A day in the Life- NICU Addition

I've seen other triplet bloggers document about a day in their lives at a certain point in time and I like the idea of going back to see what life was like for us when they were new to our lives, so here is my first installment of a day in the life!

I am bound by a strict pumping schedule of every 3 hours as I try to build up enough supply to feed 3 babies. I have alarms set on my phone so that I can pump at 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, and 10:00-both AM and PM. It's a group effort to get all the pumping equipment washed between pumpings and milk stored properly so Will is up with me for every pump, too. So currently our typical 24 hours looks like this:

At home: 11:30 pm- 9 am

1:00 am- pump

4:00 am- pump

5:00 am- Meaghan take pain meds

7:00 am- pump, then up for the day

9:00 am- drive to hospital 

At hospital: 10 am- 10:30 pm

10:00 am- pump 

11:00 am- Meaghan take all meds

11:00 am- kangaroo care with Griffin

12:00 pm- care/nurse Will

1:00 pm- pump/eat lunch 

2:00 pm- nap/rest

3:00 pm- care/nurse Cooper

4:00 pm- pump

5:00 pm- Meaghan takes pain meds

5:00 pm- kangaroo care with Will

6:00 pm- care/nurse Griffin 

7:00 pm- pump 

8:00 pm- kangaroo care with Cooper

9:00 pm- care/nurse Will

10:00 pm- pump

11:00 pm- Meaghan takes all meds

11:00 pm- drive home

Will and I joke every time the alarm goes off that it's "time to make the donuts"- I understand how that Dunkin Donut man feels in the commercial now!

It's a very busy schedule, literally around the clock. The day at the hospital has become regimented for me especially as we introduce the boys to breastfeeding. Logistics come into play because I can't do kangaroo care (skin-to-skin) with the baby right before I try to nurse him. So I spend my day moving from baby to baby to be sure everyone gets equal share of their mama. I literally keep a schedule on my phone that I refer to throughout the day. I'm so tired these days that it feels like I'm solving a complicated math equation trying to figure out when to feed the boys and when to kangaroo care with them. I also have to keep track of when to take all my medications so I don't forget to take them and when I should be taking all vs. some of the meds. 

I have to look at this on my phone approximately 29 times a day to make sure I'm giving attention to the right baby.

Kangaroo care with Cooper

Will sucking down his bottle from Daddy

Griffin wide awake after nursing with mama

Finally getting to see Cooper without his feeding tube on his face! He's in a milk coma here- nursed with mama for 15 minutes AND took his whole bottle. Grow, baby, grow!

Kangaroo care with Will- mama's point of view.

Chatting with Griffin after his dinner. I think he has discerning tastes- he'll nurse well, but isn't interested in the bottle, hence the feeding tube. Hopefully it will click for him soon and he'll get to take the tube out (by the nurses, not on his own- which he often tries to do!)

The NICU team refers to the boys' feeding schedule as care time. Will and I have been helping with the boys' care since day one, but have gotten to the point where they let us do the boys' care freely, without much assistance from them. Each care time (every 3 hours) involves checking their temperature, changing their diaper, and giving them their bottle. The boys are all on the same feeding schedule so during the day Will and I each care for one baby while the nurse or her care partner helps with the third. We're hoping to keep the boys on this same schedule at home, so this is good training for the whole family. Since Will and I will be on our own at home, we're hopeful that by the time we get to bring the babies home I'll be able to tandem nurse and/or Will can tandem bottle feed with the help of a boppy so everyone can eat at once. Since they are in different rooms in the NICU it's tough to practice this, but Will and I are a heck of a lot more comfortable caring for the boys now than we were just a week ago. Baby Will gets to try nursing twice a day because he's such a great eater and they think he can handle two training sessions in one day. 

Speaking of training, we refer to this time in the NICU as our baby boot camp. No one wants to have their children there, but since our guys are doing well and their biggest obstacles to overcome are growth and feeds, it's been nice to have some time to "ease" into multiple parenting and have knowledgeable help nearby for when we have questions. I shudder to think of how ill-prepared we would have been if they had come home straight away! I'm glad to have some confidence in caring for them before we officially bring them home.  

