My favorite things

We had a really good night last night, everyone slept when they were supposed to and there was minimal fussing, so I'm cautiously optimistic that we may have turned a corner. Or at least we'll start to have good nights more than once a week!

I was thinking the other day about all the cute things each baby does that I want to remember, so I figured I better make a list. Having babies has made me lose my mind in more ways than one, so I can barely remember who I've fed let alone try to remember something for more than a day! So here goes:

Ben: the pirate eye (when he squints one shut and leaves one eye open); sticky up hair all the time; wrinkled brow and confused look he gets when you ask him a question; pulling blankets or his shirt up close to his face like he's hiding when he sleeps; dark serous eyes; the teeny tiny baby sighs he makes when he's sleeping; heavy heavy eyelids that fight to stay open towards the end of a bottle.

Delia: the way she reaches out to touch Ethan's goatee in total awe; cute way she makes a perfect little O with her mouth; the way she gets so frustrated when she wants to reach out and touch something and she knocks it away instead; the way she burrows her head into your shoulder when you hold her; gummy smiles.

Michael: His most pitiful crying face; rooting everywhere, like my shoulder, Ethan's face, and other weird places; crazy eyes; sticking his tongue out like a little lizard; throwing his arms up in excitement for no reason at all; trying to claw his eyes out when he eats.

And here are some pictures of general adorableness.

Life at home

One of my helpers is here to replace dropped binkies, so I actually have a few minutes that I can update this darn thing! Hopefully. I've started to type several times and multiple babies have started screaming, so it may not work as I had hoped.

Life at home with all three is.....interesting.....to say the least. It's completely amazing to have them all here, to be able to lay them next to each other, play with them, roam about the house without having to worry about the wire from a monitor. But of course, we terribly miss all the extra hands from the hospital! Not just because they are helpers, but also because they are our friends :)

Everyone is still on a three hour feeding schedule, which is rough, but so far we are surviving. At night we do the 10PM feed together, then I do 1AM and Ethan does 4AM. Ideally we each have a five hour chunk to sleep, if everyone is quiet. But of course they are not. The leading contenders for fuss-bucket of the year are Michael and Delia for sure, but Ben has his moments, usually when he still has a burp stuck in there.

When it's only one or the other fussing, it's manageable. I can lay in the recliner with someone on my chest and we both sleep well. But when more than one fusses, it is tough to calm everyone alone. If we had an extra set of hands 24/7 and everyone could be held all the time we'd be golden. Of course that's not an option, so we have to rotate and do the best we can to get everyone quiet and happy at the same time. Much easier said than done.

By the way, have I mentioned that I have terrible hot flashes still? I guess the breastfeeding is keeping those crazy hormones running rampant. Hot flashes SUCK. Menopause is gonna be awful. But I digress.

Friday night was by far the worst we've had so far. Everyone was fussy all night long. I didn't even attempt to close my eyes until 5AM. And as the hours tick by on the clock, I start to think about how much sleep I'm not getting, and start to panic about how tired I'll be the next day, and get more worked up, which makes the baby worked up, and the vicious cycle ends with us both in tears. Arg.

It hasn't been that bad again since, just the one person fussing at a time. But it was enough to make me decide to reach out for more help. I've already got a coworker's college aged daughter coming Monday and Tuesday nights to help out, and someone from church on Thursday nights. It looks like a neighbor is going to take Sunday nights, and our niece Wednesdays. That way we'll have someone to catch us up on dishes, laundry, de-cluttering, and to make the night time bottles, help feed, etc. A third set of hands makes a huge difference, or allows one of us to get to bed earlier.

We're working on a schedule for the kids, hoping that will help with night time sleeping. It's so hard to keep them on schedule though, because if someone is extra fussy or we have visitors or a doctor appointment or anything, we start someone late and it trickles down from there. We're still trying to stick to it as much as we can, hopefully they will grow into it.

I need to start getting up every day and practicing getting the babies in the car and out the door, but I'm too tired to right now. I go back to work November 1, so I better figure something out soon :) My one day at a time mentality is not helping my motivation. Oh well.

That's about it for now, there is much more to tell but my eyes are getting terribly heavy so I'm going to attempt to sleep.

Please continue to pray for us, we need strength and patience to make this journey successful. Thank you so so much!

Home Sweet Home

Today was the greatest day ever. We brought Delia home, and now our family is complete and together. I'm sitting right now with Michael sprawled across me, Ben in the bouncy seat and Delia in the swing. It's been insane but amazing since we got home. Everything I dreamed it would be and more.

