TRIPLE TREAT
Darwin mum reveals amazing tale on Mother’s Day
GAYLE and Alan Huyton thought they were having twins — then found out they were actually having triplets.
They had gone in for one of their initial scans and were told it was twins, but that the doctor had seen something else and they would need to come back in a week’s time.
“We spent that week worried and wondering what was wrong with one of our babies,” Mrs Huyton said.
“When they said there was a third heartbeat, we were just relieved they were going to be OK.”
Now the couple has three four-year-olds — Alita, Michael and Loki.
For her fourth Mother’s Day, the Durack mum is hoping for breakfast in bed.
“My favourite thing about the triplets? Definitely all the extra cuddles,” she said.
“Apart from the fact it’s stacks on mum, triplet cuddles are awesome.”
While the going was tough when the kids were really young, Mrs Huyton said it is getting easier as they grow up.
“I’ve now started a blog because I want to tell other mothers of multiple birth kids that there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. While the normal challenges for parents are present in the Huyton household, other, more unusual tests are also presenting themselves.
When the triplets were about 10 months old, the family travelled to England to visit relatives.
“We actually had to take another adult on our trip, just so we had enough knees to sit the babies on on the flight,” Mrs Huyton said.
Normal shopping trips took up to an hour longer because strangers would want to stop and chat about the triplets, and once they started moving, dressing the babies at the same time became harder.
“When they were babies we had to have charts for everything, which other families thought was weird, but was necessary for us,” Mrs Huyton said. “When you’re half asleep and getting up in the middle of the night to feed one baby, it was very easy to not have any idea which one you’d fed in the morning.
“In fact, sometimes we would pick one up in the dark, thinking we were changing the nappy of one of the boys, only to discover it was Alita.”
Check out Gayle’s blog at tripletsinparadise.com