Our Boys Are 10 Days Old

Well since I had to get up and pump anyway I figured I may as well post an update.


Noah- Noah now weighs 4 pounds5oz and is eating(or trying to eat) 3 bottles a day. The rest of the time he is still getting tube fed. He is now up to 42cc's per feed and is doing better at finishing that amount everyday. They have Noah eating every 3 hours right now. Noah no longer has any problems with his breathing and rarely has an alarm-although he will occasionally sneak one in.

Nathan- Nathan now weighs 4pounds5oz-yes the exact same as Noah. Nathan started out eating like a champ last week however he dropped off in his bottle feeding early this week and decided being fed by tube was a lot easier. They are trying to get him to take a bottle at most feeds but most of the time he will only eat about 10-20cc's before giving it up. The past 2 days have been alittle better and he has finished a cpl of his bottles,although last night when he got down to the last 5cc's he decided to throw up most of his bottle. Nathan is eating about 40cc's at each feed and is eating about every 3 hours as well. Nathan still has a cpl alarms a day but overall he isnt doing too bad- a cpl days ago he was having 10plus a day and now less then 5.

Nicholas-Well even though he was born the smallest-it seems our baby Nicholas may be our first to come home. Nicholas is eating all of his feeds from the bottle now and has been for days. He is eating about 45cc's a feed and they allow him to eat when he is hungry basically-which is about every 3 1/2-4 hours. Nicholas now weighs 4pounds2oz-just 1 oz away from birth weight-yay Nicholas!!! Our little man also burps the best! We have had a very hard week with Nicholas-it seems he has a little bit of a heart condition called Supraventricular Tachycardia or SVT for those that dont wanna learn how to say that name. Ive included a link below for those that want to learn a little bit more about it. Anyway Wednesday night his little heart decided to start beating at 300bpm and continued to do this for 26 minutes. Nicholas didnt seemed bothered by this episode and continued eating normally. The nurses called the dr after they were unable to bring his heart rate down by putting ice on his face and she had them put in an iv in case he needed meds and they also did an ekg. By the time they started the ekg Nicholas had pulled out of the episode on his own and the results came back fine and they didnt need to start the iv meds. The next day he had another episode which was 290bpm and lasted 8 minutes and they were able to get him to pull out of it quicky by putting ice on his face. The cardiologist came in to check him out and decided that he was having these episodes as a result of SVT and that if he had another attack they would begin giving him medication-which he will remain on for months to years depending on how will he does. So friday night he had another attack of about 10 minutes and 300bpm so they decided to start him on the medication. So far he is handling the medicine well and hasnt had another episode yet. As scary as it sounds, SVT is apparently not very serious and the cardiologist said it could go on for days and not cause problems in infants-AMAZING! However, we dont want that to happen because it would really wear him out and could casue other problems. So we have been learning all about how to care for him when he comes home and they will be showing us how to handle an episode and how to listen to his heartbeat to check for porblems and what signs towatch out for once he is no longer on a monitor-and if he does have symptoms they wont appear until after the episodes have lasted 24 hours. At first this really had me scared- I was so worried that this was going to cause Nicholas many problems and could even delay him coming home but we were happy to learn on Saturday that Nicholas is already ready to come home but since they started him on the new meds they would like towatch him for a cpl days just to make sure he has no problems with it-so it looks like our little man may be coming home in the next couple of days!!! Another important event that happened for him this week is that his umbillical cord stump fell off on thursday-I was shocked to see it wasnt there when I changed his diaper lol.

All 3 boys are now sleeping together in one crib and they look so cute together... its so nice to have all of them together!

