Three for Thursday – Summertime Blues edition

Each Thursday, for the near future, I give updates on how our baby triplets are doing in the hospital.  They were born May 28th at 27 weeks gestational age.  Bella Marie born 1lb 14oz, Owen Charles born 1lb 14oz, and Noah Anthony born 2lb 4oz.

I had to take a look back at the previous editions to get my bearings for this post.  Sometimes I lose track of what I've been talking about.  Oft times, the days run a bit together.  Work, eat, hospital, write, sleep.  Work, eat, hospital, write, sleep. 

Bella Sends Her Love

Bella Marie – Winning the Race

I've enjoyed my time with Bella over the last week.  I've gotten some peaceful time to feed her.  It seems she's most awake at the 8:30am and 8:30pm feeds, not so much in the middle of the day.  My God, last night, she was so wide awake.  It's tremendous because she's very happy and interactive.  It's difficult in that she's just starting her wiggle-worm stage and I'm trying to learn how to change a diaper around wiggles and a litany of wires and tubes. 

She finished her whole bottle for me last night and I like to sit there and think about how her senses and her brain are starting to process everything going on around her.  She's the only one we've been able to get a weight on, recently, because the boys have been hooked up to the ventilators.  She's up to 5lbs 4oz now. 

Noah and his Guard Dog

Noah Anthony – Surgery

Noah had his surgery Saturday morning.  The Pyloric Stenosis surgery is one of the surgeries that Owen had the week prior.  It's supposed to be only like a five or ten minute surgery (not including setup) and is quite minor.  They just cut the muscle around the Pyloric valve that sits between the stomach and the intestines, so that food can travel through.  The muscle can sometimes prevent this flow in preemies. 

Well, two hours in, I was freaking out inside, trying not to let my wife see it.  The surgery was actually taking longer than both of Owen's put together. 

When the surgeon came up, she told me that there were complications, that his stomach lining tore during the surgery.  They then had to go in from a different angle and sew up the lining.  To look at him, now, he has four incisions in his belly.  I'm sure he and his brother will be comparing battle scars for years to come.

We had an X-Ray today on the area of his stomach lining that had to be repaired and unofficially, it looked good, meaning that nothing was leaking into the surround area from the stomach wound.  So that's good, and he's resting as well as he can. 

He's picked up a bug from his ventilator tube as well and is being treated today with antibiotics.  He's puffy from the fluids so they have to give him diuretics to counteract that.  This worries me because he had a helluva time dropping the excess fluid before.

Other than that, he's doing just great (sarcasm mode)!

Owen Detoxing

Owen Charles – On the Mend

So, Owen's surgery was now a couple of weeks ago.  They had previously tried to take him off his ventilator, and the poor guy crashed hard.  Turns out that he had a lot of fluid-retention and that was building up around the lungs, making it very difficult to breathe.

They gave him four doses of steroids (I think this kid's gonna have 'roid rage by the time he's two….remember, you read it here first) to help with his lungs and then took him off the ventilator a few hours ago.  So, here's hoping this time it worked.  I think he is also now done with his antibiotics because he, too, had caught a resilient bug from his ventilator tube. 

I guess he's on methadone now, to help him with withdrawal symptoms since they are trying to ween him off the painkillers.  I say it again and again, but tough way to start.

The important part is that they've started feeding him small amounts of milk every hour, and his intestines are working, which is great news since they hadn't been sewn together for ten weeks.  So, this is a terrific success (no sarcasm mode). 

Yours Truly and Wife at Baby Shower

Work had a nice baby shower for us on Tuesday.  We got a number of nice things to help round out our needs…another pack n play, a baby einstein play center, some boys clothes and a bunch of cool toys.  It was touching to see everyone who had chipped in and showed up to share the occasion.

That's it for this week.  Thanks so much for everyone's kind thoughts.  

- Namaste

Papa Charley