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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
HEALTH
WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2004
Couple expecting multiple birth again
The Associated Press
ANDOVER — When Nick Garcia and Kayce Weese discovered in January that Weese was pregnant again, that was shock enough. This wasn't planned. Their twins had just turned a year old. They were starting to walk, starting to climb, starting to find trouble. Older son Dakotah was 6.
Garcia works full time and goes to college at night. His wife stays home in Andover with the twins, often exhausted. Money's tight, the house shrinking.
Could they handle another baby?
"I cried," Weeas said. "But I came around and thought, 'OK, one more. What's one more?"
Then the doctor called. Weese's hormone level was higher than normal.She was either farther along in the pregnancy than they had thought — or carrying twins again.
"I cried again," she said.
Then the sonogram: One embryo. And another.
Yup, twins.
But wait ...
"Oh!" the sonogram technician cried out.
"Oh?" Weese replied, eyes wide, then squinting at the screen.
"There's another baby there."
"What gets me is the people who say, 'You don't need more kids,' or 'Shame on you' -- as if we planned it this way. We didn't plan this."
Kayce Weese Mother of triplets
Three.
Weese and Garcia, after the birth of twin boys and without fertility-enhancing drugs, are expecting triplets.
For a Caucasian-American woman, the odds of conceiving triplets without fertility treatments is about one in 8,100.
Having a set of fraternal twins, as Weese and Garcia do, doubles your chance of having twins in subsequent pregnancies. But Weese's "1-2-3" series of pregnancies — a single baby, followed by twins and then triplets — is so rare that her doctor, Van Bohman, has never seen it happen.
The triplets — identical boys (the result of one fertilized egg that split) and a girl — are due Sept. 29.
But triplet pregnancies rarely make it past 30 weeks, so Weese figures she'll be
lucky to get to August. Bohman ordered her on complete bed rest — an impossible dream with twin toddlers, but she's doing her best.
She has convinced Dakotah that the vacuum cleaner is a power tool, and he gleefully helps with the housework. The twins, Cooper and Gabriel, are easygoing and happy.
Weese accepts help, overlooks messes and counts her blessings.
"She's always been a glass-half-full type of person," said JoAnn Peckham, a longtime friend who accompanied Weese to that first sonogram in February. "If anyone can make it work, it's her."
But it won't be easy. Garcia's job as an engineering technician and his heavy course load at Wichita State University mean he won't be home much. The family needs his income, though, and the promise of a better-paying job after he earns his engineering degree.
Weeis found a helpful Web site, www.TripletConnection.org, and has been learning how to prepare for triplets. She registered for freebies, found a used triplet stroller and has collected cribs and other baby items from friends, neighbors and yard sales.
Her husband and a few friends are almost done converting the garage of the family's modest home into another bedroom to accommodate the growing brood.
It helps to talk with other parents who can relate to her joys and fears, Weese said. A mother of triplets from Colorado recently sent a long e-mail offering advice on everything from breast-feeding and baths to laundry and ordering groceries online.
Buy diapers, wipes and other supplies in bulk, she wrote. Keep a bucket of instant cameras all over the house.
Get a local high school student to volunteer -helping care for the babies, doing housework or running errands to fill a community-service requirement.
"I'll send more ideas as they come to me," the Colorado mom wrote. "It's hard to remember details about that time in my life. It was wonderful and crazy all at the same time."
Wonderful and crazy. That's pretty much the way Garcia and Weese are approaching this turn in their lives. It's the way they envision the coming months and years.
"What gets me," Weeza said, "is the people who say, 'You don't need more kids,' or, 'Shame on you' — as if we planned it this way. We didn't plan this."
But some of life's greatest blessings, she added, are unexpected.