Gillian Cal­iste

At four weeks old, Jay­don is a “mel­low fel­low.” His sis­ters Jay­la and Jayann are more on the “feisty” side, es­pe­cial­ly at feed­ing time. As with par­ents of new­borns, the chil­dren’s moth­er, René Vial­va-Phillip, and fa­ther, Ja­son Phillip, have been ad­just­ing their rou­tines and lifestyle, in gen­er­al, more so as new par­ents of triplets.

They have al­so had to en­sure that their first­born daugh­ter, Jené, who re­cent­ly turned eight, feels com­fort­able in her new place as the el­dest child and in her new role of big sis­ter.

Re­call­ing her preg­nan­cy jour­ney to WE re­cent­ly, Vial­va-Phillip shared that she was not re­al­ly sur­prised when her OB-GYN in­formed them that she would be hav­ing twins at her first ul­tra­sound last Ju­ly. Fra­ter­nal twins run in the fam­i­ly...on both sides! Vial­va-Phillip’s two great aunts and cousins are twins and her hus­band has twin sib­lings and twin cousins.

Lat­er, when an­oth­er test showed that there were in fact three foe­tus­es grow­ing in­side her, joy was Vial­va-Phillip’s first re­ac­tion.

“A month or so lat­er, when they checked again, they saw a third sac (am­ni­ot­ic sac sur­round­ing the foe­tus which pro­tects and nour­ish­es it), but that sac was emp­ty. So we said OK, that’s some­thing to mon­i­tor, and a few weeks lat­er it’s triplets.

“It was shock­ing, yes, but as far as I was con­cerned, I had been pray­ing for a preg­nan­cy for the longest while, so it didn’t mat­ter whether it was a sin­gle ba­by or a mul­ti­ple preg­nan­cy. My ini­tial re­ac­tion was just hap­pi­ness,” she said.

Hard time con­ceiv­ing af­ter birth of first child

Al­though she and her hus­band had their el­dest daugh­ter with­out any is­sues, Vial­va-Phillip, 36, had been hav­ing a hard time con­ceiv­ing in lat­er years. About three years ago, she ob­served that her men­stru­al cy­cle had be­come ir­reg­u­lar, and she was di­ag­nosed with sec­ondary in­fer­til­i­ty–where a woman would have had at least one preg­nan­cy be­fore but finds it dif­fi­cult to be­come preg­nant or car­ry a ba­by to term (40 weeks) lat­er on.

She start­ed re­ceiv­ing treat­ment in June 2022 to reg­u­late ovu­la­tion in the form of tablets and had to take home preg­nan­cy tests reg­u­lar­ly. Luck­i­ly for her and her hus­band, with­in a month–mid-Ju­ly–they found out that she was preg­nant. She could not help but cry.

“It was like fi­nal­ly, all the hur­dles are now over with be­cause there had been many years of dis­ap­point­ment, hop­ing and pray­ing that we would get at least one more pos­i­tive preg­nan­cy test. I en­joyed my last preg­nan­cy.

“Even be­fore hav­ing my own chil­dren, I have al­ways tak­en care of chil­dren–sib­lings, nieces and nephews, cousins, and I’m an In­fants’ teacher as well, so I love chil­dren,” said Vial­va-Phillip who miss­es her In­fants class, es­pe­cial­ly since she did not get to tell them good­bye.

2 months for re­al­i­ty of hav­ing triplets to sink in

It took about two months for the re­al­i­ty that they were hav­ing triplets to re­al­ly sink in.

“When the re­al­i­ty set in, you start­ed to say: well, what does this mean be­cause that’s three ba­bies, plus two par­ents and a sin­gle­ton, that’s six peo­ple. How do we do this? In terms of trans­port, we all can’t fit in the car. We have to get a sev­en seater now and those types of thoughts came lat­er down...like about two months lat­er,” she said, adding that hav­ing enough room for all three ba­bies, the cost of food and cloth­ing as well as school sup­plies and ex­pens­es as the chil­dren grew were con­cerns they now con­stant­ly have to con­sid­er.

Phillip said it al­so took him a while to process the lo­gis­tics of rais­ing triplets, in­clud­ing the im­pact on their fi­nances.

High-risk preg­nan­cy

Mean­while, as Vial­va-Phillip’s was a mul­ti­ple preg­nan­cy with an ex­pect­ing moth­er at “an ad­vanced ma­ter­nal age,” it was con­sid­ered “high risk” and she had to be mon­i­tored con­stant­ly. One se­ri­ous risk was twin-to-twin trans­fu­sion syn­drome where an im­bal­ance in blood flow could de­vel­op be­tween two ba­bies if they are shar­ing a pla­cen­ta.

