Oh Baby, A Triple: Surviving the Rule of Threes in Parenting

It’s 3:14 AM on a random Tuesday. I'm standing barefoot on the freezing kitchen tiles wearing a Target robe that smells aggressively like sour breastmilk and pure desperation, holding a plastic pump flange in one hand and a half-empty mug of cold coffee in the other. My husband, Dave, is in the living room playing Call of Duty on mute—or so he thought—until I hear him yell into his headset, "Oh baby a triple!" into the dead of night. I almost murdered him with a silicone spatula. Right there. Just ended it all.

Anyway, the point is, before kids, that phrase was just some stupid internet gamer meme. But in the actual, literal trenches of early parenthood, the concept of a "triple" takes on a much darker, much more exhausting reality. You always hear people say the biggest myth of parenting is that the third kid is when you finally figure it all out, or that the third time you try a sleep training method it’ll magically stick. Total crap. The biggest lie about the rule of threes in parenting is that you'll somehow have the energy to survive it without copious amounts of caffeine, a few therapy sessions, and crying in your car at a red light.

Because the real "triples" of parenthood? They're survival tests. And nobody warns you about them.

Welcome to the seventh circle of hell aka triple feeding

Let's talk about the absolute worst triple of all. When Maya was born, she was tiny. Like, swimming in newborn clothes, bird-bones tiny. At her two-week checkup, my doctor, who's a literal angel but has clearly never been awake for 72 hours straight while bleeding, told me we needed to start a "triple feeding" protocol because Maya was dropping too much weight. I guess the medical idea is that you're supposed to maximize their calorie intake while tricking your body into making more milk, but I’m pretty sure it’s actually a secret government psychological endurance test.

You're somehow expected to nurse the baby for twenty minutes so they don't burn too many calories, then you immediately hook yourself up to a plastic milking machine to pump whatever's left in your sad, deflated boobs, and then you've to frantically supplement the baby with a bottle of that expressed milk or formula. All in one window. Every two to three hours. Around the clock. It's a special kind of torture. By the time you finish washing the thousand tiny plastic duckbill valves and flanges, you've exactly fourteen minutes to sleep before you start the whole ungodly cycle over again.

I was hallucinating. Like, genuinely seeing shadows move in the hallway. I read somewhere that sleep deprivation is used as an interrogation tactic, and honestly, if the CIA had just asked me for state secrets during week three of triple feeding, I'd have given them up for a three-hour nap. Dave had to completely take over the bottle feeding and the scrubbing because I physically couldn't stand up at the sink anymore. If your doctor suggests this, you've to force your partner to do the heavy lifting with the bottles, or you'll actually lose your mind.

My sister in law is an actual superhero with her triplets

And then there's the literal triple. Multiples. I only have singletons, thank god, but my sister-in-law Sarah (yes, we've the same name, it makes family group chats a nightmare) had triplets two years ago. I remember visiting her when her babies were about four months old. Walking into her house was like walking into a baby gear warehouse warehouse explosion. Just mountain ranges of diapers and strollers that looked like public transit buses.

The biggest myth with multiples is that you should "follow the baby's individual cues" for eating and sleeping. Bullshit. If Sarah let those three babies dictate their own independent schedules, she would never, ever sit down. She had to synchronize them like a military operation. If one woke up hungry, the other two got woken up and fed. Period.

I had brought her a massive stack of these Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesies from Kianao. I'm absolutely obsessed with these things. When Leo was going through his epic, up-the-back blowout phase, these were the only onesies with those envelope shoulders that actually stretched enough to pull down over his body instead of over his head, saving me from smearing toxic newborn poop in his hair. I bought like fourteen of them in different colors.

But for Sarah, they were an actual survival tool because she color-coded the babies. Baby A was always in sage green, Baby B in rust, Baby C in a neutral cream. It was literally the only way her sleep-deprived brain knew who had been fed, who had their diaper changed, and who was just screaming for the hell of it. Plus, I think I read somewhere that like almost 90% of triplets are born premature, so they've insanely sensitive skin. The organic cotton on these is stupidly soft and doesn't have those horrible scratchy tags that cause eczema flare-ups. Anyway, they practically lived in them.

You also need somewhere to safely stash the babies when you're severely outnumbered. Sarah had this massive caged-in playpen taking up her entire living room, but I had tried the Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set with Animal Toys when Leo was little. It’s... fine. Honestly, it looks like a gorgeous little minimalist art installation in the living room, which is a rare win for baby crap that usually looks like a plastic rainbow threw up. But Leo literally just stared at the wooden elephant for three months and then aggressively tried to dismantle the frame the second he learned how to roll over. It’s aesthetically pleasing, but don't expect it to magically entertain a baby for hours so you can clean your house. It bought me maybe three minutes to pee in peace.

