When you have triplets, free time is a gift.

When an Instagram mum of twins posted 10 affirmations for parents of toddlers to her followers to think about when times got tough, we saw the funny side.

Numbers 7 – 10 are as follows:

7. Remember some parents have triplets
8. It could have been triplets
9. At least I don’t have triplets
10. Triplets.

Given our three bundles of joy were about to turn a year old, we could completely relate. Then the first lockdown happened.

2020 has certainly been a test of our patience, our marriage, and our sanity.

I knew raising triplets was going to be hard – but a year of isolation and lockdowns were about to us throw down some challenges.

Pre-lockdown life had two days of daycare. Because we couldn’t afford more days, we had a home helper the other three. She was our angel. And to my relief she was our energetic and bubbly third pair of hands.

We also had two beautiful aunties who did overnight stays so that we could get three full nights of sleep a week. Life was as about as bliss as it could get with triplets.

But the day Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made that spine-chilling announcement that New Zealand was going into a level 4 lockdown, our bubble was sealed. We lost our helper, any family support and all visits from the outside world as we knew it.

Our days became a routine of walks for sanity in the hope they’d nap, Covid-19 updates from Dr Ashley Bloomfield, and a dab of solo parenting while husband could continue to work so we had some income.

Oh and zoom classes for our seven-year-old daughter.

Our older child who attends a bilingual unit at her school, was now having to navigate bilingual learning with now a virtual teacher, which meant twice the amount of reading material and activities for us to decipher.

I look back and wonder how we kept up with her classes. I was definitely glad to see Suzy Cato back on TV.

There too were days that my girl needed a break from the toddler wolfpack (actually maybe they are more like the three veloci-raptors from Jurassic Park as hubby calls them), and time with Suzy in another room meant one less child to cater to even for just 30 minutes.

Yet my seven year old became the help we never knew we needed, and I remind myself daily it’s not her job to be a second māmā as she was only six at the time.

Mealtimes were something else. More often than not, the triplets would throw their freshly cooked food on the ground and wait to eat off our plates instead.

By May, between the two of us we had lost 10 kilos. We never missed visits to restaurants because we never could go out in the evenings anyway.

On the bright side, we in fact saw how much we relied on fast food. Add in a bit of stress, keto had nothing on us. Covid-19 and triplets were proving to be one heck of a weight loss scheme.

We walked religiously everyday - not just for fresh air and to get the critters to sleep, but for the comfort of seeing other tired parents around our neighbourhood who soon became regular enough we still wave to them now if we see them.

While other homes began hobbies, or joined drinks via zoom calls with friends, we watched on knowing we could not partake in anything that meant sitting still for a minute or two.

In one day, the toddlers had broken our plasma tv and new smartphone in a 10-minute window because we had rested on our laurels too long.

It’s not uncommon we would feel left out. And yet we were too sleep deprived to care too much. By night we were woken constantly by the little dummy relying infants we had created.

And even though we had to go to Starship twice this year; once for stitches and another for a three-night stay because of croup, I look back now at those painfully long nights without sleep and wonder how we ever survived.

Life with triplets is like living in a lockdown because to this day we are still without help. We just learned to continue rolling with the punches. Eat, sleep, work, repeat.

I still scull my morning coffee, but I can do so with gratefulness that we can see the year out with plenty of love and hugs, our health, and each other.