BockTriplets!

The kids are still in the hospital, and we don’t know when they are coming home. We do know what they need to be doing before they can come home though… In order to bring a preemie home from the hospital, the kid has to:

1. Be breathing room air – All three of our kids have been on supplemental oxygen at one point or another, and in some cases have come off and then gone back on. Right now Daniel is the only one getting any oxygen support, and this is just through a little positive pressure through his nose. Daniel was on a ventilator for a while, which can cause some other things they look for (see below).
   
   
2. Be able to maintain their own body temperature – This is why you see them in those little plastic terrariums for a while… these things help maintain a body temperature without having the preemie expend too many calories. All of our kids have spent some time in these, bt are all now in cribs. They have cleared this hurdle.
   
   
3. Finish their meals by mouth – based on their body weight, they needto be able to eat a certain amount all by themselves. So far, none of them are doing this, although Christopher is coming close. All of them are nursing from a bottle, but they tire easily, or have trouble coordinating the eating and breathing. In the videos you can see little feeding tubes going in through their noses… They need to be off of these entirely.
   
   
4. Gain weight – Every newborn drops some initial body weight before they begin gaining weight… With preemies, it is important they get through this quickly, as they don’t have much body fat to begin with. Christopher is now up past his birth weight, but I’m not sure where the other two are.

This is the routine stuff. They are also watching for any other complications (such infections from their IV tubes) and other typical preemie problems (like sleep apnea), but so far there are no real concerns. They just checked Daniel to make sure he didn’t have any complications from the ventilator, and he is doing fine.

So we don’t know when they are coming home, but everyone is progessing well towards their exit conditions. They occasionally have setbacks with things like oxygen support, and the amount they have to eat is a moving target, but we are probably halfway there. They have been getting tremendous support from the Birthing Inn at the hospital – I have been really impressed with the quality of care they are getting there.