Ups!

Aidan's beautiful blond hair Brooke with her eyes open

Cal with his eyes open Brooklyn saying a prayer for her and her brothers

April 20th, 2008

The last two days have been quite uneventful! We LOVE uneventful days! As I have mentioned before they all have some A's and B's (apnea and bradycardia). Apnea is a pause in breathing that lasts 20 seconds or more. Bradycardia (brady) is the slowing of a baby's heart rate from its usual range of 120-160 beats per minute to a rate of less than 100 beats per minute. These are two very common problems in premature babies. Most of the time all three of our babies are able to self recover from these episodes. Every once in awhile a nurse needs to intervene to help remind them to breathe by stimulating them or blowing air in their face (bagging). The babies also do what is called periodic breathing. This is when they take some deep breaths and then pause for five or ten seconds before taking the next one. Here's a little bit of info on each babe:

Biggest Boy Aidan (CPAP)- Aidan weighed in last night at 3 pounds 3 ounces. He is down from 3 pounds 5 ounces from the day before. However, they are getting a lot of different fluids, so that explains the fluctuation. He has finished his last round of ibuprophen and will start back on my breast milk today. Aidan has the most beautiful blond hair! We still can't believe that all three of our babies have hair.

Beautiful Brookie (Intubated, but not for much longer)- Brooke is slowly coming back around to her normal SASSY self. She is moving around much more and trying to pull her tube out and her wires off. That's our girl! She weighed 2 pounds 13 ounces yesterday. Her white blood cells are still high, so they think she is still fighting whatever infection she may have (they found nothing in her blood work up or lumbar puncture). Today is day 6 of antibotics for her and they will most likely treat her for ten days. This morning they did a sprint and a blood gas on her and both looked great. She will be extubated some time today. Brooke has dark brown hair and lots of it. Paul thinks she needs a haircut.

Baby Boy Cal (CPAP)- Cal continues to amaze us! Cal weighs 2 pounds 9 ounces which is what he weighed at birth. Cal has tolerated his feeds (my breast milk) for 5 days so today they will start to give him a little bit more and hopefully he will start gaining some weight. They took him off of the aminophylline (a relative of caffeine) yesterday which helped him with his breathing transition from the tube to the CPAP. Hopefully he will be able to continue breathing on the CPAP without too many A's and B's. We also got to watch Cal get a bath last night. The babies get baths every other day. He wasn't a big fan, but we are quite certain he slept well after such a big event. Cal also has brown hair, a shade lighter than Brooke's.

So...the prayers are working and we are so thankful! Before long we will be holding the babies (kangaroo care), bathing the babies, changing the babies and all of that good stuff. We can't wait! Please continue to pray for these little ones.

This morning the NICU called and they have a 5 hour surgery in the room (which means the baby is not stable enough to be moved). We cannot go to visit them until the surgery is over. What a bummer! But we wish for the best for that little baby and we are thankful that it is not one of ours.

Paul and I are SO in love with these three cuties! Enjoy this video of Cal getting a bath.