Parents of triplets get used to doing everything in triplicate, but moving your children into three different colleges on the same day? There should be a special prize for pulling off that feat.
Parents of triplets get used to doing everything in triplicate, but moving your children into three different colleges on the same day? There should be a special prize for pulling off that feat.
Laura and Matthew Witt, of South Park, Pa., moved their triplets – daughter Hannah, and sons Matthew and Derek – into three different western Pennsylvania colleges on the same day – August 22. Hannah will attend Carlow to study nursing. Matthew will attend Robert Morris for engineering, and Derek will study information technology at Pitt-Greensburg.
“This has been a tremendous journey for so long,” said Laura. “We are just thankful for all that has happened.”
The Witt triplets’ tremendous journey began when they were born at just 24 weeks gestation – barely past the time for a premature baby to remain viable. They were 1.5 lbs., and spent the first four months of their lives in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Magee Women’s Hospital of UPMC.
“Both my husband and I are nurses, and I work at Magee, so I practically lived there for the first four months of their lives,” said Laura. “College move-in day didn’t seem possible a long time ago, but here we are in spades!”
Hannah, who will be attending Carlow, decided to study nursing and Carlow appealed to her.
“I love the small class sizes, and everyone has been so welcoming,” said Hannah, who was in the marching band and was a stage manager in the theatre department at South Park High School.
After 18 years together, Hannah said she will miss her brothers, even though they aren’t that far away. But an added bonus in coming to Carlow is that every day, when she wakes up in her ninth-floor room in Dougherty Hall, she has a great view of Magee Women’s Hospital, and a reminder of how far she has come since those early days in the NICU.
“Maybe one day I will work as a nurse in the NICU at Magee,” she said. After coming this far, no one should bet against her.