My husband, Ryan, was thrilled.
We’d tried for five years before the triplets, three rounds of failed IVF, two miscarriages that we rarely spoke about afterward, each one leaving a particular kind of silence in the house that took weeks to fully lift.
Ryan had been present for every appointment during those years, holding my hand through blood draws, sitting beside me during the hardest conversations with our fertility specialist.
I remembered thinking, back then, that a man who showed up so consistently for the hardest parts of trying to have children would surely show up just as consistently once those children actually arrived.
Our fertility specialist, Dr. Whitfield, had actually warned us once, gently, during a follow-up appointment, that the stress of a difficult pregnancy journey sometimes revealed cracks in a partnership that hadn’t been visible before.
“Multiples add pressure most couples don’t fully anticipate,” she’d said. “The division of labor conversation matters more than people realize going in.”
