New pictures

Our first family photo (left-right - Ethan, Alex, Grant)


Daddy's first time to hold all three together!!


Aren't they cute??!!??


Ethan was making faces at his brothers!! :)






Video of Alex


Video of Grant

After 1 month, 1 week and 6 days...

...Mommy finally got to hold all three of her boys again!!!

(L-R: Alex, Ethan, Grant)

So, you wouldn't have believed it, but Alex and Ethan really really do look alike!!! Ethan's hair is starting to turn from blonde to brown. :)

Alex

Grant

Ethan

Milestones in weight and feeding

Ethan passed the 4 lb mark tonight. He is now eating 6mls every 3 hours. Pray that he continues to tolerate this all and can start eating just breastmilk soon.

Alex ate a HUGE 25mls from the bottle tonight. Good progress, since he has only ever taken 14 or 11 from me! He is now weighing 4lbs 11oz.

Grant ate a whooping 35mls from the bottle tonight. That is the most he has taken so far!! He is now 5lbs 6oz. They are all getting close to eachother!

Mommy and Daddy are doing well and happy to see their boys growing and changing everyday. We want them home soon, but all in God's time. Your prayers are still much appreciated!! Thank you so very much.

One Month, One Week, 3 Day update

I know it has been a while since I have posted. We have been really busy going back and forth between hospital and home.

The boys are making great strides in their journey toward home. Alex and Grant are both in "cribs" now. They are also taking food from a bottle trying to learn how to bottle feed. Grant takes about 25ml once a shift right now.


Alex is having a bit more of a hard time. They are thinking his reflux is coming back and he really doesn't like the bottle if he is refluxing. Hopefully he will grow out of it, but we'll just have to see.

Ethan is doing good right now too. He has gained so much weight these past couple of weeks. He is now 3lbs 14oz. Almost 4 lbs!!! They just started him back on breastmilk this past weekend and so far he is tolerating it pretty well. He we just upped today to 3ml every 3 hours. Hopefully he does well and can get out of the level 3 NICU and move up with his brothers to the Graduate NICU!

Grant is weighing 5lbs 6oz now. Alex is weighing 4lbs 9oz now.



Here is a video of Ethan and Mommy "playing" the other day. I'll have a video of Grant and one of Alex here pretty soon. My camera batteries died and I haven't charged them yet. (doing so now, but it takes a while.)

One month old (2 days ago)

My baby boys are a month old! Can you believe it?? I can't. It is hard to believe that they have been out in this world for this long, yet it seems like so much longer. The NICU is becoming a place that I don't want to ever have to go back to when this is all said and done!

Well, here are the one month pictures and stats.

Alex - (We didn't get a good picture because he had the CPAP still on) 3lb 12oz (he hasn't been gaining a lot, but they finally upped his food intake so he will start gaining again) 16 1/2 inches long.


Grant - 4lbs 12oz, 17 inches long. He is now taking some of one feeding a day by bottle. He just has to get the suck-swallow-breath thing down still.


Ethan - He had a major week last week, so he is semi-swollen this week, but you won't believe how he's grown... 3lbs 7oz (minus 4 or 5oz for swelling... so 3lbs 2oz)!!!!! 15 inches long (up from the 12 at birth!!) I was so happy to hear he is still doing well considering he isn't eating breastmilk yet. Hopefully midweek he will be able to start feeding again.


We also had a shower at our church on Saturday. (Thank you Brenda for the wonderful job of setting it up and hosting!) We had a wonderful time getting out of the house and hospital (even though the boys couldn't) and got a bunch of WONDERFUL gifts from our church family!!! Thank you everyone, for everything, and for the prayers. If that was all we got this whole time, it would be totally worth it because these boys need all the prayers they can get.

Surgery update

Ethan made it through the surgery just fine. They did not find anything so that is a good thing. It is also a bad thing because we don't know what was causing his issues in the first place. Hopefully he was just premie and needs to just grow a bit more and be healthy. He is recovering now and hopefully will be back to himself in a few days. Thank you for all the prayers!

I'll put up pictures from our shower yesterday and their 1 MONTH pictures later today. Can you believe that they are a month old already??

Prayers for Ethan please

Ethan will be going into surgery Friday afternoon. It is an exploratory surgery to see if there is something wrong with his bowel since he hasn't been able to tolerate feedings, he had that infection, and he has the swollen belly. We hope there is nothing wrong, but if there is something, they will be able to fix it then. Please keep him in your prayers. We want him to get well and start being able to eat and tolerate food.

I'll update as soon as I can here. Thank you.

I suppose it's time for an update...

I am wondering how to start this posting, so I gues I will just update you on each one of the boys.
Alex - Alex has been having quite the bouts of reflux lately. So, the other day the started him on a continuous feed. That means that he gets food constantly into his feeding tube and that keeps his stomach full. It should help his reflux. So far it is working pretty well. He has had a few spit-ups, but not nearly as bad as he used to have.

