Support After a Brood Awakening

For Shawna Brino, one of the hardest things about raising quadruplets is managing the chaos. Like when her 4-year-olds taunt each other in the backyard.

“With three boys the same age [her fourth child is a girl], you can imagine the dynamics,” said Brino, who lives in the Antelope Valley. “They feed off each other and do crazy things. One will say, ‘Hey, I bet you can’t jump off the swing set.’ And the other ones will try it.”

Bringing up triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets can be incredibly challenging, says Brino and other parents of multiples. And that is after enduring a pregnancy that can leave many women debilitated, depressed and downright shellshocked.

To help Southern California parents cope with some of these issues, two suburban mothers of triplets -- one from Simi Valley, the other from Lancaster -- founded a support group two years ago for parents of multiples.

Although parents of twins are welcome, the group is aimed at those who have more than two at a time. At a recent meeting, all but one of the parents had triplets, quads or quints.

Members of Higher Order Multiples Support meet once a month in a conference room at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Woodland Hills, where the drama of their hectic lives unfolds as they trade information and swap hand-me-downs.

They also get some peace and quiet -- mothers leave the children at home with dad on meeting nights, or they hire a sitter.

The recent meeting began with announcements and a look back on the group’s popular summer picnic, which drew many television cameras. Then co-founders D’Anne Fraye and Tracy Lujan divided the parents into two groups.

Those with school-age children sat on one side of the room, while those whose babies and toddlers were too young to set foot in a classroom sat on the other. Most in the latter group hung on every word uttered by Dale Sua of Simi Valley, who raised her 19-year-old triplet boys without benefit of support groups and Internet sites.

“My boys were in the same classes through elementary school,” Sua told the moms and dads. “One year I agreed to separate them, but the homework and class projects were overwhelming. And the field trips

Fraye and Lujan said they wanted to provide a comfortable, low-key environment where parents could express their concerns and fears with others who could relate to their frustrations.

“Sometimes you just need someplace where people don’t look at you like you’re crazy,” Brino said. “Parents of single children don’t understand.”

Although several national organizations hold annual conferences and connect parents of multiples over the Internet, “you don’t find the nitty-gritty how-to’s,” Lujan said.

While multiples were once rare, the U.S. multiple birth rate, meaning three or more children born at once, soared from 37 live births per 100,000 in 1980 to 194 live births per 100,000 in 1998. The surge came as women who postponed childbirth turned to fertility treatment to become pregnant. The rate has since tapered off to 181 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As mothers carry three, four and five babies to term, they find themselves increasingly isolated from a world largely inhabited by singletons and twins, said Janet Blyle, a Stockton mother who founded a national support group, the Triplet Connection, nearly 20 years ago when her triplet boys were born.

Its handbook on bearing and raising triplets is considered by many parents to be the prime authority on the subject.

“The issues are so unique, and no one else understands,” Blyle said. “It’s wonderful that they [Fraye and Lujan] are doing it.”

Expectant parents of multiples face a host of serious health and medical challenges, parents say, including:

* Reduction. Many doctors and insurance companies recommend that pregnant women reduce the number of fetuses they are carrying to one or two to lessen the risk of complications -- and to avoid the high cost of delivering multiples.

* Bed rest. Obstetricians often order pregnant women with multiples to stay in bed 24 hours a day to reduce the risk of early labor caused by physical activity.

* Medication. Doctors often prescribe medication to prevent early labor. A common one is magnesium sulfate, whose side effects include dizziness, blurry vision and loss of muscle control.

* Premature birth. Multiple babies are usually born prematurely, creating a host of medical complications. A team of specialists is usually required to deliver them in a newborn intensive care unit.

After the babies are born, parents are confronted with a new set of questions, such as:

* How do you I keep from becoming a shut-in because it’s too much of a production to take the kids out of the house? (Get a relative or friend to help you, experts say. Once you are outside, avoid making eye contact with strangers who might stop you with questions.)

* How do you breast-feed three babies? (First two, then one.)

* Where do you buy a stroller for triplets? (Order one from Italy; the U.S.-made models are too flimsy, experts say.)

* How does one parent load three babies into a car? (Gradually.)

* How do you put three toddlers to bed at the same time? (It helps to take everything out of the room except the beds to reduce distractions.)

Fraye, 37, of Simi Valley, and Lujan, 33, of Lancaster, met three years ago through Sidelines, a national support group for women who have to stay in bed during their pregnancies.

At the time, Fraye was pregnant with triplets Mitchell, Garrett and Spencer. She and her husband, Vern, also have an 8-year-old daughter, Lindsey.

Lujan and her husband, Jerry, have 6-year-old triplets -- daughters Shelby and Taylor, and son Jerry. The couple also have a 2-year-old son, Jeremy, and a 1-year-old daughter, Sierra.

Fraye, whose longest stretch in the hospital was nine weeks before delivery, said she felt like a prisoner the entire time. She wasn’t allowed to get up, even to shower.

“I felt like I had been through hell,” Fraye said. “Your whole life is taken away from you.”

Lujan could relate. Thirty-four weeks and three days into her pregnancy, ensconced at Kaiser Woodland Hills, she woke up in a panic. Something didn’t feel right.

She pulled out her intravenous lines and demanded that doctors induce labor right then and there.

They did. And they learned that two of the babies’ placentas had fused together and stopped functioning.

If Lujan hadn’t “listened to her body,” her babies probably would have died, she said.

“We’re here to show people who want triplets or quadruplets that it can be done and you can have healthy babies,” Lujan said.

When Fraye and Lujan aren’t cleaning up messes or fending off disaster on the playground, they are driving their kids around Los Angeles to various acting jobs.

About 25% of the families in Higher Order Multiples Support have children who work in show business, said Janis Brett-Elspas, a parent of triplets who volunteers as a public relations specialist for the group.

Identical twins and triplets are in high demand by producers because they can share a single role and work a 12-hour day between them, said Fraye, who worked as a talent manager in the entertainment industry before she became a full-time mom. Labor laws limit the hours a child may work on a set to six a day.

Fraye’s triplets play character Zach Brady on the TV soap opera “Days of Our Lives,” and Lujan’s trio recently wrapped up six days on the set of an Eddie Murphy movie.

Two of Brino’s quadruplets -- Lorenzo, Zachary, Nikolas and Myrinda -- play twins Sam and David on TV’s “Seventh Heaven.”

“Many of us are financially borderline, so it’s a tremendous opportunity to be able to make some money and put it away for college,” Fraye said.

Lujan and Fraye, who are friends as well as partners, hope to keep Higher Order Multiples Support going indefinitely, because it serves a purpose among a growing number of parents.

“Everyone who walks through that door,” Lujan said, “understands my life.”