Friday, August 19, 2011

HELP!

Well I really shouldn't have "yelled" that since it's not at all urgent, but that seems to be the question everyone is asking, "What can we do to help?" and we are glad you are all asking, because I'm sure we'll be needing it as time goes on...For right now, I'm feeling good and pretty normal (aside from the big belly with babies trying to escape through my skin), but there are certainly things that will come up I'm sure as time goes on. I'm very independent and like to be busy so it's hard for me to ask for help, but I'm becoming aware very quickly that there is only so much a girl growing triplets can do in one day. So here are a few answers to the question "What can we do to help?"


  • Hand-me-downs:  the answer is "yes." We are all about the hand-me-downs and if you have something to share or see something at a thrift sale we'd be more than happy to put it to good use with our little crew. You can check out our registry (Target, Babies R Us, and Amazon)  and see what we've got on there and if you've got the same thing (not the same design necessarily, but the same product--a swing is a swing in my book) in good condition we'll be more than happy to cross it off the registry list and reuse instead! The amount of new plastic/metal/fabric involved in all that baby gear kind of makes me cringe so even though we are more than happy to accept the new stuff, if it's reused, it would help my conscience out a bit! (That even means if you are invited to a shower, I would by no means be offended to open a used version of what you've found on our registries) 
  • Diapers-A couple of people have asked about a "diaper drive" (which is a new term to me) and we are certainly going to use a few diapers in our time, but if you haven't already gathered from my earlier posts I'm going to be very picky about what touches our little ones' skin and I'm certainly very product conscious in connection to the environment and chemicals involved. We intend to use cloth with a prefold and cover system as much as possible, but are aware if we have to leave the house with three little ones this might not work out for us so from my research I've chosen Earth's Best and Seventh Generation products as disposable ones that we'll use in a pinch. As for the cloth, the covers I'm making along with a couple of other great seamstresses in my life so we should have those taken care of! So what we could use is prefold diapers in various sizes (these are basically the good old Gerbers that everybody calls burp cloths these days). I've put a couple of different brands of these on our amazon registry so you can check that out for an idea of what they are, but they can be found at lots of different stores. 
  • Food-We have a friend that will be starting up a calendar of people who would like to bring us meals sometime after school starts when I hit my wall and can't come home and take care of that, too anymore. (I know, I know, you're all wondering where my husband is in this...he doesn't cook, he has tried, but it is an adventure in the kitchen that may not be equaled, so if we're going to feed me and  the babies anything other than frozen pizza, we could use some help in this area) I'm sure she'll send out a link to the calendar to those whose e-mails we have and if you would like to be a part of it and I don't have your contact info you can send me a message. 
  • Chicco carseats-This is a maybe, but depending on how big our babies are and how healthy they are when they arrive we may be able to bring them home from the hospital before they are quite big enough for the carseats that we've chosen. Since we have to get three at once doing it as infants and then again as 1 year olds seemed to be a daunting expense so we decided to go with convertibles that work from 5 lbs. It's possible our babies could be released from the hospital before they reach 5 lbs (which is really scary to me, but something I have to admit) so if that were to happen, we were hoping to find carseats that we could borrow for the first couple of weeks before they reach that 5 lb mark and the trick is that since we aren't going to go to mini van or station wagon land until after we've survived without my paycheck for a while this year, we have to get ones that will fit 3 across in our current cars and it seems that the Chicco Keyfits fit the criteria of a 4 lb minimum and room for three across. Like I said this is a maybe, since I dream of bigger babies, but if you have one that is not in use and would let us know so we know who to turn to in case this scenario were to unfold it would be great to know. It would break my heart to have our babies stuck at the hospital when they are perfectly healthy if they are only a different car seat away from getting home. 
For now that's all I can really think of, I'm sure there will be other things that will help as I get larger and more immobile and definitely once the babes are here, but for now getting geared up is probably our number one concern and, depending on how I feel after school starts, a meal here and there will certainly help out, too. Thanks for all the offers for help and hopefully this helps in answering that question! 

3 comments:

  1. Do you want hand me down clothes, Ariane? I have a ton that Brinkley's grown out of that I was thinking about sending our way even though I know you wouldn't need his sizes for awhile. But you may have lots of people giving you clothes since they're pretty easy, so I thought I'd ask first...

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  2. Katie-I would certainly take clothes. Most of our friends have little girls so I have a couple with clothes for us, but not many so yes if you want to send them we'd take them! Thanks! I'll shoot you a message on fb with my address.

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  3. You can borrow our Chicco keyfit carseat until the end of March if that will help!
    Rachael

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