By Lisa Chmelecki,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – With one newborn and five kids from previous relationships, Ron Teague and Karen Andrea Spearrin were ready to stop.

Teague, 38, called a doctor about having a vasectomy.

A day after his first consultation, Spearrin got the news. She was pregnant again.

The couple couldn’t imagine affording another baby. They had just moved to a new apartment on Knox Street and Teague’s construction job was barely paying the bills.

They decided to explore their options. An ultrasound at an abortion clinic put an end to their dilemma. They were told they were having twins.

“We knew we couldn’t go through with it,” Spearrin said. “It would have been double the tragedy.”

Or at least, double is what they thought at the time.

Two weeks later, during another ultrasound, the technician pointed to the two fetuses on the screen, then continued to roll the scope along Spearrin’s belly.

“Look what I found,” she said.

There they were: one, two, three, lined up perfectly across the screen.

The couple didn’t talk the whole way home.

“He was white as a ghost,” Spearrin said about her boyfriend. “We were both in shock.”

Two weeks after bringing Erin, Nathan and Tyler home from the hospital, Spearrin still couldn’t believe it. The odds of giving birth to triplets without taking fertility drugs are about 1 in 8,000.

“I never expected anything like this to happen,” she said as she cut pieces of meat for beef stew. Teague was sitting at the kitchen table, cradling Erin in one hand and using the other to break up Fruit Loops for their 1-year-old, Brady.

The new song by rap artist Eminem was blaring from a bedroom in the back of the apartment. Teague’s 14-year-old daughter was listening to it while getting ready to go to the mall.

As always, Spearrin had the baby monitor within arm’s reach.

For now, the newborns share a crib in the couple’s bedroom. Spearrin keeps a detailed log to track when they eat, pee and poop.

“Sometimes, when we’re tired, we’ll write down that Tyler ate, when it was really Nathan,” Teague said. “But they always let us know.”

Tyler and Nathan are identical (their embryo split to turn a set of fraternal twins into three babies). A tiny birthmark on Tyler’s eyelid helps the couple tell them apart. But, at 5 a.m. on less than two hours of sleep, the spot isn’t easy to find.

So they painted his big toenail red.

Terrible twos

Spearrin and Teague do what they can to make life easier. The bottles – 16 for the triplets and six for the 1-year-old – get filled every night. A week’s supply of diapers (about $90 worth) are always stacked and ready to go, and the babies’ sleepers and blankets are neatly piled in their drawers.

“I don’t have time to lose things,” Spearrin said.

The couple buys food in bulk to lessen trips to the store. They share one car, a small, rundown Cutlass Sierra, and they haven’t been able to afford double-seated strollers.

Every few days, they try to let each other sleep for four consecutive hours. They’ve discovered that they can go on less than three a day.

“We manage to have fun even though I can’t see straight half the time,” Teague said.

After putting Erin back into the crib, Teague picked up his 1-year-old and tossed him on the coach.

“Body slam,” he screamed, as the boy cracked up.

The couple relies on food stamps and other assistance, but Teague plans to return to work as soon as life is more settled.

“I’m worried about coming home from work and finding her pulling her hair out,” he said.

Spearrin’s worries are different.

“The terrible twos, that’s what I think about,” she said. “That’s going to be rough.”

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