Category: NICU Life

Doubling up on babies.

Post author By Adam
Post date July 15, 2020

It has been an eventful couple of weeks. We’ve had a baby home just long enough to get used to it, and then introduced another. That’s right, Mallory is now home. All that’s left is tiny Hannah. Then the real fun begins. Speaking of fun, let’s talk about what it’s like to have a baby.

Having a baby at home.

A rare moment of calm with Taylor, holding intervention is typically required to make this happen.

My hot take on having a baby right now is: “tough but manageable.” This might be because we’ve gotten into the having-three-babies mindset so much that one seems like getting off easy. Though, “easy” is kind of relative here. Taylor is still very premature. Fun fact, preemie babies tend to have some extra challenges. For example, feeding little Taylor would take 40 minutes to an hour each time until we saw a specialist. Sub-optimal. What’s more, she has pretty nasty reflux. Because of that, she would not tolerate being laid down. Like, ever. So, one of us is always awake. Always.

On night one, we put Taylor in a bassinet and attempted to get some sleep. That did not work. We both ended up all night. At the time, we didn’t know she had reflux and couldn’t understand why she would not calm down for anything. Night two, we landed on sleep shifts. Rachel does the night shift from 9:00–3:30. Then I do the morning from 3:30 to whenever Rachel wakes up. During our watch-the-baby turns, we both would make hopeful attempts at putting Taylor in her bassinet and sneaking in a nap. This rarely, if ever, works.

Needless to say, that’s not exactly sustainable, and won’t scale up to three babies. The good news is we’re making progress on her. Feeds are typically 10 minutes, thanks to various bottle and formula combinations. She’s on reflux meds, but still uncomfortable and thus squirmy and noisy. But hey, it’s a start!

Don’t worry; it’s not all crying and shoving bottles in baby faces. They sleep so much. You’ll notice a sleeping theme in the pictures because they do a bunch of that despite being fussy messes. I mean, I could effortlessly score hundreds of crying baby pictures. However, I’m opting out of that public shaming. Let’s take a look at the good times!

Taylor dozing off with her mouth hanging open like a big gross — Various pictures of Taylor sleeping. Except for that one where she lost her pacifier and was very concerned about where it got off to.

Taylor digging her pillow — Various pictures of Taylor sleeping. Except for that one where she lost her pacifier and was very concerned about where it got off to.

Having two babies home.

Mallory (right, in pink, the one with more hair) and Taylor (left, also in pink) immediately after bringing Mallory home. Though they look all adorable, I’m quite sure they have no idea what’s going on.

Having both of them at home is a lot like having the one, just more so. We’re still on our sleep shifts. Mallory has proudly taken up the slow eater cause from Taylor. They do seem to sleep well when you put them together. So, maybe they find each other comforting? Who knows. There’s isn’t much different to report on Mallory being home so far. It’s just do feeds for a while longer than before with a break before the next one. That’s when you attempt chores or hold a fussy baby.

God help you when they both meltdown. Mallory is impressively vocal about letting you know it’s time to feed her even when it isn’t time to feed her.

Anyway here are some more pictures. People like baby pictures right?

Mallory rocking a homemade hat, ready to get gone — Various pictures of Mallory. Except for the ones with two people. Those feature guest appearances by Taylor, Rachel, or Rachel’s hand.

Mallory and Taylor falling asleep moments after being set down — Various pictures of Mallory. Except for the ones with two people. Those feature guest appearances by Taylor, Rachel, or Rachel’s hand.

The forgotten child.

Little Hannah, our last hospital baby.

Hannah is still working on completing feeds. That’s all that’s holding her back at this point. She’s very eager and wants to finish her bottles, just a little sloppy. She’ll get a suck/swallow study today to assess her feeding challenges. I assume it’s what it sounds like; they’ll see how well she sucks on a bottle and where swallowing goes off the rails. Hopefully, we’ll be looking at a speedy discharge from there. She also has a bit of an obsession with laying on her right side. The poor kid’s ear is always folded over because of it. No amount of intervention helps with this. I’ve seen her tied to a rolled-up blanket with another blanket to keep her from getting onto that right ear, and she still finds a way.