Slowly but surely we're getting faster and more efficient at tasks, too. Pumping, for example, is taking about 35-40 minutes per pump as opposed to the 45-60 minutes that it took at first. We have a routine down both at home and the hospital so we each know what the other is doing. I'm grateful that Will has been such a great partner since day one. He's been right here up with me around the clock for pumpings and never complains at all about how tired he is. It's a good routine we're in for now, but we fully understand that it will change completely once our trio come home. 

That's not to say everything has been sunshine and roses! Sleep deprivation is a very real thing. It makes us both irritable and overly sensitive. Add to that my raging hormones and I can be a hot mess! Whoever came up with the expression "no use crying over spilled milk" has clearly never lost some of their precious breast milk when the pumping pieces broke apart after a 4:00 am pumping session! We have both been overly sensitive and snapped at each other for no real reason. Things that would normally roll off our backs have led to bickering. However, we've been great about talking things over on our rides home at night and reminding each other that we're on the same team here. I also randomly cry at various points in the day. Sometimes just a drop or two, and other times full on ugly crying. Last night I was doing kangaroo care with Cooper and I lost it. Like big heaving ugly cry. I just had a moment of total awe that these babies are MY babies and we get to bring them home with us, hopefully soon. I couldn't even look at Cooper because it would set me off again. It's amazing how wonky post partum hormones make you feel!

We have great nurses in the NICU who have helped us, but were particularly fond of their night nurse, Allison. She feel in love with our guys during her first shift with them, before Griffin was even in the same pod as Will and Cooper, and has requested to work with them for the remainder of their time in the NICU. She is wonderful and we're so grateful that she took a liking to our little guys. She helped coach me through my first nursing session with Griffin, she's taught us easy bottle feeding positions for the boys, and she is just wonderful to talk to. She actually reminds me of a family friend of ours, Deb Discher. They have such similar mannerisms and personalities. I'm sure that's another reason I feel so at ease with her. She makes it so much easier to leave our boys at night. I have no doubt that they are in good hands at all times, but we feel especially at ease knowing that she's taking care of them. 

One thing we've altered in the last two nights is when we leave for the night.  

Instead of staying for Will's second feeding and then the 10:00 pm pump, we've left in time to be at home for the 10:00 pm pump and hopefully get an extra 1 1/2 hours of sleep at home. I hate Leaving the boys but the main reason we've stayed through the 10:00 pm pump is so the boys could have as much breast milk as possible and as little formula. My milk has really started to come in and my body definitely seems to know that we're feeding triplets. Last night, even without the 10:00 pump to help, the boys only had to split 55 CCs of formula among the three of them in their 9:00 am feeding before we got there this morning. What I've been producing today will surely get them through the night solely on breast milk. I'm really proud that I've been able to build up to this! Finally we are to the point where we are meeting their demands and can start building a surplus for storage. This helps me feel better about going home earlier in the evening. As much as I hate to go, I understand that Will and I both need to rest, too, so we can be good parents to our trio. 

So that's our life right now, our new "normal". Exhausting and hectic but so very wonderful, too. Will told me the other night that when we get into bed at night and he closes his eyes, all he sees is their faces. Ditto, daddy, ditto. Can't wait till our new normal is having them home and on our schedule!!

One week in...

The boys are one week old today! Hard to believe that I should still be pregnant right now, and instead am living and breathing by a strict schedule of pumping, "care time", and sleeping when we can!

Some updates on the boys after their first week of life:

Will-

Will is our little blond boy with very long fingers and toes. He makes the funniest expressions as he looks around the room- his eyebrows kind of scrunch together and raise up so his whole forehead wrinkles. It's (obviously) adorable. He somewhat looks like a little old man with his wrinkly forehead- Daddy claims baby Will has a Benjamin Button thing going on. We (mainly I) had intended to have baby Will go by the nickname "Q" (for Quattro) as we have jokingly been calling our first born son Quattro for years now, before "he" was even a reality. For whatever reason, though, we've stuck with calling him Will so far. Maybe we just need a little extra time to get used to his name, or maybe Q will never be his nickname- I guess time will tell. 