Vial­va-Phillip had gained about 40 pounds where­as a typ­i­cal sin­gle preg­nan­cy would usu­al­ly add 25 pounds. Car­ry­ing the ex­tra weight proved to be dif­fi­cult for the moth­er to be to­wards the mid­dle and end of the preg­nan­cy, she re­called. But she said she “ral­lied through” with­out hav­ing to take ex­tra time off from work or bed rest.

Sleep a lux­u­ry

The ba­bies made their en­trance in­to the world on Feb­ru­ary 10 this year, al­most a week ear­li­er than their sched­uled C-Sec­tion de­liv­ery be­cause their moth­er’s blood pres­sure had been high a few days ear­li­er. As pre-term ba­bies, they were ob­served in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) for sev­er­al days.

Now that they are all home safe and healthy from the NICU from which Jayann was the last to be re­leased, the most chal­leng­ing part so far for their par­ents has been sleep­ing. In­stead of be­ing able to sleep while the ba­bies rest as many peo­ple tend to ad­vise, the new moth­er of four said that was her time to take a show­er and make prepa­ra­tions for when they wake up.

“Sleep is a lux­u­ry,” she laughed, stress­ing that the ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly was very im­por­tant to them at this time.

Ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly steps in

Both the ma­ter­nal and pa­ter­nal grand­par­ents, as well as some cousins have stepped up to as­sist the cou­ple. Some are ex­pect­ed to ap­ply for va­ca­tion time to as­sist more, said Vial­va-Phillip whose phys­i­cal move­ments are lim­it­ed be­cause she will be re­cov­er­ing from the C-sec­tion for sev­er­al months.

She gives the ba­bies a com­bi­na­tion of ex­pressed breast milk to be able to mon­i­tor ex­act­ly how much each ba­by is get­ting, and in­fant for­mu­la.

“My boy, I call him my mel­low fel­low. Even if you take a lit­tle while, he will wait, not my two girls. They are feisty. They (all three) get up every three hours to feed and it’s those two girls who will wake you up to let you know three hours have gone,” she said.

Co­or­di­nat­ing colours un­til they are old enough to protest

Since they are so young, once they are fed, the ba­bies go right back to sleep.

Par­ents of mul­ti­ples are some­times con­cerned that each is get­ting enough bond­ing time and at­ten­tion. Vial­va-Phillip said that so far she has been de­vel­op­ing her bond with them while she feeds them.

She is able to tell her two ba­by girls apart be­cause Jay­la has a nar­row face and Jayann has a more pear-shaped face. Jay­don could be mixed up with Jayann be­cause his face is sim­i­lar to hers.

Whether she dress­es them in co­or­di­nat­ing colours, the proud moth­er laughed, “I’m go­ing to en­joy that phase thor­ough­ly un­til they protest.”

Dad pulls dou­ble shift, so 1st child gets sep­a­rate time

Her hus­band, whose five days of pa­ter­ni­ty leave were al­most up last week, said he was en­joy­ing every as­pect of tak­ing care of his in­fants.

“I’m al­ways ac­tive, so it’s just an­oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty to my dai­ly rou­tine,” he said. He has al­so had to pull dou­ble shifts tak­ing Jené to and from school and ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties like dance, foot­ball, and swim­ming.

“I think we’re mak­ing a de­lib­er­ate ef­fort to al­ways in­clude her in time spent with the ba­bies as well as in hav­ing her own sep­a­rate time,” her moth­er said.

They had a few “child-friend­ly” talks with her be­fore the ba­bies were born about how long her mom would have to car­ry the ba­bies, the dif­fer­ent ways that she could go in­to labour and to help her with the tran­si­tion once they were born.

8 two-ounce bot­tles every 3 hours times 3 ba­bies

The Phillips are still work­ing out the cost of ba­by milk since the for­mu­la do­nat­ed at their ba­by show­er is what they have been us­ing so far, but the tal­ly has been eight two-ounce bot­tles every three hours times three ba­bies. As for di­a­pers, the ba­bies use up a pack of 30 cost­ing $115 in about two days, so reusable cloth di­a­pers with the snaps would have to be her go-to soon, Vial­va-Phillip said.

As to what she was look­ing for­ward to when the new­borns get old­er, Vial­va-Phillip said she could not wait for their yard to be filled with the sound of hap­py chil­dren play­ing.

“Preg­nan­cy is a bless­ing and I em­pathise with any­body who has to go through in­fer­til­i­ty is­sues be­cause it could have you in a state of de­pres­sion which I strug­gled with for a while, so to come full cir­cles is a won­der­ful thing and I want to tell any­one who is go­ing through some­thing that is chal­leng­ing with get­ting preg­nant that it can get bet­ter. Keep look­ing for an­swers,” she said.