Hannah dozing away — Some additional pictures of Hannah sleeping.

More of Hannah getting her sleep on — Some additional pictures of Hannah sleeping.

The one plus is our hospital visits are about to get real short. With Taylor coming home first, visits weren’t any quicker. The feeding order was always Mallory, Taylor, then Hannah. So, we’d still get to the hospital at the same time to visit. There’d just be a gap to sit around and fidget with your mask between Mallory and Hannah.

Baby stats! Now that we’re like 500 words into this thing.

Mallory: Almost seven pounds.

Taylor: Over seven and a half pounds! She got big fast.

Hannah: getting closer to six pounds, still lagging a little behind.

Overall the girls are nice and healthy. They all have some level of reflux, but that’s bonkers common for preemie babies apparently. Nothing they won’t grow out of. Otherwise, it’s just pump them full of bottles and change diapers.

What else is up?

We’ve been doing the tummy time thing, though those tend to turn into supervised naps pretty fast. I also read to them every day. However, I lost interest in the book I was working on (The Stand, Mr. King is far too indulgent with that novel. I did make it to the halfway mark for what it’s worth.) Instead, I’ve supplemented reading time with my daily dose of news articles and how my PredictIt portfolio is doing (not well). Gotta keep them up to date on the goings-on, right?

I thought we were at the hospital a lot with visiting the girls already. But then throw in taking them to the pediatrician or occupational therapists? We’re officially at a point where we’re recognized and asked how the triplets are doing. Sometimes even by total randos. While I’d like to believe it’s because we’re so neato, I assume the novelty of triplets is the real driver.

Thanks to being on leave, I have absolutely no idea what day it is. With COVID, time was already kind of a blur. But now? It’s meaningless. My world is feed babies.

Oh, and baby farts are hilarious.

NICU Life

One down, two to go.

Post author By Adam
Post date June 28, 2020

As the title suggests, we have a baby home now. We were both convinced it’d be Mallory that would come home first. Meanwhile, nurses kept saying it’s always the little ones that seem to pull ahead. Instead, it was Taylor in the middle that hit all her milestones—defying all expectations, which is pretty on-brand for our little family these days.

Taylor shortly after Rachel dressed her up in her homeward bound outfit, and wire-free. The mittens and different-but-similar patterns kind of makes her look like a dork. But hey, she’s a baby, so who cares?

We’re about to find out what all the lack of sleep fuss is about. That should be fun. Of course, once you’ve emotionally prepared yourself for three babies, one sounds kind of easy. The good news is I hear NICU babies are the best sleepers. And boy, if that isn’t the case. She sleeps through everything, plus she’s got a sleep schedule programmed into her. That said, it hasn’t even been a day yet. So, maybe I’ll eat these words. We’ll see.

More of Taylor because why not?

In all honesty, the journey out and home was pretty uneventful. They did the discharge, which amounted to some instructions and next steps. Then we put little Taylor in her car seat, and she fell asleep. We loaded up and drove home in our sweet new van (more on that later), she continued to sleep. Once home, we had lunch while she slept. A friend described this part as “paperweight mode,” which was spot on.

How they’re all progressing.

The girls are still holding to their A to C, big to small system religiously. Let’s take a look at some sweet stats.

Mallory escaping her sleep sack once again and getting to work on pulling her tube out. Also, again.

Mallory: 5 pounds, 9 ounces. She’s gained a pound in the last couple of weeks. Actually, spoilers: all of them gained about a pound. She is currently learning to do her bottle feeds with mixed results. That’s basically all that’s holding her back from coming home.

Taylor sleeping (supervised, of course) in a bed thing? It’s like a pillow with an indentation in the middle. She loves it.

Taylor: 5 pounds, 8 ounces. She’s up about a pound as well. She took to bottle-feeding like a champ. She actually finished her first two, fizzled out for a week, then got the hang of it full time. It was an ill-timed brady episode that delayed her arrival home. Otherwise, she would have been home nearly a week ago.

Little Hannah, pacifier for scale.

