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!!