Developmentally Will has progressed so much in his first week. He, along with his brothers, spent his first night in Vanderbilt's Stahlman NICU (their most intensive care unit for infants) which is located closest to the post partum care rooms in the main hospital. This NICU has about 10-12 beds in the room and a nurse who sits right by the isolette and watches over one or two babies 24/7.  He swallowed some blood during delivery so his first 24 hours he was spitting up and pooping some blood. Totally normal, we were told, but not something you want to see! He was also put on a Cpap machine to help with his breathing. Aside from the spitting up blood issue, he was doing pretty well and came off the cpap within a day. They let us hold him on Monday- and I was able to feed him a bottle and help burp him- it felt so nice to be able to do some "parenting" on the little guy!

On Monday evening they decided to move all three boys to the NICU at the Children's hospital. The plan was to put Will in what they consider a step down pod (still the NICU, but less intense in terms of needing constant attention from the nurses) but he had a little hiccup in his progress when his stomach was acting up after his feeding. He had puked the formula up and had a bit of a distended belly and his X-rays came back abnormal. They put him back on his cpap to help him breathe and decided that he'd join brother Griffin in the normal children's NICU instead of heading to the step down pod. As it turns out, the issue quickly resolved itself- his little belly had just been full of air and he needed to work some stuff out. For a couple days Will was getting to hog all the breast milk for himself as they wanted him to have feeds that were gentler on his belly. That must have done the trick as we were pleasantly surprised to walk into the step down pod on Thursday morning and see that Will had been moved there overnight. 

Some other "firsts" we have experienced with Will- he was the 1st baby to poop and pee on his mama (and has at this point done so on 3 separate occasions!). I thought we had an agreement that he would give his dad all the poopy diapers to change but it looks like baby Will is in cahoots with the wrong parent!

As of yesterday, Will is off his IV fluids. He hadn't needed a feeding tube as he's a very good eater. He's taking his full bottle at each feeding and is very good at pacing himself and remembering to breathe while he eats. (They were born at the gestational age where their suck, swallow, breathe reflex was just kicking in so they each need more practice in the feeding department.) 

We've started working on nursing with Will, too. The very first effort wasn't super successful as he didn't seem interested in doing much other than sticking his little tongue out and licking off the milk that we were using to try and get him to latch on. Admittedly it was hilariously adorable to see his little tongue stick out like a frog, but not successful in terms of learning to breastfeed. We tried again twice yesterday and used a nipple shield to help him- that was the trick! He nursed for about 10-15 minutes on his first try, and last night nursed for 25 minutes straight! We've been offering him a bottle after nursing to be sure he's getting enough to eat. He didn't want it after his marathon nursing session last night so hopefully that means he got enough on his own. 

Our goal for Will now is to make sure he continues to rest and grow! 

First time holding Will

Our little Benjamin Button- he looks like a little old man! LOVE that sweet face!

Proud Daddy

And proud Papa

Will loves to sleep in the "touchdown" formation

Wide awake and ready to eat!

The door to Will and Cooper's room in the step down NICU- I love that the staff take time to decorate the doors!

Griffin-

Griffin has the most  distinct looks of the bunch- his hair is extremely dark and spiky, and he has plenty of it! The boy already has a decent set of sideburns! They all have pretty good heads of hair, but I'm guessing I have Griffin to thank especially for all that heart burn I was experiencing! (Thankfully, that heart burn disappeared the minute after these guys were out of my belly- sure won't miss that part of pregnancy!) he also sports a cleft chin and has a rounder face than his brothers. His complexion is darker than his brothers, too! No one has any trouble identifying Griffin out of the trio. 