If you're currently drowning in the newborn phase and just want clothes that don't make your baby break out in a rash, you should probably browse the Kianao organic apparel collections before you buy another stiff, scratchy store-brand onesie.

Surviving toddler rage and the Triple P method

Just when you think you're out of the woods and your kid is finally eating solids and sleeping through the night, they turn into a toddler and you get hit with the behavioral triple. The Triple P.

My doctor vaguely mentioned the Positive Parenting Program to me when Maya hit her terrible twos and decided that the Trader Joe's produce aisle was the perfect place to stage a screaming, rolling-on-the-floor protest about the color of a banana. It's supposed to be this huge evidence-based framework that pediatric hospitals swear by, but from what my exhausted brain could gather, it’s basically just a system for setting boundaries and using positive reinforcement without completely losing your shit when your kid is acting feral.

You're supposed to somehow validate their irrational feelings while holding a firm boundary, which sounds AMAZING in a controlled clinical study but is REALLY hard when you're wearing yoga pants with a mysterious yogurt stain on the knee and your child is throwing organic strawberries at an elderly woman.

It’s especially hard because half the time, the behavioral stuff is honestly just physical pain disguised as toddler rage. Like, Maya was going through this horrific molar teething phase right when her tantrums peaked. She was just constantly angry. We ended up relying so heavily on the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. It has these flat, textured edges that she could really jam all the way to the back of her mouth where the molars were pushing through, and the little bamboo detail made it easy for her chubby, furious fists to grip while she dramatically threw herself onto the rug.

It obviously didn't cure the tantrums—because toddlers are basically just tiny, drunk dictators—but I'm pretty sure letting her chew aggressively on a silicone panda saved us from at least three major public meltdowns. The silicone is food-grade so I didn't have to worry about her ingesting weird chemicals, which is nice because I already worry about literally everything else.

Parenting is just an endless series of phases where you feel entirely unequipped to handle whatever the universe is throwing at you. Whether you're juggling three premature babies, three grueling steps to feed one stubborn newborn, or trying to remember three deep breaths before you yell at a toddler... you just have to do whatever works to survive the day. And drink the coffee. Even if it's cold.

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The messy, honest FAQs about parenting triples

Is triple feeding honestly sustainable long-term?

Oh god, no. Please don't try to do this for months. My lactation consultant told me it’s only meant to be a temporary bridge—like a few weeks tops—to get the baby's weight up and stimulate your milk supply. If you try to live your life in a constant state of nursing, pumping, and washing parts, you'll burn out so fast. It's a stop-gap, not a lifestyle. Call in every favor you've from family while you're doing it.

How do parents of multiples really afford all the diapers?

Honestly, I've no idea how my sister-in-law didn't go bankrupt. They bought everything in bulk online, asked for diaper subscriptions instead of toys for the first year, and relied heavily on cloth diapers for at least part of the day when they were at home. You just sort of budget for it like a second mortgage, I guess.

Does the Triple P parenting thing genuinely stop tantrums?

Nothing stops tantrums completely because toddlers lack a fully developed prefrontal cortex, or whatever the science is. But the Triple P method seriously did help Dave and me get on the same page so we weren't undermining each other. It gives you a script to follow so when you're overwhelmed in the grocery store, you've a plan instead of just panicking and buying them a candy bar to shut them up.

How do I know if my baby’s bad mood is teething or just a phase?

With Maya, it was the drool. So much drool. She would soak through three bibs in an hour. She also started chewing on the wooden crib rail like a beaver. If they're aggressively shoving their hands in their mouth and acting like the world is ending, throw a silicone teether in the fridge for ten minutes and hand it to them. If they quiet down and gnaw on it, it's teething.

Why organic cotton over regular baby clothes?

Look, I'm not a perfect crunchy mom by any stretch—my kids eat fluorescent orange cheese crackers—but baby skin is so thin and weird. Regular clothes are treated with all kinds of harsh dyes and formaldehyde (seriously, look it up, it's gross) to prevent wrinkling. Whenever Leo wore cheap synthetic blends, he'd get these red, angry eczema patches behind his knees. Organic cotton just breathes better and doesn't have the chemical residue. Plus it holds up way better after being washed fifty times, which is guaranteed to happen.