The Forness Triplets

On the morning of May 28th, 2009 my wife, Nichole, and I welcomed our three babies into this world.  To say that it was an easy and blissful ride would be a bald-faced lie, but we know that it will be all worth it. 

Back on April 22nd, at the 22 week mark, Nikki had gone to the doctors for a routine exam and sonogram, during her lunch break.  She had mentioned to the doctor that the babies had seemed really active the previous few days.  The doctor hooked her up to a monitor and found that she was having contractions every couple of minutes.  Having never been pregnant before, Nikki didn't realize that she was having contractions.  Needless to say, she wouldn't be going back to work that day.

Her doctor ordered her admitted to the hospital immediately and thus began a forty-one day adventure of living in rooms 502 and 501 and Buffalo's Women and Children's Hospital.  For myself, I got used to sleeping on a hospital cot, and in some ways, enjoyed our time there.  The nurses were terrific, the food, not so much, the discomforts experienced by Nikki were many. 

They were able to control Nikki's contractions for awhile, using Procardia as a medication, and she was monitored several times a day.  In that time, the babies grew…and the parents worried.

There were many ups and downs during that time.  Contractions frequently returned.  They were not so painful as the ones that would occur later in the pregnancy.

On Memorial Day, Nikki started having more persistent contractions and dilated from one to three centimeters in the course of eight hours.  They sent us down to Labor and Delivery and we thought we might have the babies then.  To keep our minds occupied we talked about the babies names, and made a decision to change the name of Baby Evan to Baby Owen. 

It was a long, uncomfortable night.  I was freezing all night.  Apparently the Delivery floor is kept much cooler than the other floors of the hospital. The doctors attempted to hook up three monitors to Nikki's belly to watch the heartbeats of the babies.  It was an exercise in futility as my wife and I knew it would be, and we told them numerous times.  The babies never stayed in the same place for more than a minute or two.  However, the nurses said that it was protocol to monitor the babies on that floor, 24/7.  Nevermind the absurdity of tracking three squirmy little fetuses.  In the end they sent us back upstairs the following afternoon when Nikki's cervix stabilized at 3cm.

Another two days went by as we prayed the triplets would incubate a little longer.  The nurses would tell us that each day the baby stays in the womb is two less days they would have to stay in the NICU (Neo-natal Intensive Care).  We knew that the babies were viable at that point but they were still very premature.  Generally, at 24 weeks, they start developing their respiratory system (and thus become viable) and the doctors gave Nikki a series of two steroid shots on consecutive days to help the babies' lungs develop.  I digress…

On the morning of May 28th Nikki woke up at about 5am with a very painful contraction.  After calling the nurses in, they checked her cervix again and she had dilated to 4cm.  They informed us that they would send us down to Labor and Delivery again.  We thought we were going down there for another long day of observations on uncomfortable monitors.  We packed some of our things and went downstairs to find ourselves quickly ushered into the surgical prep and recovery room.  We were a day short of entering the 27th week of gestation.

By 6:20am, They let me join Nikki in the ER.  As I walked in, covered in head to toe with scrubs, I was alarmed at the precise and controled commotion.  There were teams of three to four doctors each around two incubators and I was informed that a third incubator was in an adjacent room with four doctors there as well.  There were three doctors on the opposite side of the curtain from my wife and two doctors who were working the anesthesia. 

They were doing a classical C-section on Nikki, in which they perform a horizontal incision along the bikini line and then a vertical incision perpendicular to the other, internally, in the muscle. 

At 6:40am, the first to arrive (meaning pulled from the womb) was our baby girl, Bella Marie Forness:

Baby Girl - Bella Marie Forness

 She was born 1lb 14oz and 13in. in length.  I don't recall hearing her cry.  They told us not to expect that.  They spirited her over to the incubator behind the curtain, away from my view, and began work to intubate her with a breathing tube.

Two minutes later, Owen Charles Forness was brought into this world at 6:42am:

Baby Boy - Owen Charles Forness

They brought Owen over to the incubator to my left.  I watched with great concern as they worked on Owen for twenty minutes to resuscitate him and intubate him as he came out not breathing.  Meanwhile, I am trying to comfort Nikki on my right, who couldn't see Owen and was unaware that there were any issues.  I recall the one doctor saying over and over, "Heartbeat is low.  Not good."  Thank heaven they were able to successfully intubate him after some time and get him off to the NICU.  Owen was born at 1lb 14oz and was 12in. in length.

At 6:44am, we welcomed baby boy Noah Anthony Forness into this world:

Baby Boy - Noah Anthony Forness

Noah was quickly ushered into the adjacent room by doctors and we never got to see him before they took him to the NICU.  He was born at 2lbs 4oz and was 13in. long. 

It took them about forty minutes to carefully stitch Nikki back together and we waited in the recovery room for awhile.  I was secretly worried because the attending nurse kept saying that I could go down to visit the babies in the NICU, but I was repeatedly turned away, haveing been told that the babies weren't ready.  It was sometime after 9am when I finally got to go see them and that's when I captured the pictures above.  So these are the first pictures of the Forness triplets.  I am going to end this post for now, there is much more to write about regarding things that occurred in the first week.  I will add subsequent posts in the next couple of days.

- Papa Charley