ONE DAY, a Guyanese-born Signal Maintainer working with the New York Transit Authority received some good news: She and her husband, also Guyanese-born, were expecting. However, it was not until her first ultrasound that Michelle Archer found that she was expecting not one, not two, but three bundles of joy!

Amazingly, the confident mom-to-be took it all in stride. She was aware of the heavy risk factor of being pregnant with multiple births, but coped with the problem by taking to bed after only her first trimester.

Premature but healthy, Azalea, Alicia and Samuel Archer were born in a Flushing, Queens,  New York hospital after 31 weeks of gestation.

With the adorable trio, — now four years old — accompanying her on vacation to Guyana, Michelle reflected on being a special mom from then to now.

How did she cope with the stress of being a new mom multiplied by three?

“It was not easy, like everything else,” she said. “But you have to grab the bull by the horns.” Indeed, she did!

Since one human being with two hands caring for three helpless babies is too much for me to comprehend, many questions jostle in my mind for a chance to be verbalised.

For example: So what happens if all three babies are crying at the same time?  How would a mother decide which crying infant to leave lying while she tended to the others. Well, Michelle never wasted time dwelling on these specifics. She simply said, “Well, they had to wait their turn.”

Time helped. As they got older, the children could hold their own bottles. They developed different character traits as well. Azalea likes attention; Alicia is more independent and likes to be by herself more; Samuel is just Samuel. He’s a boy.

The children play a lot, and are advanced for their age, already using an Ipad computer. They are currently attending Birch Family Services in Springfield Gardens, and they can count, they know their alphabet, colours, the sounds animals make, and more.

Their mother notes that having three children at the same time can be advantageous, as she holds one large birthday party for all three of them, and they can share clothes.

I noticed that Michelle was immaculately groomed, with styled hair. She was also wearing neutral-toned makeup, and, most outstandingly, was having long, manicured nails. So I asked where she finds the time to care for herself.

She admits that it’s not always easy. For example, the nails are only for vacation. When she is at home, as a hands-on parent, she has to cook and clean. When she’s in Guyana, she spruces things up; but when she’s at home in America, she squeezes things in, like washing her hair, and doing her eyebrows when her children are at school.

It’s a sacrifice which takes away from her rest time. She works at night, and it works out well that she would be home to send her children off to school in the morning, and takes naps in the day.

The children are Guyanese at heart. “They love Guyanese food, and enjoy treats such as roti and curry and rice. They eat a lot of vegetables. I don’t give them sugar,” she said.

Michelle modestly describes herself as “an imperfect mother”; but whatever she does, she tries to do to the best of her ability. She has a lot of hopes for her children. She will not tell them what to do with their lives, she says, “but they must be of substance to society.”