Similar to Will's nickname situation, we had intended to call Griffin "Fin" for short. When deciding on names I knew I wanted a little guy named Finn but we wavered back and forth between Griffin and Finnegan. Well, I did at least. Will suggested we invent a name- Griffinagan. Obviously we know what name won out, and Will does call him Griffinagan from time to time, but for whatever reason Fin has not caught on as a nickname yet. I actually find myself calling him Griff more often. Funny how things work out.

Griffin was the first of the boys that I officially laid eyes on when they put him in Will's lap in the operating room. He was such a chunker (and still is!) compared to his brothers! He's the same length as Will but he seems so much bigger than the other boys. 

Griffin seemed to struggle the most with breathing from the get-go. In the Stahlman NICU they had him spend a lot of time on his belly to make it easier for him to breathe. His face was covered with the Cpap machine and feeding tubes so it was especially hard to get a good look at his face for the first day. On Monday afternoon we got to practice part of his "care" on him- we did our first official diaper change and temperature checks on Griffin. 

When they transferred over to the Children's hospital NICU there was no question about where he'd go- he headed to the same pod as Will for some extra attention from the nursing staff. He was the last baby to come off of oxygen tubes to help him breathe, but he's been doing great with breathing on his own. They moved Griffin to the step down pod on Thursday night, so he know has his own room right next door to his brothers, which is great for us. We spent a lot of time running between the two pods every day to spend time with each baby so it's nice to be able to pop back and forth between rooms as often as we want. All three boys are not able to room together as the NICU isn't equipped to have 3 babies in one room together. Will and Cooper are staying in a twin room with Griffin next door in a single. The step down NICU is designed for parents to room in with the babies so the top is almost like a hotel- we have a TV, mini fridge, bathroom, and a couch that pulls out into a bed. We have been sleeping at home at night  but will start staying there at night closer to their discharge so we can do some practice runs. 

Griffin was the first to try breast feeding. He did OK considering neither one of us really knew what we were doing. He still has a feeding tube in his nose as he doesn't always get his bottle down In the allotted amount of time. He falls asleep very easily. While my milk was coming in the boys were supplemented with formula. They each got what they could of my breast milk first, and then the remainder of their feed came from the formula. We joke that Griffin is a bit of a food snob already. He takes down breast milk with no problem but makes a disgusted face when they try to give him formula. His second attempt to nurse was much more successful and he went to town for a solid 15-20 minutes. He must be a farm-to-table kind of baby. 

The nurses often comment on Griffin's feisty personality. He is constantly moving around and waving his arms about. The doctor making rounds on the boys yesterday thought Griffin will be our first walker of the boys.  He's not fond of his feeding tube and is constantly grabbing for it on his face. He's successfully yanked it out a couple of times! When he gets too grabby he gets put in a "timeout" swaddled where his hands are put inside his burrito. We keep telling him that the better he gets at eating the sooner that tube will come out!

He's got the same orders as Will before he can come home- rest and grow. Hopefully he'll get the hang of feeding soon, too. 

Little chunky monkey

He has a tendency to pull on things so he got the Edward Scissorhands look

Kangaroo time with mama

Daddy finally getting to hold Griffin 

Griffin's door in the step down NICU, right next door to his brothers' room

They love kangaroo time as much as I do!

Cooper-

The baby of our family by one whole minute! Cooper resembles brother Will but still looks pretty unique to us. His hair is a bit darker than Will's but not anywhere near as dark as Griffin's. Cooper is our tiny little peanut- he's currently just over 4 pounds. He's got the same long fingers and toes as his brothers. 

As small as he is, Cooper is a scrapper! His arms are constantly moving around, too. And he's been the most stable of the three guys since they arrived. The nurses commented that often times the smallest baby is the one who does better because he was used to fighting in the womb- for space, for nutrients, etc... He was the first baby they moved over to the Children's NICU and he's been in the step down pod since Monday. 

