Bed Rest Book Review #3: I Sleep At Red Lights

I'm writing this book review at the very quiet hour of 5:30 am (even Jovian is sound asleep at the foot of our bed) and knowing that this will not always be a quiet hour. I'll have to enjoy it while I have it!

This is the first review of a triplet book, not a triplet parenting guide, but a triplet parenting memoir (I came across it accidentally when looking for a multiple parenting guide I'd heard about on Amazon). Bruce Stockler is an editor soon to be freelance writer/stay at home dad to a 2 year old with triplets on the way at the opening of I Sleep At Red Lights and he takes us through to when the trio are about 5.

The delicate balance of a home built on the schedules of triplets is portrayed in all its chaotic glory. Never once do we forget that when triplets enter your life, you are outnumbered instantly. I had to laugh at the "praise" for Stockler's book on the jacket that talked about the "hilarious" look into a family with triplets. I'm pretty sure that Stockler would agree looking back that much of the world of raising triplets is filled with humorous anecdotes. Looking forward, however, as a future parent of triplets, this humor is also peppered with moments of pure horror! (We still have to survive it, before we can look back at it and laugh...) This may be a better memoir to have read once the boys were in school when we could share in the memories with Stockler instead of realizing what we have to wade through!

As a book review for the general public (not the future parent of three, with a deer in the headlights look spread across her face), the memoir is a fun read complete with all sides of the parent/child relationship. It is not, as the jacket reviewers would have us believe, front to back laughter; it is funny, but also touching, frightening,  and very real. I truly did laugh and cry while reading this book...although if you've read my last post, the crying may be a little more free flowing with the pregnancy hormones and I'm not sure if this would have drawn for tears at a different time in my life!

As an avid reader, I don't know that I would suggest for everyone I know to go find this book, but it's old enough to get it for a penny on Amazon and if you have multiples in your life, I'm sure you would enjoy this little gem.