Yes. There is an organization in our area called Full House MOMS, but they also have ways to socialize and problem-solve online.
www.fullhousemoms.com
fullhousemoms.com/membership-benefits/
If you live near Portland, Oregon, they have all sorts of socializing opportunities and a very helpful periodic consignment sale. If you don’t, then in addition to looking online for groups in your area I’d take a gamble on contacting groups not in your area to see if they know someone who knows someone near you. Parents of multiples stick together, having been in the same boat! Joining a club for parents of multiples is very helpful, especially if you have one locally. (Expect to need that until they’re maybe three or four years old.)
We had twins who will graduate high school this spring. You will get through this and you can even have a lot of fun.
I’d suggest attaching everything the two of them could pull over on themselves to the walls very securely before they start walking because
mobile multiples work together, including one running a distraction for the other two. We had all ceiling lights: no lamps and no furniture that two small children could move working together. Our twins decided they liked all of our chairs to be shoved up against the front door and besides we didn’t want one to be able to get up onto the dining room table via a chair while we were changing the other, so we kept the dining room chairs attached to each other under the table when we weren’t sitting in one.
You’ll find that parents with boy-boy-girl twins will have all sorts of strategies of their own to suggest for all sorts of situations. If nothing else, they can tell you it is OK to baby proof the daylights out of your house and then occasionally lock yourself in the bathroom for a just one moment to yourself out of the fray.
We were taught “one body (caretaker) per baby until they are 12 weeks old.” In other words, you have to have help. Again, asking those who have figured out how to handle three small children when you only have two hands will be the most help. It can be done, though.
People get their triplets happily through high school and sometimes even find the advantage in always having all three of your children attending only one school every year. One school program to go to. One place to pick them up and drop them off. They’re all eating mush at roughly the same time, then in high chairs with finger food at roughly the same time, then ready for the same kinds of vacations at roughly the same time.
Train them to stay in their chairs during meals for a meal time as long as a restaurant meal time takes by giving them something to do while you get dinner on the table. Then, if it turns out that they have the ability to focus and stay in a chair, you can take them to any restaurant you want. You will thank yourself for doing that! If nothing else, you’ll have a very good idea of which restaurants they’ll tolerate and which ones would be a very bad idea. We taught our children that everyone would notice how they acted in restaurants and everywhere else, because they’re twins. They’re going to be celebrities. It is much more fun to be the celebrity that people love to see coming back to visit again.
You really do have to look at it as three children at once instead of three children with three different ages, which gives you some advantages and some disadvantages. It isn’t fair to the children to compare the work of having one child with the work of having three.
OH–my number one thing I wish I’d done is to get my children used to some certain babysitter or babysitters before they started that stage where they didn’t want anything to do with a stranger!! I won’t go into the details, but you want to be ready for that stage by having some people to help you that your children have become well-acquainted with, preferably someone who’ll be available until they grow out of that stage.
While you are in the toughest stage, from when they start to walk until after they can talk and take themselves to the toilet, remember it does get better once they’re verbal and potty-trained. Then you have children who have someone to play with and a reason they don’t need any video games to keep themselves occupied.
)
Just imagining having triplets myself gives me an imagined taste of both (though for me I think mostly excitement).