The Real Due Date

Daddy sleeping with sweet Mia!

Well its August 20th... Today is the girls' official due date. haha they are almost 7 weeks old and TODAY is the day they were supposed to make their first appearance. (On my sister's birthday too! Happy Birthday Ran!) Its just a miracle that we have the technology and medicine today that was able to keep my babies alive and healthy. Im so grateful!

Well obviously I have very little time (and motivation) to blog every day or even every week like I used to. Im sorry about that. These girls keep us all very busy and any "down time" is used up for sleeping. But it is just the greatest time of our lives! I am loving every single drop. I changed up the girls' feeding/sleeping schedule a week ago. The NICU had them on every 4 hour feedings but that didn't seem like enough to me so I moved them to every 3 hours and have been following the Baby Wise schedule religiously. It was pretty brutal at first. (I pump every 2 hours and then they eat every 3 so it is pretty rigorous.) But for the last two nights they have actually slept from 11pm until 5am!! A miracle. Now they do need to be picked up every once in a while during that time but its always gas. Poor girls have THE WORST gas and its so sad. They are in so much pain with it. Anyway, we were very excited to see the fruits of our labors pay off and see the girls get 6 whole hours of sleep at once. Its awesome!

They are just plumping up too. So cute. They are just filing out and looking adorable. Ive been getting them on video and Jared takes pictures on his camera so we are documenting every single step of this. My sister and niece came and stayed for almost 2 weeks and now my grandparents are here for two weeks. It has been a life savor having help come in. Jared and I are able to get some sleep during the night (never together though because we are on different shifts. Jared goes from 11-330am and I go from 330 until the rest of the day really. Jared works all day though) Very soon though these girls will be sleeping through the night and wont need someone up to keep watch over them constantly. And the "shift" just means someone is sleeping in the living room (because the girls' nursery is in the formal dining room) listening for them while the other person can sleep in the bedroom without any interruptions. It is a great system really.

Next week is our 4 year anniversary!! Mom, dad and the grandparents have VOLUNTEERED to watch the girls so that Jared and I can stay the WHOLE night in Nashville. We are going to the Grand Ol Opry and the temple on Friday and I plan to SLEEP IN on Saturday. I am so excited! Jared and I are just so blessed with wonderful family. It helps that the girls are so freakin adorable though too! haha

**Cute things going on with the girls** They are awake so much more now and open their big gorgeous eyes at us. They will just look and stare at you. Its amazing. They smile at us and really seem to interact much more. They make the cutest noises. Seriously, they grunt ALL the time its so funny! I will get Jared to record it so we can post that. The twins make this dolphin noise that just cracks us up. Charlotte doesnt do it, but she burps like a man. HA! They are the best sleeping buddies as you can see from the picture of Jared. Its the greatest moment having your baby on your chest sleeping in perfect peace. Jared and I are so happy and SO in love with our girls. Its going by WAY too fast....

Time Flies....

My oldest child (by about 15 seconds) Charlotte...

My middle child Abigail

My youngest child Mia

All three of my girls sleeping so peacefully.... Couldn't you just EAT THEM UP!!!! haha

I am already a mom to one month old triplet girls! My goodness! I can't believe its already been a month. I am loving every single second of my girls. I just breath them in. It's going by so fast, it almost makes me sad to see them grow so fast.

We went to the doctor on Thursday for another weight check. Charlotte is 6 lbs 7 ounces and the twins are both 5 pounds 6 ounces. So big.... They are on a consistent schedule of every 4 hour feedings and they are doing really well with it. About 30 minutes before they eat they start stirring and grunting wanting their food. haha its so cute. They grunt all the time. I just laugh, its the cutest thing ever. I pump every 2 hours still and its pretty time consuming. But totally worth it. They are each getting 80% breast milk and only 20% formula (i dont make enough for everyone to have just breastmilk.) Im just grateful they are getting as much as they are. It took a long time for my milk to come in and the nurses weren't very encouraging that I would make enough for it to be worth the time to pump every two hours. But I stayed diligent with it and SO glad I did.

