The babies continue to progress! They increased their feeds yesterday to:
Val – 18ml feeds
Jaina – 17ml feeds
Jacen – 21ml feeds

With the anticipation of raising again today. The goal is “full-feeds” where we take out the IV fluids and they eat 160ml/kg weight/day. Right now they’re at about half of that, which is excellent! They also get one bottle feed a day now, which is huge!

Their weights are:
Jacen: 4 lbs 7 oz
Jaina: 4 lbs 2 oz
Valerie: 4 lbs 0 oz

Jacen ripped yet another IV out yesterday, but they said they’d give him today to see how he does, since they are hoping to get rid of the IVs tomorrow anyways!

We’re loving every minute with them, and its so much fun to watch!

Today we’re going to take a midday break and go see Cars 2 with the big brother. It’s hard to leave, but they are in very capable hands, and until we can do more we mostly just sit and stare anyways :).

All the babies are doing great! They’re making great strides in their eating and growing, and it’s fun to just sit and watch them for hours (boy will we look back and miss this once they’re mobile!)

Jacen: Jace is still on O2 for right now as he keeps dropping his oxygen levels. He also had some bradycardia episodes (low heart rate, accompanied by O2 drops), so they gave him his first doubleshot of Starbucks today. He’ll be on that for a little while until he doesn’t have episodes anymore and then will be weaned off to see how he does on his own. Caffeine will help stimulate his heartrate so that he doesn’t have to work so hard to keep that up. He also had a little bit of a high bilirubin, so he was under the bili lights for the last 24 hours, but that got discontinued today. Otherwise, he’s doing great, they doubled his feeds to 10ml every 3 hours now (still through a feeding tube, we might try bottle feeds next week if they’re doing well), and he’s taking to eating like a champ!

Jaina: Jaina is our star pupil. No O2 anymore, and she hasn’t had the bili lights yet (though we expect her to get them either tonight or tomorrow depending on how her bilirubin levels are in the morning). She also doubled her feeds to 8ml every 3 hours, and loves her pacifier and eating. She hates being tucked into her little cocoon, though, and finds a way to kick her legs out over the edges of her boundaries every time.

Valerie: Val is doing very well too. She’s still on bili lights (they were supposed to come off today, but I think they wanted to wait for tomorrow morning’s levels to make sure she’s doing okay), but no O2, and doing great with everything else. She also doubled her feeds to 10ml every 3 hours! We’re impressed with how well they are all taking to eating and can’t wait until they can start doing bottle feeds!

Mom and Dad are doing well too, enjoying watching the little ones and learning about them and their personalities. Jacen is a troublemaker – he’s had too many IV’s to count because he keeps pulling them out. Jaina is pretty relaxed, but she is very stubborn when she wants something, like her legs sticking out of the blanket. Val is our relaxed little girl. She loves to put her butt in the air and stretch out, but is pretty calm!

Big brother got to see his siblings today and seemed to enjoy watching them. He even took some of his own pictures! As soon as I get a camera cord I’ll try to get pics posted!

Wow, I cannot believe how well the babies continue to do!

Baby Valerie was on CPAP (a forced air contraption) for the first 24 hours and came off of that this morning. In addition, she actually took the first tube feeding out of the group! She had a great gag reflex and we’re hoping to try bottles in the next few days!

Baby Jaina had been on oxygen for the first 24 hours (just a tiny bit to help out her oxygen saturation), and she’s now completely off of that and on room air again. She should be getting her first tube feed here shortly.

Baby Jacen has been doing great too! They had to add some oxygen today, but just a little. He should get a tube feed shortly as well!

We cannot believe how quickly they’re progressing. They had their heel pricks and Val needed a little bit of the bili lights, but she’s tolerating it great and should be out of the NICU and over to the Intermediate Care Unit very shortly, maybe even tonight!

I’m quite proud of my three little penguins and their progress… we know and expect that there can always be step backs before more forward progress, but I’ll take anything I can get right now!

Big brother Aiden met his siblings for the first time today when Grandma Dee came! He’s not sure what to think yet (we’ll get pics of him next time when he’s in a better mood, it was almost nap time), but he really enjoyed watching Val get her “butt” (diaper) changed and thought that her wet diaper was funny. We go potty on the toilet, duh, baby Val! 🙂 We’ll get pics of him with his siblings soon, as well as some pics up from delivery and of mommy and daddy with the kiddos. Those are all on the camera which I don’t have a cord for right now.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers! Keep them coming – we’d love to bring our babies home soon!

Well, I figured this would be the easiest way to keep everyone updated on our new, much larger, family!

A little backstory on the triplets’ birth…

It all started on Father’s Day. We got back from our day pass (after being in the hospital so long they take pity on you and let you leave grounds for dinner every few days) and Steven and Aiden headed home. I started having contractions and nausea/heartburn around 9pm. Under one of the MFM (Maternal Fetal Medicine – they specialize in high-risk pregnancies)’s guidance, the docs were banned from checking/touching me until my water broke. I think they were afraid that the mere act of looking at me would set me into labor. Either that, or the MFM had a bet riding on a certain day and didn’t want to lose. One of the two.

So I was pretty miserable all night long, begging that either it stop or finally do something. Around 7am on 20 June, I decided to go ahead and get out of bed and go to the bathroom. Needless to say, within three or four steps I started to get excited. After making it to the bathroom, I called out and had my roommate (a really sweet girl) call the nurses for me. That’s when things got amusing. I was literally sitting there clapping my hands and laughing maniacally. You see, being 33 weeks pregnant with triplets does things to your mind. Even labor seems like a welcome relief from BH contractions and carrying 12+ pounds of baby!

My water had, indeed, broken. Some of the nurses were chill – they just kinda got me situated, hung out, no biggie. Some looked around, saw the commotion and that there were already too many cooks in the kitchen, and bowed out gracefully. Some were nervous wrecks, checking heartbeats, doing manual checks for prolapsed cords, etc etc. It was all quite a comedy.

Around 730 they finally wheeled me over to L&D to get me ready. They got the IV’s placed (numbers 8, 9, and 10 of my hospital stay). Thankfully, in the meantime, Steven had just dropped Aiden off at our good friends’ house for his normal playday anyways, because we thought Steven would be working that day. He then headed straight here, calling work on the way to let them know he wouldn’t be in that day.

By the time he got there, he got scrubbed up, we got our GATORS scrub caps on (after being a resident patient, they let you bring your own!), and we headed to OR1. 9:12am they put up the drape. 9:14 the first incision was made. 9:18, Jacen came out kicking and screaming, shoving his sisters out of the way, at 4 pounds 10 ounces. 9:19, Jaina came out screaming weighing 3 pounds 12 ounces. Finally at 9:19 Valerie came out (poor baby girl, she fought to be first the entire pregnancy and ended up last!), weighing 3 pounds 15 ounces. They all had APGAR’s of 8/9, and after a quick kiss, them and daddy headed off to the NICU to get them assessed.

Thankfully, Dr. Langan was there that day. She has been my rock through the pregnancy – she did 28/29 BPP (biophysical profile – it’s an ultrasound every morning at 7am) and put up with all of my questions and complaining. I think we both would have cried had she missed it! Dr. Miller (my MFM and OB I’d seen all pregnancy) was the main doc on the surgery. Everything went perfectly, and here we are now!