Relative Invasion Triplets Launch Their Early Arrival From Spokane Relations’ Home

This is the spring Wende and Tom Barker will never forget - the year their home became the staging area for the birth of triplets.

Friday’s fine, said Wende Barker, scheduling our visit.

“There’s not too much going on. As a matter of fact,” she went on encouragingly, “you’ve picked the one good day.”

Not too much going on?

Eight house guests filled the Barkers’ Foothills home last week - including three babies so young they haven’t yet yawned, eaten and slept their way to their proper due date. (They were supposed to have arrived on June 18.) Grandparents, a great aunt and the triplets’ parents filled out the crew of visitors.

Alex, Bryce and Calder are Wende’s nephews. They are uncannily good babies, healthy and happy. Their parents, Marianne and Vaughn Hutchins, live near Eureka, Calif., where the hospital lacks the sophisticated equipment needed to safely handle triplets.

So, when Marianne, 39, and Vaughn, 43, learned she was pregnant with triplets, they studied their options. San Francisco or Spokane? They chose Spokane, because of the combination of family and medical facilities here. Marianne, an ob-gyn nurse, arrived in Spokane at the beginning of March.

“We went to my first doctor’s appointment in a snowstorm,” Marianne said, traces of her native Australia still clear in her voice. On March 31, their due date 11 weeks distant, the babies came. Vaughn, a photographer, arrived 12 hours after their birth.

Each weighed nearly 3 pounds. They were so small that Vaughn could slip his wedding ring over Calder’s wrist and up to his elbow. Complications have been non-existent. They stayed at Sacred Heart Medical Center for 8 weeks to give their lungs time to develop. At nine weeks, the boys have doubled their weight on Marianne’s milk. (Yes, she’s managed to nurse all three.) While they were in the hospital, she built up a bank of breastmilk - 100 2-ounce bottles of milk in the freezer at home.

The boys are not identical. Bryce’s dark hair marks him. And Calder has the profile of a tiny Roman senator.

“This one is the big one now,” Vaughn said, cradling Calder on his lap.

“No, this one,” Marianne said, rewrapping Alex.

Vaughn laughed. “Confusion is our standard state,” he said.

At mid-morning, the grandparents from San Clemente, Calif., and the great aunt from Connecticut announced they were off to Lake Coeur d’Alene. Wende had already left, to attend a funeral and run last-minute errands for Monday’s East Valley High School senior all-night party. Committing hundreds of hours this winter and spring, she directed the parents’ committee that organized the all-nighter.

The house grew quiet. The triplets slept on their parents’ laps or crossways in one bassinet.

“They love to snuggle with each other,” Marianne said. “They really are happiest when they’re close.” Co-bedding, it’s called, in medical terms. Marianne had heard of the practice through a nursing friend and, once the triplets were off oxygen at Sacred Heart, she got the OK from the triplets’ doctors to try it.

“You should have seen it. I think every nurse on the floor flocked around to see the triplets all in one crib,” Wende said.

Wende, 51, pooh-poohs the idea that she’s doing anything unusual.

“People have said to me they think it’s so wonderful that I’m doing this. But if I didn’t have such a wonderful sister-in-law, it wouldn’t be so easy.

“I had her picked out as my sister-in-law before Vaughn did,” she said.

“It’s been like having a sister or a really close friend around.”

Neither she nor her husband Tom hesitated at the plan, Wende said. Their home has four bedrooms, and the oldest of their two sons moved out on his own this spring, so space was no problem. When all the babies cry at once, as they occasionally do, Vaughn takes one, Marianne takes the second, Wende takes the third - and Tom can always retreat to his shop. “He’s not a baby person,” Wende said.

She jokes about the half-hour drive from the Foothills to Sacred Heart.

“Of course, I didn’t know I’d be driving to the hospital every day for two months. I just didn’t expect the babies to come early.

“But I’ve discovered so much about the city of Spokane. I found Cliff Drive for the first time in 20 years!”

When the triplets go home, in July, Wende will caravan down with the family and stay a few weeks.

“The only problem is, I’ve grown so attached to the babies.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (1 color)