Triplet trouble growing up
Habs’ Redmond, siblings were a handful for mom
Canadiens defenceman Zach Redmond had a very interesting childhood, to say the least.
Redmond is a t riplet, along with brother Alex and sister Meghan, all born July 26, 1988. Redmond’s mother, Kim, remembers going for an ultrasound along with her mother after becoming pregnant.
“The doctor said: ‘ Oh, here’s your baby … t he heartbeat,’ ” Kim recalled during a recent phone interview. “Then he went: ‘ Oh, there’s another one.’ And my mother goes: ‘ Oh, my gosh, twins!’ Then when they got to the third one, I said: ‘ Stop! Please don’t tell me there’s more.’”
Kim l aughed when recalling the story, but raising triplets is no laughing matter. Kim called it “organized chaos” and recalled one day when all three babies were screaming at the same time and she was at her wits’ end. She reached for the phone and called an organization named The Triplet Connection.
“I said: ‘ Oh, my God, what do I do? How do I handle this?’ ” Kim said with another laugh. “And they said: ‘A baby has never died from crying.’”
Words of wisdom for any parent — especially one dealing with triplets.
Kim said the key to raising triplets is to be organized — and buy safety locks for just about everything in the house. Then she added: “Just let them be kids.”
“We had white cabinets in a brand- new kitchen where they found the black permanent markers and it was suddenly art school,” Kim said with another laugh. “But you know what? The cabinets can be replaced. It’s a memory that I still have 28 years later.
“When you’re given what you’re given, you’re blessed that they’re healthy and we didn’t know any better,” Kim added. “We never had one … they were our once and only. We have Alex and Meghan and Zachary, and we always joked that it was the beginning, the middle and the end.”
All three kids l earned how to skate when they were about three by pushing chairs around on a frozen lake near their home in Traverse City, Mich. Meghan’s favourite sports were soccer and volleyball, but the boys would stick her in net when they played hockey and fire shots at her. “We would have her protected from head to toe,” Kim said of Meghan’s goalie equipment. “She hung right in there with the boys.”
Kim said among the disadvantages of raising triplets is when one comes down with chickenpox or the flu, they all get it. Potty training meant sitting all three at the same time in front of the TV and waiting patiently for the desired result.
One advantage, Kim said, is if one kid was struggling in a subject at school, the odds were one of the other two was good at it and could help out with homework.
All three have university degrees: Zach ( marketing) from Ferris State, Alex ( psychology) from Central Michigan and Meghan ( nutrition) from Michigan State. Kim said when one of her kids phones her, she knows the others will also be calli ng soon — even though the three didn’t talk to each other beforehand.
“They’re so connected,” Kim said. “What they say about triplets is true.”
Said Zach: “My mom and dad ( Richard) did a great job. We were lucky to have them.”
There were already triplets on Zach’s father’s side of the family, while his mother’s brother has twins and her grandmother was a twin.
If raising triplets wasn’t enough of a challenge, Kim had to deal with Zach suffering a transient i schemic attack — a mini stroke — as a 15- year- old while at a hockey tournament in Toronto.
“That was very traumatic … it was life-changing,” Kim said. “You see your child one minute a normal, healthy child and he was literally paralyzed down his whole right side. He couldn’t hold a pencil, couldn’ t walk, couldn’ t pronounce his words.”
Zach made a full recovery, but gave his mother another terrible scare when he was with the Winnipeg Jets in 2013 and a teammate accidentally stepped on his leg after he fell during a practice, severing the femoral artery in Zach’s right thigh along with three muscles in his leg. Zach lost more than half the blood in his body by the time he arrived at a hospital for emergency surgery.
“At that point, I truly did say: ‘ Dear Lord, help me through this,’” Kim recalled. “I’m telling you, that young man has more drive and determination than anybody I truly know in my life.”
Despite all the struggles, Kim laughs a lot when she talks about raising triplets.
“It was a lot of fun,” she said. “It was our life. They are the light of our lives.”