Cooper was the first baby to get to kangaroo care with me (skin-to-skin). Oh my, What a wonderful feeling. He just snuggles right into your chest and falls asleep. The only reason I'd want to give him up is to move on to one of his brothers. Kangaroo care is absolutely mama's favorite part of the day! 

He has his own little personality, too! He has no problem voicing his displeasure when he's not comfortable. His voice is still muffled while he's in the isolette but I have a feeling he's going to have some pipes on him. He shows his sassy side when we do kangaroo time, too. I'll let the picture tell the story!

He tried breastfeeding for the first time yesterday and did pretty well! He latched on for about 15 minutes and then refused his bottle so that's good. He got very fussy about an hour later, though, so he likely didn't get enough to eat. He's also having some trouble finishing his bottles during feeds so he's stuck with a feeding tube, too, for now. We're looking forward to when all of our boys have faces free from tape and wires. 

Such a tiny peanut

First kangaroo care with Cooper- note my red blotchy eyes. The hormones!!!

Grandma got to see Cooper kangaroo care before they headed back to Illinois

Sweet little face

Not sure what I did to deserve this, but I'm sure it won't be the last time I get this look from Cooper!

tiny baby toes

They are going to start popping the top off their isolettes in the next couple days so they can start working on keeping their body temperatures regulated on their own- another thing they have to master before they're allowed to come home. They've kept them closed up so far to make sure that the calories they're using are going towards growth and not towards keeping warm. 

All three have been losing weight this week, but within the normal range. We're hoping to see them all start gaining from here on out. 

Birth Story

I'm going to try to write down the boys birth story through dictation while I'm pumping (already getting the hang of this mom thing- multitasking!) So let's see how this works…

I hit 34 weeks on Friday, June 19 and apparently hit the end of my rope in terms of gestating three babies. The whole day I was feeling different, to the point that I started trying to count/monitor what I thought might be contractions. They were only coming about once an hour, though, and weren't painful or uncomfortable so I didn't think much of it. 

We went to Will's dads house for dinner that evening and by then my stomach was really tightening up a lot. But I still couldn't figure out if they were contractions or if I was just uncomfortable. A lot of the books had said (and people had told me) that if I was having labor-type contractions, I would definitely know as they feel like very painful menstrual cramps. But these tightenings were not painful, just very uncomfortable. I ended up calling both my sister-in-law Sandy and Our friend Amy who recently gave birth (to twins!) to ask them what I should be looking for in terms of whether or not I was in labor and if I was having real contractions or just Braxton hicks. The general conclusion from both of them was that if I was in labor, I would know.

I woke up Saturday morning and felt like the tightening had gone away. However, I was exhausted! I slept most of the day and just couldn't seem to stay awake for more than a short period of time. I also noticed that I couldn't feel the boys moving as much as normal. They would still move around a little bit here and there, but they weren't their usual active selves.

Sunday morning when I woke up, I took my blood pressure and noted that the reading was higher than normal- the lower number was 90, which is not a good thing. They had told me to call if the lower number was 90 or higher or if the top number was 140 or higher as an elevated BP could put me at risk die preeclampsia. I waited a few minutes and then retook it and the number jumped up to 95. My parents were driving in for the day to see me "one last time" while I was pregnant and we were scheduled to meet at church, so I decided to hop in the shower and get ready before checking my BP one more time before we left for church to see if it had gone down at all. The lower number did go down, but just to 88 so it was still high. Will Encouraged me to call the on-call doctor just to see what they thought given that my blood pressure was higher than normal. When she called back I let her know what was going on and mentioned that I hadn't felt the boys move as much as usual in the past day. When she heard that, she encouraged me to go to labor and delivery to be checked out and to have the boys monitored just in case something was wrong. She told me I could have something to eat before I went and it wasn't an emergency situation, so I had a bowl of cereal and some orange juice and then off we went! We made sure to have all of our bags packed "just in case", but it hadn't occurred to me that we were truly leaving the house to go have some babies.