We've only had one night so far where the girls were just inconsolable for hours. They had serious gas problems and Mylacon just made it 10X worse. They were all screaming for about 3-4 hours straight. It broke my heart that I couldn't do anything for them except hold them and just try to soothe them. So sad. Other than that though, they sleep really well in between feedings. We have a pretty good system going with nighttime feedings. We have the girls sleeping in the living room in their cribs. So at night Jared, my mom and myself take turns sleeping on the couch for a few hours at a time. We just rotate shifts so we can have uninterrupted sleep for a few hours at least. Makes a huge difference. When the girls first came home from the hospital we let them sleep in our bedroom but we would wake up with every groan and grunt. So we decided to keep them in their cribs so we could get a good nap at least. *I could not survive without the amazing help of my mom and dad. They take over and let Jared and me get some sleep and it just could NOT be done without them*

My sister is flying in today with my niece to stay for about a week and a half. We are so excited too! First time seeing the girls for her. Then it will be my mamaw peg and papa skip. We have company coming for the next 2 months to help us with the girls. We are having family pictures taken on Wednesday and I am so excited to see how they turn out. It will be so nice to have amazing pictures of my girls! Jared and I are exhausted but I am blissfully exhausted. I love my girls and just want to be close to them all the time. They are just little angels and I am so blessed to get to be their mom. My life is so good.

Extra!! Extra!!

My girls are coming home tomorrow!! Mia and Abigail are finally coming home to their momma and daddy! We could NOT be more excited! Abigail now weighs 4 pounds 7 ounces and Mia is now 4 pounds 6 ounces. So she finally caught up to her sister. hehe

Charlotte was 5 pounds 7 ounces at her doctor's visit last week and she is growing like a weed. We haven't gotten a ton of sleep the last few days with her being home but we have loved ever minute of it. I am not dreading having all three of my girls keeping me up at night. I am just so grateful they are all healthy enough to be at home OUT of the hospital. We are so blessed. Tomorrow is their three week birthday mark too. Three weeks ago I begged the doctor to leave my girls alone but she didn't. But everyone is healthy and growing. It's a miracle the medicine and technology we have today.

Our family will be together again tomorrow..... it will be a great day.

One down!

Just a quick little note! Our sweet Charlotte is home! She was able to come home with us today and it is just so wonderful. Definitely bitter sweet though, leaving two of my children at the hospital with one in the car. Its really strange having a baby here to take care of all the time but I love it. Im already exhausted with pumping every two hours.... but what a sweet time of our lives. We are so blessed. Thank you all for the prayers for the twins still in the NICU. The doctor has high hopes they will be able to come home sometime next week. So we are preparing diligently. Life is good!

Good things are happening

Yesterday Charlotte was able to move into a crib!! So now she has to do well for the next 24-48 hours and then can come home! I can actually have one of my girls home in the next couple of days! I am so excited. The twins are doing well but are they will spit up their feeding every once in a while so they haven't let them "progress" in a couple of days. We got to get that spitting up under control. Well I say spitting up but they pretty much vomit the majority of the milk right up. But they are still gaining weight so that is good news and means we just need to slow down with them and let them adjust. We still think next week they could come home.

I forgot to mention how MY doctor's check up went. My incision is healing up really well. No infection or anything like that. My blood pressure is down to 130 over 70 so thats really good news. (Im not a ticking bomb anymore). Im only taking about 2-4 of my prescription IB profen now. Im totally off the "hard stuff." Im still sore but not really in pain anymore. And the coolest news: I lost 40 of the 45 pounds I gained during pregnancy! I was pretty darn excited.

Thats it for now. I will keep yall posted on the latest!!

Update

Just a quick update on my girls:

Jared and I are at the hospital every single day with the girls. We usually go between 3-6 and get to feed them, change them and take their temperatures. It is torture only being there a few hours every day and only getting to handle them for a little bit.

We are making great progress though. Babies always loose weight a few days after birth. My girls are all now back up to their birth weight and little Abigail is even two ounces over her birth weight. Abigail and Mia are getting bottles every third feeding and working their way up. They are spitting up the bottle every now and then so thats why they aren't taking more bottles right now. But they are still gaining weight really well so they are still on track as of now. Charlotte, on the other hand, is doing great with the bottles so the doctor told us today that they are going to give her ALL bottles and see how she does with it. Which is GREAT news. Once she can take all bottles they will move her to a crib for 48 hours to make sure she can control her body temperature and then she can come home!! We think she will be able to come home by the end of the week!!! The doctor said the other two should be ready next week! This is such great news for us and we are so excited to finally get our girls home.

I was able to try to breast feed Charlotte yesterday and she was such a pro at it. She was doing really well with it for a good 20-25 minutes and then got tired so we gave her a bottle for the rest of her feeding. But it was so awesome to be able to do that with her and see how much she is progressing. We tried again today and she wasn't as successful but its because she was SO hungry that she didn't want to do it the "hard" way. haha she wanted her easy, fast bottle. I don't blame her. So we will try again tomorrow. Anyway, just a quick update for you. We are so ready for them to come home. Next week could NOT come fast enough for this momma and daddy.

