Today after visiting the kids, who are doing well and I’ll update about them in just a bit, we went to a meeting held by Parents Partnered for Preemies. This group provides support for parents whose preemie babies are in the NICU or other preemie nurseries at the hospital (and has provided us with some nice preemie clothing and frames for some pictures). Their meetings are basically a short social event during which each parent can give a background of their child and update the group on their progress. We felt immediately out of place as the other parents started to describe their children, all of which had been born under 2 lbs, and most were born before 26 weeks and have had very serious complications. It was sobering indeed and only makes us more grateful that April was able to carry Kimball, Brinlee, and Sawyer to 31 weeks and >3 pounds. We wish all of our new friends the best of luck as their children grow and progress (we were the only parents with multiples).
/
/
/
/And, as promised, our update:
/
/
/
/The three continue to do well and now weigh:
/
/
/
/Brinlee and Kimball – 4lbs 3 oz.
/
/
/
/Sawyer – 4lbs 13 oz.
/
/
/
/They continue to progress down the road. They are no longer on continuous feeds and are receiving their food over 1.5 hours instead of the continuous feeds (they receive approximately 36 ccs every three hours which is given to them over the first 1.5 hours of the three hours). This is a significant step as they need to be able to bottle feed for all eight feedings. Each bottle feed takes a maximum of thirty minutes, so they need to be able to digest their full feeding in thirty minutes so we hope to see that 1.5 hours decrease to thirty minutes without negatively affecting them.Â
/
/
/
/They all finished their bottles this morning, with Brinlee finishing hers in 10 minutes, which is fantastic. They are also having fewer and fewer episodes of apnea and bradicardia, and the nurse believes that they will be coming off their caffeine very soon, possibly tomorrow. Being off the caffeine for approximately a week without any episodes is also a significant milestone that they must cross, so coming off the caffeine will allow us to know if they can do this.Â
/
/
/
/Today Brinlee breast fed extremely well. All in all, things are well. They are a little anemic, but that is fairly normal for them at this age.