Jack, the medical director of a medical-equipment company, was so thrilled, "he was giggling for days," recalls Maureen. But as she weighed the complications of suddenly adding three babies to the family, shock turned to fear. She looked for advice about possible medical problems and tips on how to feed three babies at once, but there was nowhere to turn. "I had never known anybody who had been down this road," says Boyle, 42. "There was no support network available, the Internet didn't exist, and the information we were able to gather was antiquated."
Today, despite having suffered early respiratory ailments, her sports-loving 14-year-old triplets, Nora, Brendan and Patrick, are every bit as happy and healthy as sister Meggie, 16, and brother Colin, 9. And Boyle not only survived the ordeal, she found a way to help other moms of multiples conquer the same fears she had faced. In 1987 Boyle helped found Mothers of Supertwins (MOST), a support network that uses a Web site (www.mostonline org), a toll-free telephone number and a quarterly magazine to provide information on everything from prenatal health issues to buying multi-seat strollers.
Boyle, who operates out of an office next to her East Islip, N.Y., home and personally answers many of the 30 to 50 calls her office receives each day, offers comfort as well. "These moms want someone who is going to be honest and supportive," she says. "I can put them in touch with other moms who have had similar pregnancies." And she can share her own positive experiences, like watching her infant triplets sucking on one another's hands as they slept. "Those were the little moments we'd hold on to," she says, "when we'd go for more than 48 hours without sleep."
MOST has become the nation's largest nonprofit group offering assistance to mothers of triplets or more, with members in 30 countries, six paid employees, including Boyle, and 150 volunteers. Its services have never been more in demand. The number of triplets and higher multiple births in the United States rose from 37 per 100,000 in 1980 to 173 per 100,000 in 1997, primarily because of the increased use of fertility drugs and treatments. But multiple fetuses can mean multiple problems, from the risk of preterm delivery to the psychological strain of caring for three or more infants.
That's why obstetricians around the country now refer their patients to MOST. "They need a team approach, with the obstetrician, the neonatologist and Maureen Boyle's group," says Victor Klein, a Great Neck, N.Y., obstetrician. Ann Lademann, now a MOST volunteer, recalls a night three years ago when she followed that advice and called Boyle. Lademann, now 34, was at the hospital because her newborn triplets were in intensive care. "I turned around and Maureen was there," she says. "I'd never met her. She was there to tell me, 'It's going to be okay.' "
Boyle has been inclined to help others since her childhood in East Islip. Both her mother, Mary, 65, a retired legal-aid investigator, and her father, Jim, 68, a retired high school principal, "were active in supporting the underprivileged," Boyle says. The oldest of six, Maureen dreamed of being a nun until she fell for Jack Boyle, three years her senior, at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "She wasn't attracted to me at first," says Jack. "I grew on her."
Motherhood, by contrast, charmed her from the start. When Meggie was born in 1984, two years after Maureen and Jack married, Maureen left Hofstra University, where she was pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology. "I knew that above all else, this was what I was meant to be—a mother," she says.
But when she bore triplets, she faced obstacles she had never imagined. After a pregnancy that included severe nausea and six weeks of hospitalization to prevent preterm labor, Boyle, who had not taken fertility drugs, gave birth to babies with their own troubles. Born at 32 weeks, the average gestation for triplets, and suffering from respiratory distress syndrome, Patrick and Brendan spent 10 days on respirators. Patrick and Nora were diagnosed with fluctuating hearing loss, which lasted until they were 9. And all three had repeated bouts of respiratory syncytial virus, an ailment that often requires hospitalization, until they were 4. "You'd wake up one morning and someone had sniffles, and by night they couldn't breathe," says Boyle.
MOST got its start when the Boyle triplets were 3 months old. Put in touch by their doctors and through word of mouth, six Long Island mothers agreed to gather at one another's homes to swap stories and tips. They talked of color-coding bottles, keeping babies on strict sleeping schedules and feeling overwhelmed. "It was a relief to meet people who knew what you were going through," says Maureen Smilow, 51, a mother of triplets who held meetings in her Bethpage, N.Y., home. Soon, says Boyle, "we had moms coming from as far away as New Jersey."
By the time her own triplets were in nursery school, Boyle had decided to make MOST her vocation. She set up an office in her children's playroom. "I took down a changing table," she says, "and put in a desk," Initially funded by "the bank of Jack," as Boyle refers to her husband, MOST soon began attracting such corporate sponsors as Medlmmune, a drug company. With an annual budget of $125,000, "we still struggle with finances, like most nonprofits," says Boyle.
The emotional fallout of running MOST can take its toll as well. "There are lots of successes," says Jack, "but there are also heartaches: kids who don't make it to delivery; kids who die postnatally. Every one hits Maureen hard." Sometimes, she admits, "I wonder, 'Why am I putting myself through this?' "
Then she remembers the hard-won wisdom she has to offer. Next fall, for instance, Nora, Brendan and Patrick will be attending three different high schools. "They decided they wanted to explore themselves as individuals," says Boyle. She'll be able to advise families with similar logistical challenges—just as soon as she solves her own. "Separate parent-teacher conferences, carpooling, graduations," she says, laughing. "I don't even want to think about it."
Kim Hubbard
Sharon Cotliar in East Islip
- Contributors:
- Sharon Cotliar.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
