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