Couple adapts to their adoption of identical triplets

Published 10:50 pm Sunday, April 13, 2008

ANDERSON, S.C. — A green beaded anklet reads “Daniel.” “Chris” is the name on the red anklet. The last one is blue, and it displays the name “Nathan.”

Save for those anklets wrapped around their tiny feet, good luck telling who is who.

“We can’t tell them apart,” said their mother, Rebecca. “We have to look for their birthmarks or use their anklets.”

In fact, she made the anklets using lettered beads for that purpose. Telling twins apart is one thing. Telling identical triplets apart is something else again.

But that’s part of the fun, according to Rebecca and Jeff Bate of Anderson. Now, weeks after they’ve had a chance to recover from a whirlwind adoption experience, they laugh about those little things, like making anklets and having about an hour to decide whether they wanted to adopt three children at once.

The couple already had adopted once. Two years ago, they worked with an adoption attorney in Greenville, S.C., and adopted a red-headed baby girl, Mary, now 2.

They decided on adoption, Rebecca said, when she and her husband were unable to conceive. She said she had thought about adoption before, and it just seemed like the natural direction in which to move.

So when Mary reached the toddler stage, the Bates decided it was time to enlarge the family. They called their attorney and told him they wanted to adopt a baby boy — one, that is. They made the call last April. By November, their attorney had found a mother in California who was pregnant and knew she could not raise a child. She was looking for a caring, Christian couple.

The wish for a boy quickly turned plural, Jeff said.

“Rebecca was going crazy on the phone when we found out,” Jeff said. “But I wanted to get past the excitement. We had quite a discussion. I was concerned about the practicalities. We thought, ‘Can we do this? Can we afford to do this? Do we want to do this?’ Then we thought, ‘Yeah. This is great.’ ”

Within about an hour, the decision was set. They had one month to transform their office-and-gym combo room into a full nursery. They went from thinking they were going to have Mary share a room with her baby brother to giving the boys a whole room to themselves.

By January, Rebecca was on a plane to California. She said she knew there was a strong chance the babies would be born before their due date. She was right. They came eight weeks early, on Jan. 13, and weighed roughly 3 pounds each.

“In those incubators, when I first saw them, I’d never seen a baby so small,” Rebecca said.

But for the most part, they were healthy. They just needed to stay in the hospital, in those incubators, to continue developing, so they could maintain their body temperature and learn to eat.

Now, Mom and Dad are learning a whole new routine — juggling four kids instead of one or the intended two.

Their church, University Baptist Church, and their family have helped ease the transition, the Bates said. Church members took care of Mary when Rebecca first flew to California and brought the family dinners each day when the Bates returned to South Carolina.

“We had this big sleep deficit and all this stuff to do when we first got home,” Jeff said. “And every four hours these little guys wanted to be fed.”

And the boys have helped as much as they could.

“So far it’s not been as bad as I thought it would be,” Jeff Bate said. “The first several weeks, they wouldn’t fuss or cry, they just slept.”

That’s changing slowly, though, as the boys continue to grow. Then the fun will really begin.