Okay so that is my update for the boys-Now Mommy and Daddy. I really dont know how we are doing at the moment. Everyday seems to be going by so fast. Between Clydes 2 jobs and me pumping non stop and trying to recover from the c-section plus going to the NICU as much as possible-it seems like we are never siting still for long. Most days we are already going on 5 or so hours of sleep-ahh an outlook of the coming months. It was really hard for us to leave our babies in the NICU when I was discharged last week- I thought going into this that I would be okay but it really hit me hard- I was missing them before I even left the building. It was one of the hardest things to do as a parent-to go into a hospital pregnant but leave with no baby(or babies lol). We know that being there is the BEST place for them but it is still hard not being with them and holding them and feeding them all the time. For me its hard becasue I dont want to miss bonding with the boys. With Alex-Clyde did a lot of the feeding and he bonded very quickly with Alex-this is obvious now when Alex wont even let his daddy out the door for work...so I really want to have this strong bond with these babies and its hard to have that when I cant be with them. I know that many people (mostly all the grandparents) are dying to hold these babies but Im just not ready for that yet- I really want the bond between us and the babies to be as strong as possible before I start handing them over to others-its hard enough knowing they are getting bonded with nurses but it helps that its different nurses and not the same ones everyday. I hope all of the grandparents know that someday (soon Im sure lol) that Im gonna get tired and when that time comes there will be plenty of holding times available-its definatly not a way of hurting the grandparents-just my way of dealing with the seperation of the babies. As far as life in the NICU goes, it hasnt been too bad....most of our nurses (95%) are wonderful-they let us do our thing while we are there with the babies-we change and feed them and swaddle them and hold them and the nurses just sit back and allow us that time...however there havebeen a cpl nurses this week that have caused a little panic in our heads and I think we may be talking to someone on Monday about not having these one/two nurses care for the boys-I dont want to hurt their feelings but I just dont feel they are caring for the boys in a correct matter. The one nurse left Nathan in the crib alone and left the railing down- I was stunned...this is the nurse who was being pushy with Clyde and I about how we did everything from washing our hands to feeding and here she leaves my baby unattended with the railing down?!?! Ugh anyway-now tat Im done pumping I think Im gonna try to rest a little bit. I hope this week brings us all good news and no bad news and that hopefully all of our boys will be home real soon. I will be posting pics of them here soon ( probably the next middle of the night pumping session)!

Here is the link to learn more about SVT
http://www.med.umich.edu/mott/chc/patient_arr_sup.html

The Babies Are Here-Born January 28,2009 at 34.3weeks

Well first off Im sorry this is so late but here it is-Our Birth Story!

So it all really started Tuesday January 27th when Kierra , my mom and Clyde all had the stomach flu all day. Alexzander had it the week before so I decided Alex and I would hide out in the bedroom all day hoping to avoid the germs. Everytime I left the room Id wash my hands a cpl times and spray some lysol and then pray I wouldnt get what they all had. By 10pm I was starting to feel kinda sick-I didnt even want to drink because I didnt want to get sick. So at 3 am when I got Clyde up for work I knew it was over- I was sick! I threw up twice between 4am and 6 am and I couldnt drink anything without feeling sick. I got up to get Kierra up for school at 6:30 however thanks to the horrible snow and ice storm school was cancelled so I decided to lay back down until Clyde came home and was hoping Id feel better then. So around 8:30am Clyde finally rerturned home and I couldnt take it anymore, I was so sick and I was really dehydrated at this point so we decided to call Dr Baird and ask her what I should do. Dr Baird said she didnt want me dehydrated and that I should go into Labor and Delivery and get hooked up to an iv for some fluids and to check in on the babies. So Clyde called his mom over to watch Kierra and Alex and by 9am we were off to the hospital.
The roads were really crappy but we managed to get to the hospital by 9:30 and once we arrived we realized it was going to be a long day since the place was packed. Every room was full and I had to take a bed in triage, this tiny little bed, in this tiny little room and we had to fit 3monitors for the babies and an iv and Clyde in there-it was cramped. In fact the nurse kept knocking things on the floor lol. So the nurse got me hooked up to the 3 baby monitors and the contraction monitor and got my iv hooked up-by now it was around 11am. Finally the meds and fluids started kicking in and I started feeling a little better. Clyde then decided he wanted to multitask so that he didnt waste a day sitting in the hospital when I was just gonna be there getting some fluids for the flu and he decided to call my mom to come and sit with me while he went to go van shopping. My mom was there by 11:30am and Clyde left. During this time The nurse was having a really hard time getting the babies to stay on the monitors and she was trying everything to get them to show up. Around noon the dr finally came in and checked me out-I wasnt contracting (says the monitor) and I was still closed so he decided to help the nurse focus on getting the babies on the monitors. After almost an hour of trying to locate them with the monitor and the ultrasound machine-he decided he would call Dr Baird and ask about sending me over to the high risk Dr down the hall to get a good look at the babies. Finally around 1:15pm we were wheeled down to the high risk Dr and they started getting an ultrasound. The dr said the babies looked great and estimated they weighed between 4 and 5 pounds each and all of their heatrates were fine so he sent me back to labor and delivery to wait for Dr Bairds orders.

