always love to read her personal blog, Life's a Trip. She also has some great kid crafts and design ideas so follow her on Pinterest! I'm so thankful she found some time away from her busy schedule to share her story and some inspiration for you.
I woke up this morning, the first day of 2014, and thought
it was the perfect time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the new
one…and then life with four kids hit us like a Mack truck, and I did no
reflecting, but instead, spent the day just trying to survive with a mild, New
Years Eve induced, hangover.
You see, my
husband and I are parents to a wonderfully smart, headstrong 5-year old girl
and 21 month identical triplet boys. I’m
sure many people out there have or have had a 2-ish aged toddler and understand
what this phase encompasses…a lot of discovery and very little listening. Now take what you may have experienced with
one toddler, multiply it by three, then again AND add a little girl who likes
to challenge and negotiate every minute of the day, and that MIGHT give you an
idea of what our daily life is like.
We
are, as my husband and I affectionately refer to it, in survival mode.
Rewind to a little more than two years ago when we were told
at our six week ultrasound that we were pregnant with spontaneous (no
fertility) identical triplets. I’ll
never forget October 27, 2011, the day our life took a hard 90 degree turn into
the unknown. It was little consolation
that we were parents to a three year old and had at least a few years of
parenting under our belt. That prepares
you only slightly for life with multiples.
If anything, having an older child in addition to triplets just adds on
a heaping side of mother’s guilt because now all the singular attention is spread
thin to four kids. Luckily after many
struggles and a year of play therapy, our daughter is more than capable of
vocalizing (loudly and often) when she feels she is not getting enough love,
attention, snuggles, toys etc.
The boys were born nearly 3 months early, at 29 weeks and 3
days, due to complications that arose between babies B and C transfusing each
other. We spent 94 days traveling back
and forth between our home and Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, taking care of
our daughter and working (well, at least my husband was), which meant barely
seeing each other save for a few minutes before we flew out the door in the
morning and arrived home in the evenings.
Those three months were by far the hardest of our lives, but we were
fortunate, and all of the boys were discharged healthy and with very few
lingering complications.
Then came the really hard part, they sent our babies home
and WE were responsible for taking care of FOUR kids. I never even imagined myself with four kids,
and the idea of being responsible for molding and shaping all these little
beings into good, kind adults is overwhelming to say the least. With the boys
at home, we slowly got into a groove.
That would last a few months, then they would move onto the next baby
phase and we would rethink our game plan…again. Luckily, we had a lot of support from the community, because both of our
families live four hours away in Indiana.
We definitely learned to swallow our pride and ask for help, because we
needed it, were desperate for it.
People ask all the time how we do it.
We will often hear, “I was having a bad day
with my child, and I thought of you with three and thought, if you can do it, I
can do it.” At first I was offended by this comment, but now I take it as a
compliment! I honestly can’t say how we
do it, we just do. Like I said, it’s
survival mode. On the exterior, it may
look like we have it all together, but that’s not the case at all. Our house is chaos during all waking hours;
everything has taken a back burner, from housework to hobbies.
One thing I did for the sake of my sanity was
go back to work. I give high praise to
stay-at-home moms, it’s a HARD job; I could hardly hack it for a year. So when
the opportunity came up for me to go back to work when the boys were just over
a year old, I jumped at the chance. I
just feel personally that working makes me a better, saner mom. Other than that, I cope by staying up really
late and working on crazy projects (I don’t recommend trying to stencil your
walls with a giant stencil and paint), alternating between my two vices of beer
and ice cream (not at the same time), and some occasional therapy session and
anti-depressants.
When the going gets
really tough, I go upstairs, scream in my pillow for a few minutes, then think
back to those three months in the hospital when our sweet babies were so tiny
and fighting so hard, and that’s all it really takes to put this crazy life
into perspective.
So here we are, nearly two years in to Triplet Mayhem, and I
can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m sure it’s a few more years away, but
we’ll get there eventually. But for now,
I try not to question why, do whatever I can to survive, and enjoy all the good
moments to get through the bad.
Labels: rockstar mom, triplets
