The last time we sat down with Martha Sugalski, she had scaled back her busy days to the most basic of activities – attending her kids’ sports, doing the news and growing “the bumps,” as she affectionately nicknamed her triplets in the womb.
We recently visited Martha and her big family at their Lake Mary home. With a college student, a high school student, a middle school student and three mobile babies, there is no scaling back these days. Martha is as busy as ever, and she couldn’t be happier.
It is organized chaos in Martha Sugalski’s home. Twenty-year-old Chase lies on the floor so his baby sister, Holden, can crawl on him. Thirteen-year-old Spencer snaps a selfie with baby Heaton. And sixteen-year-old Maxwell tries to keep baby “Wild-Man” Wilder from closing his tiny fingers in the dresser drawer he methodically opens and closes, opens and closes.
Then Maxwell is holding a puppet book and tickling Heaton with the puppet, and Chase is helping Holden, in her fru-fru dress, onto a riding toy, and Spencer and Wilder are pushing a loud, popping toy on wheels. In another room, Rob is wrapping up the final details for the first big family vacation since the triplets were born. The caravan of three vehicles will leave the next day to cart all the people and baby gear to the beach rental.
Martha is especially grateful for the health and normal development of all three babies. Born by C-section at 33-and-a-half weeks, identical twins Heaton and Wilder were just over and just under five pounds each, but sister Holden was only two-and-a-half pounds and had to spend more than five weeks in the NICU.
After a phone consultation with the nurses in Atlanta, Martha began using the Moms On Call system. They moved the crib to the nursery and set up the video baby monitor. They bought a white noise machine, which they cranked up for naptime and bedtime. And they swaddled the babies for sleeping. That combination of advice worked for Martha and Rob, and before long the babies were sleeping through the night – just in time for the end of maternity leave and Martha to return to the WESH2 anchor chair.
Now, the babies stick to a pretty tight schedule, napping twice a day and going to bed at 8:30 every night. When they are awake, though, they blend right into life with the rest of the family. “Yes, we go to Publix. Yes, we go out to eat. This is our family. We do what families do,” Martha laughs.