He was also having some pretty good de-sats (oxygen level drops). They checked his red blood cell count and it was very low. He had a blood transfusion to help with that. It also seems to be helping, but we won't know for sure for the next couple of days.

Otherwise, he is doing really well. He is weighs 3lbs 12oz tonight.

Grant - Grant had a big day today. The nurse said that he is big enough now that he can come out of the isolette. That means he will be going to a crib. He will still be staying with the other two boys in this NICU. They like to keep multiples together until they go home. So he will move to the crib probably tomorrow.

We also tried the bottle with him today. He sort of got the suck-swallow-breath job down. Out of the 38ml he gets for each feeding, he ate about 10ml of it by bottle. The nurse said that was really good for the first time bottle feeding! He did so good and gave us a big burp afterwords. :) Last night he weighed 4lbs 5oz.

Ethan - Ethan also had a big day, but not a nice one like Grant. :-( We got a phone call this morning (I really am starting to hate weekends) and he had to go into surgery today. He needed to get a line put in to a vein because the IV lines they have had in him keep infiltrating. That means that they keep leaking into his body. He has had two in his arms that infiltrated and caused a bunch of blisters. The surgery went well and he continues to recover. The doctors are pleased with the line placement and how he is doing. (The line is like the central line he had in before, but this one goes in through his neck).

He also had to have a blood transfusion after his surgery. His red blood cell count was low too. So, hopefully he will start to get better and be able to get healthy and grow. Not that he isn't growing though. He was at 2lb 14oz last night!

Like I said, I really have been dreading the weekends cause things always happen to them on the weekends, especially Ethan. Hopefully next weekend will be better. It should be, we have our first baby shower!!!

On other news, I want to say Congrats to our pastor and his wife, Brain and Tara, on the birth of their new son, Joel! Congrats!

Pics & Weights

Patience Please!!!

Jess and I have decided that we will only do night time cares every other night to allow us to rest so that we don't get ourselves exhausted and possibly sick. Tonight was our night off so I stopped by on my way home from work and spent about an hour with the boys and got the opportunity to hold Grant for a little while.

Since we didn't go to night time cares I JUST got off the phone with the two nurses caring for them tonight and here's what they said...

Overall everyone has had a very good couple of days and nights.

Ethan is doing very well. He's down to 27% on his oxygen concentration. He's also up on his weight to 2 lbs 9 1/2 ozs.

Alex is also doing very well. He hasn't had an oxygen desat since earlier in the day. Even when he had that one he only dropped mildly and recovered on his own. The nurses had an admitance flown in via Life Flight Denver so she hadn't gotten his weight done yet. Last night he was at 3 lbs 7 1/2 ozs so hopefully he's up a little tonight.

Grant had to get another IV put in. Poor boy can't keep an IV in more than a day or two. I guess it was a difficult process and then ended up putting it in his head again. He weighed in tonight at 3 lbs 14 1/2 ozs. Almost 4 lbs!!! Keep it up little man!!!

Thanks to everyone for your continued prayers. Mimi has been handing out blue paper clips to her everyone she knows asking them to put it somewhere they see it often and say a little prayer everytime they see it. I think she's given away over 60 clips so far!

Here are a few pics for you...


Alex and Dad


Ethan


Grant being held by Mom

Ups and Downs

The boys did not have a good weekend, and therefore neither did we. It all started with a 7 am phone call saying that Ethan was back on the ventilator and that he might have an infection. Turns out he does have an infection, but they are treating it really agressively and he is getting better. He should be off his vent today.

We then found out that Grant has a urinary tract infection. He was put on antibiotics. You can tell the antibiotics are working because he is back to his feisty self as of yesterday.

Then yesterday, we found out that Alex also has a urinary traact infection. He is now on antibiotics also. He also has a low red blood cell count so he is having issues holding his oxygen count up. But, since he is on the antibiotics, he is doing much better with that.

The poor babies just had a hard weekend, and so did we. It is hard to hear that your baby is sick and needs help. Let's just say that James' birthday was not what we were anticipating. I thought it would be nice and quiet, but the boys made sure that we never have that expectation again! :)

Well, even though they are fighting infections, they are still growing. As of last night they weigh...
Alex - 3lb 7oz
Grant - 3lb 13oz
Ethan - 2lb 6oz

They are growing and eating great. Alex is now eating 18ml of fortified breastmilk every 3 hours. Grant is eating 16ml of fortified breastmilk every 3 hours. Ethan is eating 1ml of breastmilk every 6 hours. Ethan will eventually get there, but they are just taking their time, especially since he is still on the vent.

So, that was our weekend and week up to yesterday. I'll try and get some pictures today. Sometimes I just don't have the time when I get in the NICU to take pictures, but I know you all want to see them, so I will try.

Love,
Jessica