So now that you know what happened from Michelle’s point of view, I’ll give you a similar rundown of events from a dad’s point of view. I’ll preface this whole entire thing by saying that 33 is my lucky number. It’s Larry Bird. It’s my basketball jersey from high school. It’s the number I’d load up on in roulette. I had a feeling things would happen at week 33. I don’t get to say this much: Boy, was I right.

The night started like every other night has for the past six months or so. We sat down to watch Netflix. Michelle has been awaiting the return of the show Ozark for a while now, to the point where she would get upset at Netflix for changing the picture of Jason Bateman and ‘tricking’ us into thinking a new show would be available when it was not. But finally, season 2 was here.

I’ve become a pretty good massager of feet, lower legs and backs in the past few months and being as how we were 33 weeks in, they were more important now than ever. (Part time job? Haha… we are going to need the supplemental income.) We decided to start a second episode and see how far we could make it before our eyelids got the best of us.

Michelle had already gotten up to pee a couple times. This in itself is a process when you are 33 weeks pregnant with triplets. Many times she would refuse the help to get out of the couch because she’s a badass.

I had my hand on her stomach and it felt like Baby A was doing the electric slide (for the older audience) or (for the younger audience) the Kiki challenge. Michelle said she had to get up yet again which was surprising. It felt like she had just sat down, but she insisted she had to go again. She refused help as usual and walked to the bathroom. She grumbled something about needing new underwear because she’d probably just peed herself.

As soon as the bathroom door closed she called me to her. I knew something was off. The dancing baby. The ‘peeing herself.’ The tone of her voice. It didn’t add up. When I opened the door, it really added up. It was time to go. Michelle had lost a LOT of blood and was still hemorrhaging more.

She asked me to run upstairs to get something to throw on to go to the hospital. I ran upstairs, panicked, grabbed something (that was most likely not the thing she wanted) and went back. There was even more blood. Michelle was done calling her doctor and now on the phone with emergency services. She was shaking. I was shaking. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t deal well with blood and looking back on it I think it was just adrenaline that kept me from fainting.

I called our neighbors, Nate and Beth. They had agreed to be our night time emergency contact if we had to leave the house with Elise sleeping. They came over in a heartbeat. Nate even helped get the stretcher in and out of the house. (They seriously are the best neighbors ever…more on them and our other wonderful friends and family will have to be its own blog soon.)

I called Michelle’s mother and she said she would be by to take care of Elise immediately. At least I did a couple things right.

Sacopee rescue got there quickly and I met them in the driveway to let them know we the situation and add the additional detail of the sleeping toddler on the second floor. Owen and Mike came in and were extremely calm, quick, professional. They got Michelle on a stretcher in a matter of minutes and we were out the door, leaving behind what looked like a scene from CSI: Hiram in our bathroom. Owen told me to hop in because: “There is no way you are going to keep up with me.”

As calm as they were, Mike repeated to Owen three times, in three different ways that we needed to get there quickly. Owen followed direction really well. Full lights. Sirens. “We’ll just try to wake up all of downtown Standish,” said Owen. There were times I couldn’t see the end of the speedometer from my point of view, I just knew the trees were flying past the window at an unbelievable rate.

Along the way, Owen tells me how great it is going to be to have triplets. He is the older brother of triplets (How weird is that?) and said at first it is going to be a crazy amount of work, then it’s just going to feel normal after a while. Considering the speed of the drive, the situation with Michelle and the fact that my adrenaline and already overflowing, Owen was able to calm me down and we even shared a few laughs.

Long story short, we got there in just over a half an hour. Basically half the time it normally takes.

The good news, upon arrival at Maine Med, was that Michelle has mentally prepared me for what was about to happen. In a very Belichick like way, she had gone over with me some possibilities about what could happen so I was ready for whatever I could see. She did, at one point, mention that bleeding to death was possible with placenta previa. That is a phrase you don’t forget. It flashed in my brain in neon lights as we got up to the Labor and Delivery Unit.

If Michelle was stressed, it did not show. The doctors and nurses were moving quicker than usual and I could tell by the speed with which things were happening that they were concerned. A strange look when they moved Michelle from stretcher to bed told me that they were nervous just like I was, but professionalism had to win out.

Baby A had a heart rate that was much lower than they were comfortable with so we were off to emergency C-section. I had this whole idea of holding Michelle’s hand while this was happening. I got up to leave with her and the nurse looks at me and just says, “You have to stay here. We’ll get you when they’re ready.”

So I sit. This is not how I pictured it. By this time Michelle’s mom has arrived back at our house and Elise is still out cold somehow. (This is the only part of the night I wish to repeat… the sleeping two year old part.) I don’t sit for long. I get up and start walking, pacing, whatever. A mere ten minutes later a nurse says to me, “Oh, they’re all out. They’re okay!” This was a huge relief, but I didn’t know how Michelle was doing.

I went up to the NICU and met a team doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists bringing Andrew up to the NICU. Many of them said, “Hi Ben!”. I quickly realized that because they were co-workers of Michelle that they knew a lot about me and I knew nothing about them besides that they were awesome and they would make sure my boys and Michelle were okay.

A second thing Coach Belich… I mean, Michelle told me, was that there would be a LOT of people in the room and that I should stay with the babies no matter what. I did just that. There were four people to a baby. Questions were being asked and answered at a rapid pace. It was basically in another language. Every so often someone would explain it to mean in layman’s terms. It was calming to know that this was standard operating procedure. (Thanks Coach/Mama!)

I stood in the middle and just watched until folks encouraged me to step in, take pictures and hold hands with them. It’s weird, even though they are your children you just feel like you should step back and let the experts work, but with some encouragement I stepped in, and had a little chat with each of my boys. Their little hands barely could fit around my pinky.

I can’t even remember what I said to them, but it was something like: “Hey little guy. I’m your papa. I’m really glad you’re here. You just keep resting and growing, okay? I love you.” It was probably more of a jumbled mess than that, but you get the point.

Three hours later I went to finally check on Michelle. She was recovering and in a lot of pain, but she is so damn tough, she was already talking about seeing them and making milk, and still worry about the condition of the bathroom that we left behind. Somewhere around 4 am we got to both go up the room with all the boys. I rolled Michelle’s wheelchair to each pod and it made my heart just melt watching her meet them for the first time. What she dealt with to get them to that point cannot accurately be described.

At 33 weeks and 12 minutes: Welcome to the circus, young Murphlets.