on having triplets

having triplets really sucks.

does it suck more than having three different-aged children? i have no idea. i go back and forth with my grass-is-greener notions and assumptions.

does it suck more than having dead triplets? i would gander a guess at NO, or more accurately, hell fucking no, you asshole.

being a parent to already-alive children when you have a dead baby brings a whole new dimension to INGRATE and GUILT within my realm of motherhood. i'm thinking it's even worse when you already had a shitload of guilt and ungratefulness about the fact that you had a TRIO.

(one of the things i hate is having to call them unit names like the triplets, the trio, the three...but i can't deny their unit-ness...it is another thing that makes me crazy: i only had two children, my first one being three, my second being dead.)

i want to by-pass the whole disclaimer about how glad i am that they're alive; i mean come on, people. i want this post to be about my real life being home with three kids the same age. i want to say the shit i usually don't say on here because this is dead baby space...not so much because i feel bad talking about my alive kids, but just because i have enough people to bitch about alive kids to.

today is different, though. maybe it's the weather, who is a skanky cock-tease bitch. maybe it's because i've been holed up in this house for way too long. maybe i'm reveling in a pig's mud pit of denial that i ever even had a dead kid at all. probably (most definitely) all of those.

they are four years old. three years old really sucked ass; they could talk (which i couldn't WAIT for them to do) but were also out of fucking control. the first year was a logistically a living hell, and when i see pictures of them during that year, i feel really sad and nostalgic about their babyhoods...yet i don't have more than a handful of really nice, loving baby memories. the second year was i guess the best, because they could MOVE THEMSELVES (ie- i didn't have to physically move them around and wonder what position they wanted so that they would SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY). i also stopped pumping when they turned one, so i'm sure that helped. in a NUTshell, it mostly felt like waiting for the magical time/age/stage/phase where it all comes together like i thought motherhood would be before i had kids.

(STOP LAUGHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

i always assumed that it was the fact that there were three of them at one time, which split basically ME in three, that accounted for the lack of feeling really connected to them. i also blamed infertility, which made being pregnant to begin with really REALLY surreal. i remember saying once during a weak moment that it felt like some space aliens dropped three tiny babies into the crib and left, not that i gestated and bore them. in other words, i never felt that insane mother-love i imagined (and let's be honest, that people talk about having). i'm sure both those factors contributed to my lack of connection/whatever, but mostly, it was me...and HOLY SHIT is that another post...

as a mother, i now emotionally and intellectually know that each time/age/stage/phase has its own special positive and negative qualities. that's the fucker that's being a parent. integrating it into who YOU are as a grown adult?!? i can't come up with a good enough string of curse words to accurately describe it, times three.

TIMES THREE, PEOPLE. i think practically speaking it's really like times 7 or something.

the three, they are four. they never stop grabbing at things, climbing, fighting, falling, screaming, crying...did i say fighting? cause if you think it must be easier because they can play together like a little daycare class, all the same age level and everything, YOU'RE SORELY MISTAKEN. HAHA! i remember having those fantasies...but here we are, at four, and it is crazy-making.

i find myself remembering things women said about mothering, i remember things i've seen them do or say and totally judge them at the time, in my mind. I WAS AN ASSHOLE. i completely understand them.

i also feel a special and new-found connection to miss hannigan.

i also, at times, understand how mothers have (i can't type it) their kids and then done the same to themselves. i sometimes feel like i want to beat the ever-loving SHIT out of one or all of them. i sometimes want to scream and yell and curse them, those little fuckers. i sometimes want to threaten them with the most ridiculous and unrealistic things just to get them to comply.

i sometimes feel like a bat-shit crazy, dumb, worthless, out-of-control woman. i know if i never had childrenbecause of infertility it would have really sucked ass in hell, and i had almost 4 years of the realistic notion of just that. it is the weirdest, stupidest, dumbest, worthlessest thought in the universe to also, NOW, think, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING TO HAVE CHILDREN!!!!!" (this is the post where i don't want to add on to that a DEAD baby [and failed ivfs to have MORE children!!] but i feel i have to right here.)

i'm looking at the title of this post. i'm thinking it should really read, 'on having kids,' or 'on motherhood,' but triplets is what i've got. triplets is what i've got, and it's maddening.

it's sometimes NOT maddening, of course. like right now (totally ironic timing), because the weather is fucking perfect today and it's a whole new world out there, people! but this post is about all the shit i'm not supposed to feel or say...it's about the shit that's negative, but my reality, nonetheless.

having triplets is HARD. staying home with triplets before they are school-age is really, really hard.

it's mentally and emotionally trying

for me

because i fear

(know)

that this whole experience is forcing me to confront my own goddamned self.

it's scary.

marriage, motherhood...

MIRRORS.