I'm sure mom and dad were surprised when I called to let them know that we wouldn't be at church because we are on our way to the hospital. But I told them to go ahead and go to church and plan to meet us down at the hospital afterwards since I figured we would be at Labor and delivery for a while being monitored. 

The whole ride down to the hospital my stomach was doing the tightening thing again. Again, the tightening wasn't extremely painful, but I noticed that they were definitely getting more and more uncomfortable and frequent. The on-call doctor had called ahead to let them know that we were on our way, so we we got put into a triage room immediately to start being monitored. It took a little finagling to find all three boys and start measuring the heartbeats. By this point, I was starting to feel some pain with my stomach tightening. I learned very quickly that the tightening I had been feeling were actually contractions, and I was contracting about every 2 to 3 minutes. It appeared that I was going into labor on my own, though likely in the very early stages.  They checked my cervix found that I was thinning, but not yet dilated at all. One of the doctor stopped in to the triage room, and asked when I eaten. I let her know it was around 10 AM and she said "okay then, we're going to go ahead and take the babies today as you're 34 weeks and 2 days- we want to be sure your body has time to get the food out of it system. But we will likely have you in surgery around 4 or 6 PM tonight".

34 weeks, 2 days...and done.

Needless to say, I had a bit of a panic attack at hearing those words! I definitely cried some panicked tears and immediately got pretty scared. While I should've known, and I guess in the back of my head I did probably know, that it was possible that they were going to decide to deliver them that day, I hadn't really allowed myself to think about that as a reality. But after a few minutes I calmed down and realized that today was the day we have been planning for and just to get ready to enjoy the ride. Will and I also joked that this would be a Father's Day to remember for him as he was going to get the greatest present of all – becoming a dad himself. All future Father's Day presents will fail in comparison to these gifts!

All the dads in my life on Father's Day

We decided not to tell a lot of people that we were going to be delivering the boys that day as we wanted to wait until they were here and know everything was okay before we started telling family and friends. And really, there was no point in alarming people who would then be waiting on pins and needles for news the rest of the day. We only told immediate family – our parents, and Will's sisters since they live close enough to have been able to get there for the delivery. Clearly my parents picked a good day to come down and visit with me! They called as soon as they were out of church and we let them know to come to the hospital, but we didn't tell him we were going to be delivering the boys until they got there. I found out once my mom and dad came back to triage to see me that they had brought Ella down with them for a surprise so she was here when we deliver the boys, too! She didn't get to meet them, though, as she was too young to come back to the NICU.  

By the time I learned that we are going to be going into surgery that afternoon, it was already close to 1:00 or 2:00 pm so there really wasn't a whole lot of time to panic or think too much about the upcoming C-section. It was actually a bit of a blur as they move me from triage to a prep room. Everyone in the family (who were old enough) was able to stop in and say hello while I was in that room before moving into the waiting room for the news of the boys' arrival. The contractions I had been having were starting to get pretty darn painful and I admit I was glad to know that I wouldn't have to endure them for very long since we were going into surgery so soon. But I'm also happy to know that I was going into labor naturally and got to experience what a "real" contraction felt like. Admittedly though, they did not feel like menstrual cramps at all to me! Good thing I didn't wait for that to be a cue before calling the hospital or going down to labor and delivery!

At just after 4:00 the team came and got me and wheeled me down to the surgery room. They gave me a spinal epidural to numb me up. I had somewhat been dreading that moment as I didn't know how it was going to feel. Thankfully it wasn't as terrible as I thought it was going to be and I went numb fairly quickly. They had warned me ahead of time that there would be a lot of activity going on around me throughout the surgery and to expect a lot of people coming in and out of the room. In addition to my surgery team, each baby had their own NICU team to take care of them once they delivered. Those teams stood on call just outside of the operating room and entered in as soon as each baby was born. Once my spinal was in place and they had me set up to the surgery, they let Will in the room. The first thing I said to him when he walked in was that he looked like he was in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory- his outfit looked like an oompa-loompa!

Oompa-Looma outfit, right?!

