For me the challenges far, far outweighed the joys, at least for the first year. I'm a stay-at-home dad of triplet boys who are now two and a half.

What made the first year so tough was that we didn't think it would be so difficult to care for triplets. My wife's mother came to stay with us the first month and we thought three adults were plenty to take care of three babies. Boy were we wrong.

Lack of Sleep

Here's why. Newborns have to be fed every two hours. If you're lucky, they will come home from the neonatal intensive care unit (where all preemies go before they're sent home) only needing to be fed every four hours. But that's still six times a day, including during the night.

Newborns also have their schedules reversed. This means they sleep during much of the day, but will start screaming their lungs out at night, when you and your spouse are most exhausted.

One adult per baby is not enough because that is the minimum required just to comfort newborns during their wake time (we were carrying ours around in Baby Bjorns constantly). And you still need someone to do laundry, cooking, and all the other chores.

We became so stressed out that my mother-in-law and I got into a huge fight, and we almost sent her home. As you can imagine, my marriage suffered too.

It wasn't long before I was calling every member of my family (who all lived out of state) begging them to fly over and help out. Thankfully, they came and rescued us. Especially helpful was my mother, experienced in raising four boys only one to two years apart in age.

Our church also pitched in. They sent volunteers over, two at a time, every day, for more than a month.

Things got much easier once the babies slept through the night, but that took months to happen, and still our children would wake up every now and then (even today.) But it was nothing like it was when they first came home.

My wife had to go back to work, of course, and so that left me with the infants during the day. This is when I first got a real taste of what it's like being a stay-at-home dad.

Feelings of Inadequacy

My initial feeling was of being worthless. Because being a caretaker brings in no money, I had no way to judge how I was doing, and so I felt useless.

I quickly came to realize, however, that I was SAVING the family plenty of money, because if it weren't for me we would have had to hire nannies round the clock - that translated into tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Also, of course, I was benefiting

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about The unique joys and challenges of stay-at-home dads?
We want to hear your view. Write now!