Bath Time!!

They let us give the girls baths today. I love bath time. Its so great. Some of you were wanting pictures with something else in the picture to scale how small the girls are. Well here they are....

Here is Mia! My gorgeous Mia Rebecca! So adorable....

Mia

Mia naked! hehe Look how her small hand wrapped around her grandpa's. Awe...

Miss Charlotte Cynthia. She is completely off her oxygen and is doing so well. She's eating more than her sister's are at this point and can really suck her pacie so I have high hopes for her on the breast.

Look how small Charlotte is compared to her daddy's arm.... and shes my BIG girl. When we gave the girl's their baths last time, Abigail went first and she cried and cried the first few minutes. So I came up with the idea to put our arms on either side of them to cradle/support them and have some skin to skin contact. She loved it and didn't cry anymore. So we tried it on the other girls and they love it! No more tears.

Charlotte getting a diaper change.

Charlotte smiling cause her momma is getting her sugar, the picture just doesn't show me doing it... I cant get enough of them.

Charlotte and her daddy.

Little Abigail getting scrubbed down.

Daddy washing Abigail's hair. You can see she's about the length of my forearm.

Abigail's little feet. She has the cutest chicken legs! haha

Abigail loves to touch her face. She can wiggle out of any swaddle so she can have her hands next to her face. I love it!

She was looking up at momma. I was singing to her to keep her calm.

Our Beautiful Girls

Abigail is my squawker! She was the only one who cried when they pulled her out of me. So she has some good lungs! Good for her!

Proud momma and daddy! We only get to feed them, change their diapers and take their temp. And thats only sometimes. So when we get to hold them, it is the highlight of my life!

My little Mia, I caught her sucking her thumb! HA Precious!

This is my Mia Rebecca. She's the baby of the three.

Here is our middle child, Abigail Riley Lynn. Her and Mia are completely identical (as of right now).

And here is my sweet Charlotte. She still has to have the oxygen in her nose but she is my big eater. She is eating more than her sisters right now so she is trying her hardest to come home to mommy as soon as possible.

Week 33..... and no more...

If week 32 was the longest week of my pregnancy then week 33 was the shortest. My girls are here! They made their appearance on Tuesday, July 6th around 3:20 pm. Here's our story:

These belly pictures you see were actually taken right before Jared and I left for my doctor's appointment on Tuesday. I had been having headaches all week and seeing the fire fly floaters more this week but felt fine other than that. So I honestly thought it would be a routine visit. And it was at the beginning. The ultrasound showed the girls were doing perfectly and I hadn't dilated anymore from the last appointment. My doctor and I were talking about how I received a letter from my insurance saying they wouldn't pay for the C-section since it wasn't an "emergency." She couldn't believe that and I was just in tears about it (its so expensive). That lead to a conversation about my high blood pressure and we joked that we could use that as an excuse to go into an "emergency Csection" NEXT Friday. The nurse in the room went ahead and took my blood pressure right then and low and behold it was 149/101. Insanely high.

We waited a few minutes and took it again. No change. Waited a few more minutes and did the same thing. Nothing. I told her about my headaches and seeing flurries this week and turns out, I have preeclampsia. The doctor looked at me and said "we need to get these girls out, today if possible." Everything happened so fast after that. I remember fighting her on the issue because my girls were NOT ready to come out. I could hang in there ten more days and THEN she could take them, but NOT now! She told me I could start having seizures and even have my placenta detach and loose a baby. I knew I would never risk that so I cried and cried when I realized my girls were coming now and I could not keep them anymore.

That was all around 12:30 and by 3:00 they had me in an O.R. taking out my girls. It was so bittersweet to me because I knew they would not be coming home with me. I knew they would be too small and that they would need more time to grow. I was heartbroken.... But when I saw them for the first time, there's just no words to describe the feeling. The nerves, the emotion, the overwhelming love you feel in that one moment comes to a head and it takes your breath away. It was so surreal seeing them. They are so beautiful and perfect. I cried. Because I was so grateful they were healthy and because I was so upset with myself for not being able to prevent them for having to come so early.

I don't feel like a failure or anything. But I cringed every time someone says "You did such a great job keeping triplets for that long." They needed more time and my stupid blood pressure ruined everything. Its hard to "forgive" your body for not doing its job well enough. Especially when you see your babies hooked up to machines and wires. Heartbreaking.

