My Historic Home Was Beautiful. It Was Also Slowly Killing My Triplets.

When I first saw our home, I was absolutely blown away. The 4,500 square-foot 1906 Detroit house boasted giant historic windows, two staircases and so many doors that little kids could run circles through every floor of the house. There were nooks and crannies, tons of closets to hide in and a spacious yard.

It was perfect for kids. 

Little did I know this house would invisibly and unflaggingly poison my future children, changing my family’s lives forever. 

When my wife, Jess, and I decided we wanted to conceive at the same time for pseudo twins, we knew we would be signing up for a hard (albeit beautiful) first several years if we were successful.

When we decided to co-parent with our future babies’ biological dad, we knew we would be living a family life very outside the norm.

And when I conceived twins, giving us pseudo triplets due 10 days apart, we knew the infancy stage was going to be rough.

But we had no concept of the nightmare coming our way.

The twins, Arden and Conall, had colic, so sleepless nights and bleary days incessantly ran together. Miko (our singleton) watched as Jess and I paced the house, sang lullabies and nursed the twins incessantly.

Finally, after six months of yoga ball bouncing and noise-canceling headphones and crying right along with my babies, they started sleeping for two, then three, then four hours at a time. 

The light at the end of the tunnel looked more like hope and less like an oncoming train.

But then the train hit.

Suddenly, at eight months, sleep worsened again. The triplets had a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep. They needed help resettling every time.
Their best night was 21 wakes, and their worst night was 55.

55.

I became so sleep-deprived that I hallucinated cobwebs and shadow spiders while awake, and my therapist had to talk me through when the voices in my head were (mostly) benign, and when I should be worried.

And the triplets all became insanely irritable. They cried so much that our gentle part-time nanny — a professional day care worker who only took care of one baby at a time, while one of us parents managed the other two — cut her hours because she couldn’t endure the constant screaming.

Something was wrong.

I was dissociating, using headphones to block out the screaming so I could still comfort my poor babies without losing my mind. Guilting myself for not enjoying their fleeting infancy only compounded my stress — a vicious cycle I couldn’t escape.

We went to specialist after specialist. I researched every pediatric concern that could cause their symptoms: sleep difficulties, irritability, abdominal pain, delayed growth, anemia.

“Stop breastfeeding,” one doctor said. “Then they’ll sleep.”

“It’s because you respond when they cry,” another doctor said. “Just let them cry themselves to sleep.”

But I knew this wasn’t because I was doing gentle parenting.

Something was wrong. 

And at their 12-month appointment, my intuition was confirmed. 

Concerned, our pediatrician told us the babies tested high for their capillary lead blood level test, and we needed to go ASAP to a hospital and get a venous draw to verify.

In a few days, the results arrived.

Arden, Conall and Miko had lead poisoning.

To be honest, I didn’t know lead poisoning was still a thing. 

I knew old homes probably had lead paint, but I thought, as long as you made sure the paint wasn’t peeling and you didn’t let your child lick the walls, you’d be totally fine.

Now that I’ve learned how pervasive and insidious lead still is, I’m stunned at how wrong I was — and stunned that the information I have now wasn’t readily available to me then, as a parent with kids in the prime risk group (under 6 and in a pre-1978 home).

I didn’t know that 50% of American children and 78% of Michigan’s children have detectable levels of lead in their blood, and that there is no safe level of lead in the blood.

I didn’t know that high-friction areas (like windows, doors and floors) can’t be safely encapsulated — lead can still come through intact paint. Half of my house’s doors had lead paint, buried underneath a layer of safe paint, but it still exposed the kids to lead dust. 

Even if someone’s home is new, construction season can kick up leaded dust. My kids’ lead symptoms began before they began crawling, and their doctors think it’s because they were exposed to construction in my neighborhood.