From the time they made their first incision to the time they closed me up was very fast- only 48 minutes total. Some things that will stick out to me about the surgery: the Number of people who were in such a small room – it was organized chaos. Also, the smell. It was awful, and at one point I thought I was going to pass out from the overwhelming smell. Will equated the smell to when they use the drill at the dentist office- x100. Fortunately, the anesthesiologist had warned me that I might feel like I was going to pass out and to just let them know as they could give me a med to help with that. Luckily it did! As soon as they had cut me open they called for the NICU teams to come in and suddenly swarms of people entered into the room- each baby had at least 3-4 people working on them. The door to the room looked like a clown car- people just kept coming in!

Willard Joseph IV arrived at 4:55 PM with a cry. What a surreal feeling to hear your baby cry for the first time! He was immediately taken out of that room to another room for all his vitals and observation as my room was only equipped to hold 2 babies at a time. I didn't get to see him at all on his way out the door so I had no idea what he looked like. 

Willard Joseph IV

Griffin Sawyer

Cooper Riley

Griffin Sawyer came one minute later, and the baby of the family, Cooper Riley, arrived a minute after that. We can't be sure because they never officially told us who was pulled out from what position, but we think (based on their last growth ultrasound where Snap was the smallest, Crackle was the middle weight, and Pop was the biggest) that they were pulled out Crackle (left side of my belly) Pop (top right of my belly), then Snap (lower part of my belly, closest to my cervix). The doctors did a vertical incision instead of a horizontal one along my bikini line to be sure they had enough space to pull them out. So it makes sense that Snap, who we always assumed would be the first out, actually came out last. 

On that note, we're glad we didn't start calling them by name when they were still in utero! We knew that the first baby out would be named Will IV but we hadn't discussed who would get the other two names. While they worked on Baby 3, one of the doctors brought Baby 2 over and sat him in Will's arms. It was a bit of a surprise to Will as he wasn't expecting to hold any of the boys in the room. As the doctor sat him down she asked what his name was- Will and I kind of looked at each other then I looked at the baby and said "Griffin Sawyer!" and at that, all our boys had names. Having had a few days to get used to their names, I think we did a great job- Cooper looks like he should be a Cooper and Griffin is totally a Griffin. 

The observing doctor invited Will to take pictures of all the boys so he snapped what he could without getting in the way of the care teams. Shortly after that the boys were on their way to the Stahlman NICU and I was headed to recovery. 

I felt pretty ok overall following the surgery. They let me see family right after I was in my recovery room, where we shared the news of the boys' names and weights. After hat they moved me to a postpartum room where I spent the next several nights. I got to eat several hours later, but I couldn't go to see my babies until I was able to stand on my own without getting woozy and could transfer to a wheelchair. That was certain motivation to get recovery going! Will and I were finally able to visit the boys just before midnight, so a full 7 hours after they were delivered. 

They were perfect. It was really emotional to see them each for the first time. I cried as we moved from baby to baby. They all looked so unique! I didn't know it was possible to fall so deeply in love with a tiny person that you are seeing for the first time! All three were on Cpap machines to help with their breathing and had lots of monitors and cords attached to them, but overall they were doing well. The nurses kept commenting on how good they looked for being 34 weeks, and how big they were for being triplets! They have a long way to go before they're ready to officially come home to us, but I'm so glad they're here!

Cooper in the Stahlman NICU

Griffin in the Stahlman NICU

 

Will in the Stahlman NICU

(This whole dictation thing works pretty well! I was able to write this while pumping and/or snuggling with one of my boys- multitasking at its best!)

They're Here!!!

It's been a whirlwind of a week since the boys arrived on Father's Day! I'll try to write updates here on the blog during downtime (AKA pumping time!) to keep everyone updated. 

Everyone is happy and doing well so far! Thanks to all for your thoughts, prayers, and well wishes! We are so smitten with our baby boys!!!

Cooper Riley

June 21, 2015

4:57 PM

4 pounds, 7 ounces

17.7 inches