34 Weeks Old! You won’t believe what all has happened this past week!

WHAT A WEEK!!!  WOW!!!  I’m not even sure where to begin…..These kids are A-MAZ-ING!!! So our Tribe turned 1 month old on last Saturday 8/15, and just yesterday….one week later, they turned 34 weeks old (as far as gestation goes) They have grown like little weeds!  The doctors have told us they were pushing for them to gain about an ounce a day, and we’ve seen it!

Here’s an update on their weights:  (the last I posted was from about 8 days ago)

Payton was 3lbs 8.8 oz  – Now she is 4lbs 1.6oz

Pecos was 3lbs 14.7oz  – Now he is 4lbs 11.1 oz

Porter was 3lbs 14.1oz –  Now he is 4lbs 9.3oz

Powers was 4lbs 1.6oz – Now he is 4lbs 11.5oz

All are in the 4lb club!  And all are in open cribs!  Powers and Pecos were in their cribs before last weekend, and actually over last weekend, Saturday and Sunday, our other 2 came out and were put into open cribs since they are holding their temps on their own!  And, I got to hold all 4 of my miracles at once!  And so did Big Sis!  And, finally a complete family photo! 

We started introducing the bottle to all of them on Monday 8/17, they were a few days over 33 weeks old.  We are told that the suck-swallow-breathe reflex is something learned and mastered somewhere between 34 and 36 weeks gestation, they were just wanting to start them out and let them start learning while their feeding tubes are still in.

Now let me talk about Mr. Pecos and his progress…..goodness, where do I start……So, he started out on the bottle slow, he would finish about half his bottle at first and have to be fed the rest through his tube over the first day or so.  I think it was Wednesday when he just took off and was drinking his entire bottle every time!  And by Thursday his feeding tube was out!  This little guy is just blowing the minds of the nurses!  He hasn’t had any Heart Rate Drops HRD, since the 14th which is excellent, and he has been taken off his caffeine.  So…..according to Hospitals and Insurance companies, all a baby has to do to be released from the NICU and go home is have no HRD’s in the past 7 days, be maintaining their temperature in an open crib and be feeding well and gaining weight.  And, our little Pecos is doing all of it!  So…he will be coming home with us, probably tomorrow (or today since it is almost midnight that I am typing this)!  I feel crazy even saying it…..We had no idea this would happen this fast, but he is just a little miracle (they all are) Anyway.. first I heard that it could be a possibility for him to come home next week was this past Thursday.  The doctors told me that as long as he did not have any setbacks that he would be discharged.  I was told maybe the end of the week.  Then on Friday about 4:00 we were told that insurance has only approved him through Monday and it would probably happen then.  Yikes!  What a blessing, what a miracle to get my baby home and out of the NICU…….except for…..I’m not ready, I have 3 other babies in the NICU, and My House – Here’s a pic of my house and what it looked like earlier today when Trent and I came home to try and ready a “corner” to put Pecos in…..  It is an absolute mess!  (I think anyone would be anxious about bringing home 1 baby to this mess….but I have him and my others still in Temple, and no nursery ready.)  And, Here’s a pic of what the nursery looks like…..LOL!!! I am just delirious about all of this.  Oh well…It will get done, somehow, and Pecos won’t take up too much room. 🙂  It’s sad to say but we have been asking the Doctors if there’s anyway that they can keep him for longer….haha….but they are not really able to buy us any time since Insurance pretty much calls the shots on that sort of thing.  They just always told us that the babies would be in the NICU until about their due date of 10/3 or maybe earlier if they did well.  Trent and I were liking thinking that our children would do well and come home some time earlier, but this is a few weeks before we even thought it could happen.  Doctors recently had been telling us that they have seen babies go home at 37, 36,and even some at 35 weeks, but we are even before that.  We certainly don’t want to take for granted the fact that we have a baby that is excelling so well that he can go home at 34 weeks and 2 days gestation (6 weeks before he’s even supposed to be born) and he is a multiple which statistically should make him not do as well.   It is truly a miracle and we’ll gladly bring him home!

And so on to Miss Payton, our sweet little angel.  She has not had any Heart Rate Drops (HRD) since the 14th and has been taken off her caffeine.  She is still hanging onto her little bit of Oxygen.  It has been turned down to 1/16 of a liter which is so very minimal…she is just not giving it up quite yet, but getting close.  Her feeding has been a little up and down.  She’ll do very well with her bottle one day, and just decide she wants to sleep instead on another day.  So she still has her feeding tube in.  She is very proper with her eating and is a little lady about her burps….most of the time you don’t even hear her burp, it’s just a little puff of air coming out.  So, she still has some growing to do to get rid of her O2 and to get her suck-swallow-breathe reflex down a little better.  I know without a doubt she’ll have it down in no time!

Mr. Porter, or Mr. Hiccups, as I call him sometimes (he really gets the hiccups a lot!,)  he is still hanging onto his O2 as well.  He was on 1/2 liter of air, but they just today turned him down to 1/8th liter.   Also, he has not had any HRD’s since the 15th!  Now, his feeding….OH MY…this boy can eat!  (like his mommy!)  The first day we introduced the bottle to him (which was Monday the 17th at 33 weeks old)  he was like..yummy, I like this and let me show you how it’s done!  He took to the races with it and hasn’t stopped since.   He actually started feeding better and caught on faster than Pecos.  They just removed his feeding tube yesterday, but we are really not sure why it wasn’t out earlier since he is doing so well with eating.  Anyway, he’s really amazing, they are now offering him as much as he wants and his volume has increased.  He is trying to get up there to catch his brother’s weights.  I know he can do it and he’ll slowly grow out of his need for the little puff of air going into his cute little nose., then he’ll be coming home for sure!

And finally my Mr. Powers, he is just such a little cutie pie….or big cutie pie I should say.  He has remained our big boy and probably will continue.  He likes to eat as well….he just likes it to be fed to him through his feeding tube, lol.  He just can’t get the suck-swallow-breathe thing down yet, but he’s working on it.  He’s so cute watching him trying to figure it out…..he tries hard, then he decides he will just go to sleep and let the nurses do all the work.  He has decided he just wants to do things the easy way and just sleep and grow.  Nurses say though that he’ll get it soon and one day he’ll just start taking his bottle like a champ!  And I know he can do it too!  He has also had many HRD’s this past week, about 1 a day.  So he is still on his caffeine to try and help with that.   This is something that he will grow out of and is still normal for a preemie, it just doesn’t seem so in our case since we have 3 others that aren’t having the episodes.  He actually had one while I was feeding him on Friday, and I saw his little face turn blue….It was a horrible sight and I started crying as the nurse grabbed him from me and startled him to breathing again…..whew… He will for sure not do that once he comes home, but it was not something any mother would like to see.  That is a sight I will never want to see again.  So Prayers for my little Pow-Pow to learn and grow out of this all would be appreciated.  I know he can do it and have faith that he will and he’ll be home soon after that.

I’ll update on our progress soon and let you all know for sure when we get Pecos home and how it’s going.  Parker is extremely excited to get to bring her babies home!  She was also super duper awesome when she held them all 4 in her lap!  She wanted to do it again the next time we went in…..She’s so awesome, love that girl with all my might!

With Love,

Niki