Hannah: 4 pounds, 7 ounces. She’s got the spirit but struggles with her bottles. Hannah has also taken to rolling on to her right ear, folding it over. It doesn’t look too bad in the above image, but trust me, it’s getting messed up. Typically it’s straight-up folded in half. They’ve introduced a donut pillow now to keep things in order, and to avoid flat a spot on her head. Luckily the puking has faded somewhat.

NICU vibes.

At this point, the girls are just learning to bottle feed. That is more or less all that’s left. Of course, I think Hannah resets her brady timer every other day. That should be frustrating for her come home status. However, she’s only once finished a bottle. So, it’ll be a minute no matter what.

Mallory, on the other hand, just needs to get her act together and finish her bottles. She’s making progress, but it’s slow progress.

Otherwise, things are pretty chill in the NICU. Turns out the girls are an easy assignment to have. While that’s great for their prognosis and whatnot, it does result in a revolving door of nurses. Every day we get to meet someone new. It’s not a big deal, but it is tough learning a new person’s systems and preferences knowing you’ll just reset tomorrow. On the upside, I now have a wide variety of tricks to use since everyone has their own way of doing things.

Random stuff.

There’s something about the different beds (if you can call them that) that Mallory and Hannah are in. Let’s take a look.

The “rolly cart with a box” model. This is actually a picture of Taylor’s bed. However, it’s identical to Mallory’s except for the “Baby B” label.

So, there’s the bar. Let’s see what Hannah is kicking it in.

The super deluxe bassinet. What it lacks in storage it makes up for in futuristic style.

As you can see, the two simply do not compare. Also, those drawers on the rolly carts make the baby flinch every time you close them. Actually they don’t close. They just slide into a groove. Ok, I do understand that the one Hannah is in can tilt. That tilt is needed to reduce spit-ups. But still.

We did our first swaddle bath with Mallory this week. Turns out those are exactly what they sound like. You bathe the baby, but they’re still in a blanket to keep them warm.

The only “cute” picture from the swaddle bath, all the others ranged from pissed looking baby, to very pissed.

Back to that van I mentioned. We went ahead and pulled the trigger on that. Honda Odyssey. It’s a van.

Pictured: ugh.

So, girls, when you’re older and complaining about that lame van…I mean, I’m not saying it’s your fault. But I’m not not saying it’s your fault.

And with that double negative, let’s close this one out and wait for another baby to come home.

NICU Life

New to being alive.

Post author By Adam
Post date June 14, 2020

Infants are adorably bad at everything they do. My personal favorite is when they’re happily sucking on a pacifier (I reject the use of “binky” with every fiber of my being), then for no reason, grab at it and throw it across the bed. Meltdowns and confusion quickly follow.

Pictured: Me intervening before another pacifier goes flying. Meanwhile, Hannah is taking this opportunity to attempt a feeding tube removal.

Not all of their struggles were quite as adorable at first. If you’re like me, you’ve never heard of a Brady Episode before. By the way, “Brady” is short for Bradycardia. It wasn’t named after someone like I thought for a minute there. Anyway, they’re not supposed to be breathing yet; they’re supposed to be in the womb focusing on kicking their sisters. So, they’ll forget to sometimes. Next thing you know, their heart rate will drop, and alarms start sounding.

Turns out this is super normal, the baby almost always bounces back after a few seconds. If it keeps going, the nurse (or me holding my tiny baby pretending I’m not freaking out about this) will gently prod them. Then they remember that breathing is part of being alive now.

It’s also treated with a steady caffeine dose. Might as well start that habit early, right?

Overall the NICU experience is something you can’t prepare for until you’re living it. You have access to your children, but it’s limited and on someone else’s time. You wait a lot and feel very in the way. Not to say anything negative about the NICU nurses, they are kind and accommodating. They clearly care about what they do and want you to feel comfortable and involved. It’s just tough seeing your tiny newborns through plexiglass, all hooked up to wires. With little red marks all over them from some monitor or tube being moved to distribute irritation. I don’t think they care or even notice, and it’s for their own good. It’s just not where you think the “should we have kids?” conversation will end up taking you.

How are babies?

Here are a few baby pictures. If any look vaguely blurry, it’s because they were taken through the bag you have to put your phone in.

