Being a mum of triplets is a lot.
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For Canberra mum Jasmine Bourchier it is the "extremes of everything" to get the best for 11-month-old trio Arlo, Levi and Eilish.
"Initially, it's the shock factor of survival mode and being able to literally make sure you're meeting their immediate needs of food, sleep, hygiene, general health, but then it's on top of that of their development," she told ACM, publisher of this masthead.
"Having said that, though, there's extreme highs and I would still not have it any other way. The joy is unimaginable and we are very lucky."
For multiple births in a cost-of-living crisis, there is an added cost to basic such as formula, food and clothes. A new report from the Australian Multiple Birth Association, Multiples Unfiltered, highlights the costs and the mathematical challenge that it takes on average 28 hours and 12 minutes per day to look after triplets.
The costs of twins (five times) and higher order multiples (13 times), were found in the report to be higher up to the age of one than those of a single child.
"It cost us $2000 just to re-engineer new anchor points into our people-mover, a car which was a hand-me-down from my family, because we could not afford a bigger car so quickly," Ms Bourchier said.
"On top of that, the cost of wages for nannies is insurmountable because there is no way I could do this by myself and I accept that I can't do it all and that is for my mental health and wellbeing just as much as theirs."
As well, her paid parental leave has "dried up" and her family is pulling thousands of dollars out of savings every week in the last few weeks to get by.
Adding to this, childcare places, already difficult for parents of single children to secure, are much harder to find for those with multiples.
The Multiples Unfiltered report was released on Thursday in a bid to get the Albanese government moving on a long campaign for recognition and to get better assistance for families with multiple births. It found childcare was not affordable for 67 per cent of parents of multiple births.
It comes after the government passed legislation to progressively increase Commonwealth paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2026 as well as introduce concurrent leave for both parents to take at the same time. The government has also flagged a major uncosted pre-budget measure to pay super for parents on the taxpayer-funded leave.
The report found mums of multiples needed more financial support, more hands-on support and partners helping at home longer, but 60 per cent of partners went back to work within two weeks or less, while 78 per cent were back to work within four weeks or less.
The report recommends parental leave be extended, at a cost of $29 million a year, to eight weeks for each additional child born in a multiple birth. It recommends multiple birth families be included in the In Home Care program at a cost of just under $40 million. It also wants the multiple birth allowance opened up to include twins.
"We want additional parental leave," said the association's director Silje Andersen-Cooke.
"We need in-home care and support programs for multiple birth families and we need the multiple birth allowance to actually not be means-tested. It is currently rigidly means-tested and not open to twins. We want it to be open to all multiple birth families and not so means-tested."
For Evatt mum Annemarie Power, her eight-month-old twin boys Spencer and Jeremy were lucky to get a lot of family hand-me-downs, but the costs were high.
"A lot of nappies. I'm lucky that I've been able to breastfeed where there hasn't been the cost of formula but that would be a very high cost if we were not able to breastfeed and it has been very demanding," she said.
"It has a different cost, I guess breastfeeding, with the time and all the energy that goes into that, but I guess now that we are starting solids it adds a lot to the grocery bill.
"Coming up we will have daycare. I'm not doing that yet. We're hoping. We have got some promising, hopefully two spots where we want to go. We have had their names down since they were born. So we are hoping that comes through."
Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney was sympathetic both professionally and personally.
"These are really matters that I understand. I am a mum of twins and it is an extra impost. There's no doubt about that. You double everything. Imagine if you had triplets," she told ACM.
"Organisations like the Multiple Birth Association are fantastic. They do help with all of that. So I do understand their ask. At this moment, we don't have a formal response to that, but we certainly get it.
"I think as we try to modernise our social security system to really reflect the society that we live in, this is certainly an area we could have a look at."