Audra Jarvis of South Beloit holds her infant triplets Aiden, Brady and Alyssa in the nursery of her home.

ROCKFORD — Audra and Nat Jarvis of South Beloit have three new, beautiful reasons to celebrate this Mother’s Day.

Their names are Aiden, Brady and Alyssa, and they’re all 18 weeks old.

“From going to not being a mother to a mother of three is a wonderful experience, a great joy,” said Audra Jarvis, of her triplet sons and daughter.

She wasn’t always this excited about having three children at once, however.

“My husband was very excited, but I was in shock for quite awhile,” she said.

Once she found out she was pregnant with three, a relative told Jarvis about a Rockford group that might help with the transition into triplet parenthood: Mothers of Multiples of the Rockford Expanse, or MMORE, an organization dedicated to helping moms of twins, triplets, quadruplets and the like in the Stateline area.

Jarvis has found the advice and support she’s received from the group to be indispensable. Now she fields calls from a friend in the group who also is pregnant with triplets.

“People with singletons, they just don’t understand,” said Diane Angell of Rockford, who coordinates group membership. “You’re not only thrust into motherhood (with multiples), but you’re thrust into taking care of two babies. You feel like you’re being pulled in two different directions.”

The group was founded 50 years ago by a handful of Rockford mothers, and serves as a resource pool, support group and social organization for mothers of multiples. It is the oldest chartered club for mothers of multiples in Illinois. Events like playgroups and a biannual rummage sale can be a great place for moms of twins and triplets to find things like double strollers and twins’ clothing.

“It’s a great resource. If someone needs advice or anything … sometimes people send out mass e-mails, and get tons of response,” Angell said.

She joined the group while pregnant with twins in 2002, having just moved to the Stateline area. Her husband called the hospital to ask about resources for mothers with twins, and the hospital suggested MMORE.

“I had a really hard time when my boys were infants, and the then-president really took me under her wing,” Angell said. “We were new here — we didn’t have any family around, or friends.”

Brenda Nicholson, of Roscoe, has been a member of the group for 33 years — since her twin sons were born. She has served as president of MMORE and also a similar state organization, the Illinois Organization for Mothers of Twins Clubs.

“It’s a wonderful support group, and I’ve made the best of friends,” Nicholson said. “I don’t know if I would have made it if it weren’t for my sister mothers.”

The wealth of experience that mothers like Nicholson have to offer is a comfort to expectant moms like Erikka Coletta, a teacher from Machesney Park. Coletta is early in the third trimester of a pregnancy with triplets, and is busy organizing a two-room nursery with three cribs, while home on bed-rest.

“Twins would’ve been fine — we were originally planning for two,” Coletta said. “Having not had any children before, let alone multiples, we needed all the help we could get.”

Coletta and her husband, Peter, have found that help in MMORE.

“Everybody looks out for each other, and you have an immediate bond with these people,” she said. “You’re going through something — and they’ve gone through something — that most people don’t experience in a lifetime.”

Though she is now extremely excited about the upcoming birth of her triplets, Coletta’s biggest question still is, “Once you get these three little guys home, how do you make it work?” It’s easier, she said, being able to talk to people who have been through it before and know to tell her that she’ll go through two dozen diapers a day for three babies.

Nicholson said she’s seen increasing numbers of triplets over the years.

“It’s hard enough having two; I can’t imagine not having a third hand for three!” she said.

As it is, having to buy twice as much when twins are born can be costly, as new mom Cindy Cooper of South Beloit quickly is finding out. Cooper has 7-month-old twin girls, as well as a young son who is nearly 4 years old.

“When you have to buy two of everything, it really adds up,” Cooper said.

She appreciates the group’s warmth and diversity, and said it was easy to find out about the organization; whenever she went out with her twins, people would ask her if she’d heard about it.

“I’d be walking around stores, and (people) would say, ‘Oh, you have twins; do you know about the Mothers of Multiples?’” she recalls.

Cooper said she has commiserated with her MMORE friends about the anxiety that can come with feeling a need to care for her twins equally, but more than that, the group offers a sense of belonging.

It’s about “Knowing that you’re normal, because you’re such an abnormality in society,” she said.

Mothers like Angell and Jarvis, who now have had some experience parenting twins and triplets, enjoy being able to guide those who are just starting out.

“Now I’m kind of telling them stuff,” Jarvis said. “It’s nice to be able to help with my experiences.”

Though she was surprised when she found out she was having triplets, now that she has them, she can’t imagine life without them.

“I think it makes it easier, because this is all we knew,” she said. “This is just how it is for us.

“I wouldn’t trade any of them.”