BockTriplets!

This video is fresh – from this afternoon. You can see Daniel in his isolette and Anthony and Christopher in their cribs… all still have assorted wires, IVs and nose feeds in.

I can’t believe it has been 6 days – on one hand it feels like ~3-4 (because that is how many nights I have slept), but on the other hand it feels like a month (because I have done about a month’s worth of effort on stuff).

You can hear the nurse in the background of the video on the phone with tech support over some issue they were having with their Microsoft Exchange email server. Not coincidentally, this was also the first time I heard Christopher crying.

Anthony, Christopher, and Daniel have spent the past few days in the neonatal intensive care unit. They are on a completely normal course for preemies at this age, so all this is nothing to be worried about.

Christopher is still doing the best. He hasn’t needed any kind of special attention, and today he moved from an isolette (the little plastic habitrail in ) into a real crib. Those isolettes are amazing little things that stay quiet in the bustle of a busy hospital room and keep a constant temperature. He is eating from a bottle, but hasn’t quite figured out how to get it ‘straight from the tap’ yet, if you know what I mean.

Anthony is still in an isolette, and is still on a little bit of oxygen (40%, with room air at 21%). He is eating well too, and has even gained back a little bit of weight. (Newborns lose a little bit of excess water weight before they start to gain their own weight).

Daniel has had a tough time – he wasn’t getting enough oxygen, even in a little tent, and he was wearing himself out by breathing so hard. To understand what is happening, a little bit of medical pseudo-knowledge is necessary.

In the womb, babies don’t need to breathe, but they ‘practice’ it anyway – taking breaths for a few minutes, then stopping, and so on. When a baby is born, the lungs expand when hit by air, thanks in part to a chemical called surfactin that the baby makes. Because Daniel was so young, he didn’t have his surfactin yet.

Because of this, they put Daniel on a ventilator and gave him some surfactin as a mist into his lungs. By that afternoon, he went from exhausted and unable to breathe (despite getting oxygen), to resting and well oxygenated on room air.

This afternoon they started weening him off the ventilator. It is currently set to give him 40 breaths a minute if he tries to rest, but when I saw him, he was breathing on his own at about 67 breaths a minute.

Lorna is still in the hospital as well; I’ll let her tell her stories on the blog when she gets home…

Even with the good news, they are still 7 weeks premature and have some fighting to do before they come home. The latest news is that Anthony and Christopher will be coming home before Daniel, but nobody will be coming home for at least 2-4 weeks.

It has been facinating seeing everything they are doing for them. I had learned a lot watching a bunch of baby shows on A&E and Discovery Health Channel (I had set my Tivo up to record anything with the word ‘triplet’ in it), but seeing it in person, when it is your own kids, is a much different experience. I never knew how cool those isolettes are – they have HEPA filtered air, they monitor the temperature of the baby and regulate the internal heat (so the baby doesn’t have to spend calories regulating its body temperature), and cut out most of the sound. They should make those adult-sized, with air conditioning, a flat-panel HDTV, and a place to plug in your iPod. You could revolutionize air travel by giving each passenger one of these and just stacking them inside of the body of an airplane. I bet you could fit even MORE people in stacked on top of each other – the airlines should love that.

Ok, that got of topic, but I don’t know where to edit it back. I’ll just leave it and let you laugh at my ramblings.

Announcing: Anthony Edward Bock

AKA: Baby “A”. 5Lbs, 4ozs.

He is doing very well, but as is typical for preemies, he is on a little bit of supplimental oxygen. Actually, it isn’t even oxygen, it is just room air with a little pipe in his nose to help him breathe.

Announcing: Christopher Russel Bock

Previously known as “B”, his face is prominently featured in the 3-D ultrasound also on this blog.

He is 3lbs, 14ozs, and doing the best of all of them. He doesn’t need any help at all, and seems to have doubled in size in the first 12 hours.

Announcing: Daniel English Bock

This is Baby “C”, who always liked to kick mom in the ribs. He is 4 lbs, and an unknown number of ozs (I’ll update when I find out.)

Again, as in typical for preemies, he is on a little bit of oxygen, but he is doing very well.

All were born last night around 6:40 pm. Mom is recovering, but as of 10:00 this morning hadn’t even seen them outside of the delivery room – they are in the Neonatal ICU, and she is in a separate recovery room. If you are one of our friends in the area tracking the blog, sorry, but we can’t have any visitors yet…

We are at 33 weeks today. It is also our 8th wedding anniversary. Everything is going well – at this point no news is good news…

I have always been a people watcher – and it has gotten more interesting when I see people chatting about Lorna.

A few days ago, after a doctor’s appointment, Lorna and I had lunch out. The hostess asked Lorna, “Is this your first one?”, to which Lorna replied, “no… it is out first three.”

The hostess looked a little confused, so Lorna let her off the hook by saying “I’m having triplets”. She got all excited, doted over Lorna for a second, and then I watched as she bounced around to a couple of the waiters and waitresses, telling them something that would immediately make them look on our direction.

Today, we went and checked out the pediatrician we are thinking of using. They were expecting us, and as Lorna approached the counter, they started making a fuss about how they have never taken care of triplets before. Another mother of a patient came into the reception area and started hearing fragments of the story, looking with intent as she put together the story. She finally asked Lorna, “Are you having more than one?” Lorna said, “I’m having triplets”. the lady looked shocked, and then the little girl with her said, “That would make my belly hurt…” to which her mom whispered to one of the nurses, “That’s not all that would hurt…”

One of the books we first looked at when Lorna got pregnant included an excellent description of the nutritional needs a woman pregnant with multiples will need – this includes things like extra protein, extra calcium, and other things you might thnk it takes to build a baby. With multiples, of course, you need more of it.