Thankfully my girls are just perfect. The twins, Abigail and Mia, weighed the exact same. 3 pounds 15 ounces. (One ounce shy of 4 pounds...) And Charlotte (the oldest by a few seconds) weighed exactly one pound more than her sisters, 4 pounds 15 ounces. (One ounce shy of 5 pounds). I am so in love with these girls. I ache for them. Ache. I have been cut open, sewed up, catheter, IVed, doped up with Magnesium Sulfate, and so many other painful things but NOTHING compares to the hurt I felt when I had to leave the hospital Saturday night withOUT my girls. It was heart wrenching. I want my girls with me so bad I can't even explain it. They wont give us a date when the girls will be able to come home but I am hoping no more than 2 weeks. Two whole weeks..... it will be an eternity.

This post became way too long so I will cut it off. I will post pictures and updates on the girls though. And when more details from the last few days come back to me I will write about those too. I am a proud momma and Jared is just an amazing daddy. You think you can't love someone anymore or anyone else as much..... what a joke. I love Jared so much more today than I did a week ago. And my life and everything in it now revolves around those 3 precious angels. My heart is full...

Week 32.... (Sorry its so long)

This has by far been the LONGEST and most STRESSFUL week of my pregnancy. It all started when I woke up Friday morning, the first day of week 32, and... ***WARNING! EXTREMELY PERSONAL INFORMATION***... lost my plug. It completely freaked me out. I immediately woke up Jared and pulled out my books and started reading about it. He called the doctor, my mom, his mom. Of course the nurses wanted me to go to the hospital immediately but my doctor was on a cruise so she wasn't even in town and I didn't want an on call doctor. Plus my insurance wouldn't have paid for me to sit in a hospital room all weekend. From what I read about it, women can lose their plug and not go into labor for a couple of weeks. So I thought, "If I start having contractions, I will go to the hospital. Let's just wait it out and see what happens." And that was just the beginning.....

I already mentioned that I got my steroid shots on Wednesday and Thursday. Well, apparently they have a few side effects I wasn't aware of. For example, not being able to breathe in deeply and loosing my voice and stirring up contractions and not being able to sleep and seriously awful heartburn. Oh my word, those shots did a number on me. So my body is freaking out about what happened on Friday and on top of that, I might as well had pneumonia as bad as I felt. I would sweat from head to toe one second and literally start freezing the next. My body was in overdrive and couldn't get it together. It was the worst I have felt ever.... and I was an emotional wreck thinking the girls were coming three weeks earlier than they should be.

I knew I had a doctor's appointment on Monday, so that was my goal. Make it until Monday and then the doctors can check everyone out. Well my doctor was out of town, like I said, so I had the on call doctor check me out. Baby A's amniotic fluid was at a 4 and her sisters were at an 8 so I was leaking fluid. Not a good thing. Plus I was dilated just under 1, which isn't a lot but certainly not good considering how much weight and pressure Im carrying around. The on call doctor insisted I go to the hospital to be monitored. But it didn't feel right to me. I knew as soon as I was admitted they would poke and run all kinds of tests and it would for sure put me into labor. So I told her that I wasn't going, but that I would come back tomorrow morning (when MY doctor would be there) to get checked out. She couldn't believe I told her no. A mother's instinct is far superior than a doctor's though. Thank goodness.

I didn't sleep at all that night. I was resigned that my girls would be coming in the next day or so. I was so disappointed that my body couldn't hold it together these last crucial weeks. I know two and a half weeks early doesn't sound like a lot, but when you think about how they are already coming 6 weeks early to begin with... I just felt defeated. I was an emotional exhausted disaster. So 7:30 am the next day (on Jared's birthday, poor guy) we went BACK to the doctor's office, did ANOTHER ultrasound and..... found out Baby A's fluid was back up to a 7. It was nothing short of a miracle. An answer to A LOT of prayers. I talked to my doctor and apparently Im leaking fluid so slowly my body is able to regenerate or replenish the lost fluid for baby A. Amazing!

The doctor's still confident that we have a couple of weeks until delivery. She was proud of me for not going to the hospital; she agreed with me that they would have tried to deliver my girls too. My blood pressure was up (132/80) and I am still dilated somewhat though so Im on bed rest officially. I have an appointment on Thursday and then again on Tuesday. So that's my new goal... just make it until Tuesday. Thank you all so much for your prayers. Until next week.... hopefully.