BockTriplets!

Just a quick thought that I hope helps other pending parents of multples – I was just talking with a friend of mine and I told him that we had set our tivo up to record anything with ‘triplet’ or ‘multiple’ in th description appearing on discovery, A&E, the Discovery Health, and so on.

thanks to all of the shows like ‘A Baby Story’, we were really prepared for all of the possibilities – and complications – that can happen with multiple births.

That is a picture of Matthew and his lovely bride, Jen. They were married this past Saturday. Matthew is my first cousin, once removed, and he has given me an interesting perspective on my own kids.

In my family, I’m the youngest in my generation. I have cousins who are anywhere from 7 to 20+ years older than I am, and as a result, I have always been the ‘kid’ at family gatherings.

When all my cousins started having kids, I was stuck in the middle between two generations. For countless holidays, weddings, and other special events, I was at the ‘kids table’, entertaining kids in the play room, and so on.

Matthew is the oldest in that generation, and I can clearly remember seeing him shortly after birth. I don’t want to say ‘it seems like yesterday’, but in the thousands of days that have past since then, that one seems closer than most.

Two years ago he graduated from the Naval Academy, and this past weekend he got married.

This makes me both excited to see my own kids grow up and afraid of how fast it will happen.

Sorry for the delay in updating the blog; I hope this picture explains it a little. This is a self-portrait taken about 3:30 in the morning, after finally getting them to sleep after a feeding. I think it was this evening that Lorna said, “Everyone always says they are ‘sleeping like a baby’... Why doesn’t anyone ever say they are ‘screaming like a baby’?

Over the past few weeks they have put on some weight (everyone is in the 6-7 pound range now), started focusing on things like people’s faces and their mobiles, and even try to hold their pacifiers. They even play with each other if you put them in a crib together – the rules to the game are something like “I’m going to yell before you hit me, otherwise I’ll yell after you hit me”. There is video I’ll try to post today.

They are now eating 90ml at every feeding, which is pretty much every 4 hours like clockwork. They came home from the hospital on that schedule, and although we drift a little, we try really hard to stick to it. We also feed them in order, and it is possible or one person to manage an entire feeding as long as all the kids cooperate.

Two of the boys ended up with a case of ‘goopy eye’, so all three were put on an antibiotic for a week. That seems to have cleared it up, but at the same time has turned each baby into a 6 pound jar of squeezable Goulden’s mustard, if you know what I mean (and if you don’t, well, you are lucky).

Anthony and Daniel came home yesterday around 9:00 pm!

Before we took them out of their baby carriers, we painted their big toes with nail polish just so we can tell them apart. That isn’t as much of an issue as we feared though – all three are so different once you see them side-by-side.

By the time we got everyone fed and settled, it was close to midnight; I volunteered to spend the first night with them so Lorna could catch up on her sleep – the previous two nights we were both doting over Christopher, so we were both pretty tired. We settled down in the nursery for a night of adventure.

What an amazing night – 30 fingers and toes, 12 flailing appendages, and three screaming voices (that are still new enough to sound exciting), and all three decided it was “boys night out”... out of the NICU anyway.

About 3:00 in the morning, after changing and feeding Daniel and Christopher, I was on my way downstairs to heat a bottle for Anthony when it happened… I almost killed Chris. He was in my arms as I was walking down the stairs and burping him, and I slipped.

You know in ‘The Matrix’, when everything slows down and the bullets fly over Neo’s head? It was kinda like that… time slowed down and I could consider every option before me. My arms gripped Christopher. Both arms. My brain tried to send my third arm back to brace my fall, but then I realized I have no third arm.

BAM! my back hit the hardwood stairs. Time sped back up.

THUMP THUMP THUMP as I slid down about 8 steps.

Then I hit the bottom.

My breath was knocked out of me. I felt as if I had broken my back. I was still gripping Christopher though…

Lorna shot out of bed and down the stairs, asking in a panic if I was ok. I could barely muster an out-of-breath “help”, but I became irrelevant when she saw I was holding Christopher and she figured out what had happened. She picked him out of my arms… he was clueless that anything out of the ordinary had happend.

I apparently make a really good cushion for a fall.

Today I can barely sit down – I bruised my tailbone, and every now and then I stress it in such a way that it steals my breath away.

Yesterday morning we got a call from the hospital that said, “Bring in your baby seat for the baby seat test, because Christopher is going home today”.

But yesterday wasn’t all good news, as Christopher has developed an eye infection that, while not serious, is very contagious. They had him in the isolation ward when we got there.

We got Christopher home last night, and the fun began… every 4 hours we are up feeding and changing. I have no idea how we are going to handle 3… I look forward to the day that they can hold their own bottles – my arm is about ready to fall off.

Every time we feed Chris, he gets the hiccups. I’ll have to post some video of that.

Anthony may be coming home today…

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.

Being under very good care of Doctors (and Dave), I have had a relatively uneventful triplet pregnancy. I even joked that I’d carry them until they were 18 years old. I hadn’t had awful morning sickness, I was generally comfortable, I loved watching the lava lamp that was my belly as the boys rolled around. Then week 31 rolled around and I was not as comfortable any more. Christopher & Daniel would have races up and down my ribs. It became very difficult to take a full breath. And Christopher was pushed against my stomach so I could only eat small amounts at a time and eating took forever. Then Anthony would have the hiccups causing my lower belly to drum out a steady rhythm. And Daniel would stretch pushing me first in the back and then in the front (felt like I was unwittingly doing the hoola).

Then 6/14 rolled around and the Doctor said I had to deliver.

Dave dressed in his bunny suit, and I was wheeled into surgery and prepped to see my babies for the first time. I could feel the doctors pushing and pulling inside of me and then I heard the most beautiful sound. Anthony’s first cry! I’m sure anyone who has had a baby knows what I’m talking about. And those who haven’t think I’m nuts.

Then Christopher was pulled out from what felt like under my ribs. There again was that beautiful sound but also a wonderful feeling – I turned towards Dave and said, “I can breathe!”.

Finally, out came Daniel and there were three crying babies! Everyone was out and crying – it was an amazing sound. Thst is when Dave took the pictures below.

There are several really good stories that belog on the blog, but they are Lorna’s to tell. Help me encourage her to write them – add your comments to this entry! (BTW, comments don’t look like they appear at first, but they do – they go into a queue that I approve – so there is no spam on the site. It should tell you that, but it doesn’t. So there is a bug, but rest assured, your comments are added.)

If she doesn’t write something soon, I’ll have to start telling them. I might even include some of the pictures I took of Lorna in the hospital (yes, this is a threat).