THE Macaskill triplets are preparing to go to the `big school'.

Eleven-year-olds Hannah, Laura and Rebecca will start at Salendine Nook High School in September.

Mum Louise, of New Hey Road, Marsh, said the girls were excited but apprehensive at the same time.

"The Salendine Nook school is so vast compared to Reinwood Junior at Oakes. But I am sure they will be fine," she added.

The girls are the best of friends - despite the odd fall-out.

Louise said: "They are very protective of each other, even though they fight among themselves. They just don't like any one of them being told off.

"If we tell one of them off, the others will stick up for her."

Louise was 30 when the girls were born through IVF.

"Thankfully, they were all healthy," she said. "Hannah weighed 4lb 11oz, Laura was 4lb 8oz and Rebecca was 4lb 7oz."

Louise thinks it was her laid-back attitude to the treatment that helped her and husband Andrew achieve success. "I work as a district nursing sister, but I'm afraid I didn't do everything by the book during the IVF.

"You're supposed to take the injections at specific times, but with my shifts I was sometimes three hours late. So I was very lucky!

"But I would do it all again," she added.

"Sometimes I wish I could go back for a week to when they were babies, because now I would be a lot calmer and know what to do because the girls were my first - and only - children.

"Now, there is never a quiet moment. They are very boisterous. They're not the kind of girls who want to wear pink, frilly dresses."

Louise managed to go back to work when the girls were 12 weeks old, thanks to support from her mum and sister and Andrew, a driver.

And somehow she has also managed to complete a degree from Huddersfield University and is now a community specialist practitioner.

"Once they were in bed I used to get my books out and start working. I got there in the end," said Louise.