If you’re better at remembering numbers than me you’ll notice that their weights look a lot like the initial numbers. That’s because they’re back to their birth weights. I didn’t know babies dropped a whole bunch when they come out. Something to do with fluids. So, if you’re like me now you know too. Congrats. Ok, moving on.

Oh, you’ll see a bit of a sleeping theme. Man, do tiny babies sleep a lot. Ok, actually really moving on.

Mallory graduated from an isolation pod to a box on a rolly table.

Mallory: 4lb 7oz, or a lot of grams. I’m American, sorry. Mallory is out of her isopod and is starting to learn how to eat without a tube. Well, I guess just drink for now. It’ll be a while before real eating happens.

Taylor doing what she does best, sleep.

Taylor: 4lbs 3oz, or fewer grams than Mallory. She was about to come out of her pod until a little weight dip re-set the timer. She lost just a couple of grams after a spit-up, but that was enough. They have to gain for five days along with maintaining temperature. Otherwise, she’s doing great.

Hannah following the theme established by her sisters. Sleeping away.

Hannah: 3lbs 6oz, or some grams or whatever. The nurses always call her “feisty,” which I can attest to. While being tiny, she’s super alert and always pulling her feeding tube out. She’s taken up puking too.

If you’re wondering what an isopod is, it’s a plexiglass box they stay in. I’m pretty sure to maintain a stable temperature like they’d experience in the womb more than to protect them from germs. Those are managed by washing your hands and using so much hand sanitizer. It’s funny when you hear talk of them learning your smell. I’m pretty sure they think the world and everything in it smells like hand sanitizer.

They all came off breathing assistance super fast, except for Mallory, who was on room air from day one. None of them have IVs anymore. They’re keeping fluids up by eating. Losing IVs was great because that means they get to wear some of those onesies Rachel’s been stockpiling. The oxygen monitors are gone too since that’s been consistently fine. Overall, we’re pretty lucky that they’re so healthy. Which, of course, leads us to the big question…

When do babies come home?

It depends. If there’s one thing I’ve discovered about NICU life, it’s that everything happens in approximations. Holding your baby for a feeding might last 45 minutes, or it could be two hours. She’ll come off her IV tomorrow, or it could be a few days. We’ll start bottle feeding this weekend, or it could be a week. Everything depends on how they’re doing, how they tolerate something, or how quickly they figure something out. There isn’t any set timing on anything. Coming home boils down to some key milestones. There are five of them.

Breathe room air without assistance. Check for all.
Consistently gain weight. Check again for all.
Maintain temperature on their own. Mallory and Taylor are very close. Hannah is still doing her best.
Eat without a tube for 48 hours. No one is quite there. All of them have taken their first steps, success has been scattered.
No Brady Episodes for five days. Everyone is a shit show on that one. It takes a bit for those to go away. I have been told they’ll be taken off caffeine soon. Not actively treating it sounds like a good sign, right?

The very best possible outcome at this moment is one baby coming home in 5 days. Only if that baby nails eating, temperature, and never forgets to breathe. Of course, that’s not likely. They’re just over 33 weeks now, still very premature. For now, we continue to wait.

How are we?

We’re fine. Rachel is through the worst of healing. It’ll be a while before she can take up competitive bodybuilding, though. I’m back to work until at least one baby comes home. Rachel is basically on their schedule now, thanks to pumping. My new hobby is washing pumping parts.

Having them earlier than expected got us moving on prep at least. If we needed to bring a baby home right this moment, we have somewhere to put them, multiple places to change them, and loads of supplies. We even did our “Homeward Bound” class, where I got to breathe into a mannequin through a mask. That’s a silver lining, right?

Extra stuff, observations, and thoughts I couldn’t be bothered to weave into the narrative.

Baby poops are real weird. While I knew about the black tar looking stuff, I was not ready for milk poops. If you actually want to know because you haven’t seen it live, ask me, and buckle up. I have been crapped on already too.

They’re super dramatic about waking up. Lots of big yawns.

They get hiccups all the time. Because of their tiny voices, they sound like little squeaks.

Pulling their feeding tubes out is their favorite pass time apparently.

