At this time twenty six years ago, I was pregnant with triplets. I had had a surprisingly uneventful pregnancy, that is, if you don’t count how it was achieved, the initial ultrasound that revealed three babies, the perinatology (high risk) practice my ex-husband and I frequented in the intervening 7-8 months, the eventual weeks of bedrest at home followed by a week in the hospital during which the babies received steroid injections to strengthen their premature lungs, the emergency C-section that brought them into the world at 32 1/2 weeks gestation, and the subsequent 2-3 weeks spent in the special care nursery until they were each ready to come home, healthy and strong, albeit small. What I mean by uneventful is I felt amazingly good throughout, never had morning sickness, and managed to keep working until essentially the last trimester. I felt so unpregnant in the beginning, in fact, that finding out the sex of the babies is the first thing that really made the whole situation feel real. I hadn’t been feeling anything, good or bad, up to that point. Finding out that Baby A, squished between the other two, was a girl; Baby B, in prime position for a normal vaginal delivery, was a boy; and Baby C, up in the “penthouse apartment” of my uterus, was a boy, was the first time I really “felt” their existence. I’m not talking about feeling them kicking…that came later, and plenty of it. But knowing what they were was a turning point. (It makes me smile to recall my Cuban in-laws referring to all of them after that as “the boys and the baby.”)

Every year as the anniversary of their birth approaches, I am visited by reminders of that time in my life. One is orange season. Since this time of year corresponds with the height of orange freshness, I naturally ate oranges during my pregnancy. After I told a friend how much I had been enjoying (craving?) them, it wasn’t long before a crate of Florida oranges was delivered to our house. I specifically recall eating them at work and peeling them at my desk while in conversation with coworkers. Who knew the simple act of peeling an orange would end up annually stirring up such a strong time-and-place association with my pregnancy. (The coincidence wasn’t lost on me, by the way, that Olivia Colman’s character, Leda, in The Lost Daughter, also had a poignant reminder of her experience as a mother that involved peeling oranges. Highly recommended.)

For many years, another annual reminder of my time on bedrest at home shortly before being admitted to the hospital for monitoring, has been the Westminster Dog Show. I recall struggling to comfortably lay on the leather couch in our living room and spending more than one day watching the preliminary “variety” and “breed” levels of the competition that preceded the prime time broadcast of the top awards. Joe Garagiola was memorable as one of the commentators. Sadly, the pandemic has impacted the show for the last two years so that it hasn’t aired during its normal time. I’ve missed it, but it remains a meaningful reminder of that time 26 years ago nonetheless.

It’s been interesting to realize that although these reminders from the external world help me recall my pregnancy each year, I really have very little in the way of my own documentation and/or reflections of that time. I regret that. I do have some ultrasound pictures–the old fashioned, not 3D kind–and little reminders from the hospital after they were born. But not much about what I was feeling or thinking about as my stomach grew bigger and their presence definitely became more felt. I’m sure there was a mixture of excitement, apprehension, and anxiety about how we would manage with three newborns at home. As it turns out, we managed quite well thanks to the loving assistance of friends and relatives who signed up for regular feeding “shifts.” Hmmm…I’m realizing at this moment how satisfying it was for me to set up that spreadsheet, along with the one those volunteers used to record input and output for each baby. Ever the organizer of information…

What makes me sad today is not being able to tap into the feelings of what it was like to be pregnant at that time. I could say it’s because the world was different then, that the technology that is so much a part of our everyday lives now and that makes it possible to instantly capture thoughts and feelings on our phones or in an app, hadn’t yet permeated our world 26 years ago. That may be true. And yet, I have journaled on and off throughout my life, with paper and pen; you would think this might have been one of those times. But apparently, I kept it all in my head. All the more reason for this blog, to capture some of my present thoughts and feelings to look back upon in the future. It won’t bring back those from 26 years ago, but may at least satisfy my–or others’–curiosity in the future about what I was thinking about in 2022.