Since I love to cook, I came up with several different recipes using this information, but as we got further along in the pregnancy, I found myself with less and less time to do the cooking.

I’m sharing this recipe here so that other people with multiples might find it useful. Add a comment if you try it!

Nutritional Considerations and Ingredients

Flax Seed Oil

With 3 developing brains, mothers of multiples should be trying to get a decent amount of the good oils like Omega-3 (the source of the ‘fish is brain food’ meme). Flax Seed oil is great for this. I use it in almost any recipe in place of margerine, butter, or vegetable oil. You can definitely find it in any health food store. This is crucial for multiples – as a lot of brain growth happens in the last trimester, which will likely be cut short ifyou have to deliver early. Giving them this edge up early can help.

Extra Protein

Protein is important too. you can add dry milk to just about any baked good recipe to pump up its protein content. Experiment with your recipe to see how much you can add – this will make baked good brown a little faster.

Soy Milk

I also use soy milk in baked goods in place of milk or water. Lorna doesn’t like the taste of it for drinking, but in something baked, you’d never know the difference. Why soy milk? Soy is a nutritionally complete protein; it provides everything a growing baby needs. In particular, I use Silk brand Soy Milk, which comes in several variations. the two most useful for pregnancy supplementation are the one with Omega-3s and DHA (again, useful for brain development), and the unsweetened one (if mother needs to control gestational diabetes).

Eggs

I also make a point of using eggs that claim to have Omega-3 levels higher than ordinary eggs. Our grocery store contains several brands that claim this. By the way, if you add powdered milk to a recipe (as described above) I have found you can add an extra egg to any recipes that call for 2 already… further bumping up some nutritional value.

Other Things

If you can eat them, nuts are good – they contain trace elements, other good oils, etc. I will also occasionally add benefiber to some baked goods – it mixes in without changing the balance of the recipe at all, and can help with some ‘other issues’ often experienced late in pregnancy.

Since we are going to use those guidelines to enhance package mixes, realize that the nutritional value of what you create will largely depend on the package mix you are enhancing. So follow this advice too:

• Don’t buy a package mix if the nutritional label shows any trans-fats. They are evil – if nothing else, they will make it harder for you to lose your pregnancy weight… worse, they can set your kids up for weight issues.
• Avoid artificial sweeteners. I’m allergic to nutrasweet, so I think they are evil anyway. They provide nothing of value and run the risk of messing up you and your children, so why mess with them?
• When comparing two mixes, choose the one with the lower saturated fat and the lower suger. If you subtract the sugars from the total carbohydrates, you’ll get a rough idea how much complex carbohydrates the mix has… these are good.

Putting it All Together – Pumpkin Loaf

As much as I love to bake, I’d love to share a recipe that starts with roasting and mashing pumpkins… but sorry, not today. I bought a pumpkin loaf mix at the grocery store that met my requirements above, and tweaked it as follows:

• Used soy milk (with Omega-3 and DHA) instead of water
• Added dry milk (it would have reconsituted to a quart)
• Used Flax Seed Oil instead of margerine or butter
• Used 3 eggs instead of 2 (and used Omega-3 eggs)
• Added 2 cups of walnuts
• added 1/4 cup of benefiber

The end result? delicious! I could feed this to guests and I don’t think they’d have any idea it had been tweaked at all. The addition of nuts, dry milk, an extra egg, and fiber also made the recipe much bigger – I made two 5×9 loaves, where the original recipe said it would make one.

By the way, this same technique works well with the box blueberry muffin mix (although I also add more fresh blueberries to them).

If you plan on breatfeeding, these suppliments can help support the enhanced butritional needs of the mother after delivery.

You know, its kinda funny that I put those google ads on the side of this web site – I have earned a staggering $3.51 from them, but they have cost me far more than that.

The first day I had the ads up, they served me a link to the place we had the 3-D ultrasound done.

Then they started serving me links for things like storage of cord blood. I’m a child of the modern technical age, and after researching it, I decided to bank our kid’s cord blood with Viacord.

In my lifetime, I have seen huge improvements in technology and medicine… I can’t imagine what my kids will see, but I’m going to give them every advantage that is within my grasp – I mean how many people do you know that have blogs before they are born?

So those little ads have almost earned me a Starbuck’s White Mocha, and they have cost me a lot more than that… but who knows what they will end up saving. Do me a favor and click on one – my kids’ college funds will have a few more cents in it if you do.

You would think with three kids coming, it would be easier to pick names… we wouldn’t just have to settle on one – we would get to use everal of our favorites.

You would be wrong.

First of all, I want to let everyone know that we won’t be revealing any names until they are born… We don’t want opinions, no matter how well intentioned, on whether people think they are good names or not.

Second of all, I’m disappointed we can’t find a good ‘triplet themed’ set of names. I had Lorna seriously considering “William” and “Theodore” for 2 of the three names until she realized that meant we would be calling them “Bill and Ted”. I could be half-way serious about Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, but Lorna won’t have anything to do with it. And of course, everyone suggests Huey, Dewey, and Louie, or Larry, Moe and Curly. The most obscure reference was Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

Finding three names has been pretty difficult – we have middle names picked out (those were easy family name choices), but finding three first names that we like and aren’t off limits for some reason has been pretty difficult.

We have 16 days left to decide…

We had a doctors appointment yesterday, measuring the growth of our herd of children.

• Baby ‘A’ is 4lbs, 5oz
• Baby ‘B’ is 3lbs, 14oz
• Baby ‘C’ is 4lbs, 4oz

The doctor said those would be fine weights at this point even if they were singletons, so everybody is doing well!

Lorna is struggling carrying 12 and a half pounds of baby, but is in remarkably good spirits. I’ll have a picture or two of Lorna up soon, so check back often.