You don’t know dry hands until you wash and use hand sanitizer every ten seconds.

They’re pretty adorable and precious, we can’t wait to bring them home.

NICU Life

A very weird birthday.

Post author By Adam
Post date May 30, 2020

We started the day heading to a car dealership to buy a mini-van (yeah, I know, ugh) and ended up with the babies instead.

What happened? Rachel’s water broke shortly after a test drive. A couple of hours later, we were in surgery. Well, technically, she went in surgery. I was there for the ride, and moral support or whatever.

Now we’re just sitting in a hospital room with all the time in the world. So, update time.

Baby stats

Mallory (baby A) is just over 4 pounds

Taylor (baby B) is just under 4 pounds

Hannah (baby C) just over 3 pounds

As you can see, they’re pretty little. They’re all just over 31 weeks, so that’s to be expected. Ok, pictures. See below.

Pictured from left to right: My hand, Taylor, Mallory, and I think Rachel’s hand.

Hannah doing her best and being very small.

Mallory later in the NICU all cleaned up.

They’re all looking pretty good and currently in the NICU baking. Mallory is breathing on her own without help. The others are breathing fine, but getting a little help to keep their lungs open. We don’t know how long they’ll be in. It could be weeks; it could be over a month. We’ll just have to wait and see. Apparently you know the most within the first 24-48 hours.

Rachel is fine. She’ll be attempting to walk soon and not really feeling too much pain. She’ll have to be in for about three days give or take.

I was asked at least five times if I was going to faint, or if I’ve eaten and my blood sugar was good, so I don’t faint. Apparently that’s pretty common? I don’t know. No fainting occurred.

Next steps? Recover, head home, and then just visit the babies every day until they can come home. Visits are extra limited right now, though.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got. Bye!

NICU Life

So, what’s new?

Post author By Adam
Post date May 3, 2020

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to ratchet up the uncertainty of expecting triplets. We just watched Parasite today (which was a little baffling at first when you think it’s a horror movie thanks to poor categorization in Hulu), which left me with some first-rate wisdom.

A lot of this going around these days.

For now, we’re just doing our best. Honestly, we’re just fine. Rachel is on bed rest in everything but name. She also looks like she put on a comically over-sized pregnancy suite and decided wearing it every day all day would be fun. I’m remote full time. We’re both just grateful for some stability and simplicity considering the goings-on. For now, we wait, be a little bored, and hold out it’s time to pull them out.

When do things get real?

Yeah, we still don’t know. Basically, the goal is to hold out as long as possible. If we’re lucky, we make it to June. Right now, they’re at 28 weeks and surprisingly large for multiples. Also, sonograms are kind of rough at this point since they’re all squished together. Honestly, they look better live when you can see the motion—your brain kind of pieces it together. Of course, I’m now banished from all visits thanks to Covid. So, let’s all just be disappointed together on this one.

Nursery?

Finally, feeling a little urgency on that one. Turns out preparing for three babies when you’ve had zero babies, and when there’s a dang pandemic floating around is hard. We’re also both life long lovers of procrastination, so that doesn’t help. We are chipping away at it each weekend. Well, at this point, I’m doing the work, and Rachel is project managing and eating cookies, so she doesn’t strain things. We wanna make it to June, remember?

Oh hey, massive thanks to everyone that’s been flooding us with baby stuff. I’m pretty sure we are now well known to all local delivery drivers.

Our front room basically every week regardless of unboxing efforts.

Nursery in progress. While still incomplete, I think the theme is coming through. If not, it’s grey, cream, mint, and vaguely pink.

This is by no means all of it, but it is coming together. Oh, Rachel made that blanket herself. It turns out crochet is a great thing to take up when you have a lot of time and nowhere to go. By the way, those comforters are coming out of the cribs until they’re old enough. I read the warning label.

Washing and prepping baby clothes and blankets is making it clear laundry is about to be my number one hobby. I’m also supremely confident the current stock of diapers won’t even kind of cut it.

That’s all I have. Considering the lag in posting, it’s entirely possible the next one you’ll see will be “we have actual babies now,” but hey, who knows.