Triplets rearrange couple's life

Besides the clamor of three kids the same age, Bruce and Lisa Stout had to deal with switching traditional roles.

By PAMELA GRINER LEAVY

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 3, 2000

CLEARWATER -- Make no mistake, Bruce Stout said: Being the stay-at-home dad for triplets can be tough.

But doing the hard work of parenting every day helped Stout through the difficulty of a career-ending knee injury. Six months after he took disability from his job as a Tarpon Springs paramedic, his wife, Lisa, gave birth to triplets.

She went back to work. He stayed home with the boys.

"There was nothing romantic about it: I felt tremendously overwhelmed," Stout said. "There were also problems with depression -- not Lisa's, but mine. I realized I was never going back to work as a paramedic and I had to accept it."

Today, almost nine years after their births, Eric, Brad and Craig are honor students who just earned black belts in tae kwon do.

Stout proudly shows off a letter from the editor of Tae Kwon Do Times saying the magazine never has heard of triplets achieving such an honor.

Ask Stout about the day they were born and he gets tears in his eyes and has a tough time talking. In the delivery room to coach and support Lisa, Stout asked to deliver Craig, the last of the infants to emerge.

"The doctor asked me what size gloves I wore and moved over," said Stout, who had delivered about 40 babies as a paramedic.

Craig was "absolutely the most special baby I've ever delivered," he said. "It's as real as yesterday."

Odds were against the Clearwater couple ever having children. In 1989, Stout, then 39, traveled to Shands Hospital in Gainesville for microscopic surgery to reverse a vasectomy. Doctors didn't hold out much hope, advising him that the success rate for men in his age group was about 25 percent.

The procedure, described by Stout as "pretty rugged," worked. But his sperm count was low. Samples of Stout's sperm were used to artificially inseminate Lisa, who was 28.

She also was placed on a drug designed to enhance estrogen production. A side effect of all this, they were told, was increased chances of multiple births.

Eric, Brad and Craig were born July 5, 1991. They each weighed about 3 pounds, but they were in good health.

"They got their independence a day late," Stout said, laughing.

Stout laughs now, but there was trepidation for the couple on that day.

Because of Stout's knee injury, his own son would be the last baby he would ever deliver. His new role would be to stay at home and take care of the children.

After four weeks of maternity leave, Lisa returned to her full-time job in the radiation physics department at Morton Plant Hospital. Every night she returned home with a cooler of breast milk.

"We figured Bruce injured his knee for a reason," said Lisa, who works as a dosimetrist, a radiation planner for cancer patients. "We aren't super-religious, but we believe in God. We thought, "This must have happened for a reason. We will just do role reversal.' "

For the first six months, the triplets were on what Stout calls a "feed, water, change, back to bed" schedule.

Honor students at Curtis Fundamental Elementary School, the boys now enjoy golf and surfing the Internet on their home computer. Each has his own distinctly different bedroom. Their pet menagerie consists of three ferrets, a gerbil and African gray parrot. Stout stresses that the triplets, who are not identical, never have been dressed alike. Although they are extremely close, he and Lisa want them to grow up as individuals.

"My biggest challenge is keeping up with them," Stout said. "I never want them to see me as old. Because of my knee, other kids' dads can do things I can't do, like go out and play football. I can't take them to movies because I can't sit still that long very well."

Stout volunteers as a room parent at Curtis Fundamental. He picks the boys up from school and is home to collect one of the boys from school if he gets sick.

"I think he's a really good dad," Lisa Stout said.

"Bruce is a man in a woman's world," she said. "They are looking for a "room mother' at school, a "clinic mom,' a "reading mom,' a "cooking mom.' Bruce can do all these things, but it's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole because society doesn't think of a father doing these things."

But Eric, Brad and Craig know that he does.

Asked what kind of dad their father is, each boy answers: "He's always here for us."

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