We got back to my room and they finally had a room open for me so they had me move into a bigger room and they hooked me up to just the contraction monitor since they knew the babies were ok. At this point I was starting to feel really sick again but they didnt want to give me anything until Dr Baird said so. The nurse told me that Dr Baird was on her way to the hospital for a delivery anyway and she would come to see me after that. So I decided to try and rest for awhile. Clyde called just after 3pm and said he was going to let his mom go home since the roads were so bad and he would just sit with the kids until we got home. Then around 3:30pm I started feeling some really light cramping that kept getting stronger-I asked my mom which monitor I was and when we looked it showed I was having contractions...I was stunned! My mom went out to get my nurse to come in and verify that I was having contractions and sure enough I was-they werent very strong at this point but they were coming every 1-3 minutes. I decided we should call Clyde and have him come back to the hospital just in case-however when we called his mom had just gotten home and he no longer had anyone to sit with the kids. Poor Clyde was freaking out-He was lost, he was running around trying to find a sitter while trying to get my things together to bring to the hospital. Finally he got ahold of Kierras Nana and Papa up the street and they said they would watch the kids until Olma could come and get them. So after calming himself down a little bit he dropped the kids off and made it to the hospital by 4:30pm. Just before he got there Dr Baird came in to see me and she was also shocked to see that I was contracting-they had slowed down to 2-4 minutes apart however they were really strong at this point. Dr Baird didnt want to just rushinto delivering the boys if I was just contracting from being sick and dehydrated so she decided we would just watch and see how things went for the next hour or so. She let me know she had to leave though and her partner would be there just in case we needed her. Around 5:45 the on call dr came in to check on me and the contractions were back to every 1-3 minutes and were coming very strong- I was definatly feeling them at this point and I was starting to get uncomfortable. The dr decided that we didnt need to continue watching and making me uncomfrtable and he said that it was time to have some babies. He told us to get ready because we were going to have our babies in the next hour.

Sure enough within 5 minutes our room was full of nurses and dr's having us sign papers and getting us all ready for our c-section and by 6:45 they were wheeling me down to the operating room. Clyde waited outside while I got my spinal put in and they got everything ready and then he came in and sat with me. I was feeling really sick and just a littel scared at how being early would affect our babies but Clyde was calm and helped me relax a little. The spinal was making me really sick and I started getting sick again so they gave me some meds and withing a cpl of seconds I was feeling better and was able to relax just in time to hear my first baby let out his first cry-Baby A (Now Known as Noah Anthony) made his entrance into this world at 7:22pm on January 28th 2009 and he weighed 4 pounds 9 ounces-he was our first born and our biggest baby. It all happened really fast and both Baby B (Nathaniel Robert) and Baby C (Nicholas Henry) were born at 7:23pm. Nathan weighed 4 pounds 7 ounces and Nicholas weighed 4 pounds 3 ounces. All 3 boys came into this world crying and breathing on their own-it was the best feeling ever. While they were getting the babies weighed and ready to go to the Nicu and while I was getting all fixed up, I told Clyde I was amazed by how different I felt-even though I couldnt feel anything I could tell how much lighter my stomach felt-both him and my nurse laughed at me. The nurses brought Noah and Nathan over to say goodbye real fast before they went to the NICU and Clyde got to go see them off while I had my cerclage removed and by 8pm it was all over and I was in recovery resting. Clyde and my mom got a cpl pictures and so I got to see those while we waited for my spinal to wear off and for the NICU to get the babies ready for us to finally meet them up close. We were in recovery for over 2 hours and I was getting really anxious- I was really missing my babies and couldnt wait to see them and get to know how they were all doing...and then at 10:50 the nurse came to take us to see our Baby Boys! They rolled me on my bed down to the NICU and since room was limited I only got to see and touch Baby C (Nicholas Henry) but it was amazing. All 3 boys were doing well. Noah was the only baby that needed just a little assistance and they put him on a hood so he could get a little extra oxygen...they said he had a tiny hole in the lungs and they would check him by x-ray in the morning to see if it improved. They told us they expected the babies to only be in the NICU for about 2 weeks or so...mainly to learn to eat and grow....we were so happy to hear that news. They let us visit and get some pictures for about 15 minutes and then it was time to say goodniight and we were wheeled to my room to get some sleep. My mom helped get me settled and then she went home to get a lttle rest and By 11:30pm both Clyde and I were passed out-It was a really long day for us both but it was definatly one of the most amazing days of our lives!

So there it is- our very long birth story. Thank You for taking the time to read about how we welcomed our newest members into the world and I will post an update about how they are
doing really soon.