Great Grandma McD and CGAM were our first visitors, followed shortly after by Gran and Papa Ben, and then cousins Shannon, Irelyn and Tristen. It was a madhouse as the ladies tried to help me put away junk from the hospital and clean up dishes and laundry and we tried to get all the babies taken care of. I kind of felt like I was in a tornado, but somehow I was totally calm and happy and glad to be there. There was just so much love there, support for us and elation that everyone is finally healthy enough to be home with us.

While it was joyous to leave the hospital today, it was also bittersweet to leave our second family behind. We became so very close to our nurses and doctors; we saw them more than our own family at times. They cared for our babies and for us, and it's the end of a major chapter in our lives to be leaving. I bawled like a baby when I pushed that stroller through the front doors, it was one of the most incredible feelings I've ever experienced. Somehow it was like watching them be born all over again. In a way they were reborn today, as regular old kids leaving to go home with mom and dad. So very awesome.

I'll post more pics soon and have lots of stories to tell no doubt. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has supported us thus far. We couldn"t do it without your help!

The journey

I know I'm going to regret staying up to write this tomorrow, but at the moment I feel compelled to write so away I go.

I've been thinking the past couple days about how funny life is. We spend so much time and energy working towards these goals that we set, and then once we achieve them, we don't know what to do. Or at least I don't. It's always about getting to the next step - getting into college, getting that job, getting promoted. Once my life got a little bit settled down, I had no idea what to do with myself. These babies are very similar. It was such a struggle to get pregnant, then we had to stay pregnant. Then we had to get them off oxygen, out of the incubator, eating on their own, coming home.

They will be ten weeks old tomorrow, and I feel like all I've done is focus on the next step. What about everything we've done these past ten weeks? Part of me feels like I've missed it. Now granted, exhaustion is starting to set in and I am indeed losing chunks of time in the wee hours of the morning, waking up with a baby in my lap and a half eaten bottle on the table with no memory of feeding them. But I digress. If all I ever do is focus on getting to that next milestone, I'm going to miss all the amazing stops along the way. And just the getting there.

So I'm setting a new goal to enjoy each day, and not worry so much about where I'm going. I've got to have some destination in mind so I know what direction to take life, but I don't have to go full speed ahead. Maybe I could drive in the right lane for a while and enjoy the scenery. So what if the house is dirty, or I'm late to the doctor, or the laundry isn't folded. If I want to cuddle with a baby I should do it and not feel guilty.

Is there any chance that I'll be able to follow through with this new philosophy? Not sure, but I'm definitely going to try.

Now on a funny note, the mail brought me a great laugh yesterday. Jury duty notice. I'm thinking that infant triplets qualifies as an extreme physical or financial hardship. But just to be safe tomorrow I'm going to ask the doc for a get out of jury duty free card. Surely they can come up with something. In all seriousness I'm still breastfeeding and I don't know that they would stop a trial so I can go pump. I wish this would have come a year or two ago, I would be interested in being on a jury, but the timing is just all wrong. Maybe next time.

Maybe those boots were made for walkin'

One of our favorite nurses brought Delia the cutest pair of teeny tiny boots today as a bribe to inspire bottle feeding. If we're lucky, she'll walk out of here in those boots very soon.

Our trial without the tube failed, she wasn't taking enough volume so she lost weight. The tube went back in on Monday. As if that wasn't hard enough, we actually thought she was going to come home on Monday, didn't find out until almost noon that it was a no go. She had been doing OK, until she lost weight. So close yet so far away. And with no real reason, just "she's a preemie."

We did look into her blood pressure, it was running kind of high so they did some tests and determined it's not high enough to be worried about for right now. We may have her checked out by a specialist in STL in a month or two just to be safe. That was good news, but also bad because it eliminated one more reason that she isn't eating. The past day or so she's started to pick up again, so maybe we've turned the corner and she'll continue to improve.

Life at home with two is interesting. The first couple nights weren't bad at all, but I think Ben is going through a growth spurt because he is constantly hungry. And Mr. Crankypants managed to overtake Mr. Michael and infiltrate the house. Taking two to the hospital alone has been interesting also, but today should be the last day of that. From here on out through the end of the month, my mom, Ethan, or crazy great Aunt Mary will be with us every day. And hopefully there won't be too many more trips to this darn place. I love my nurses but I'm SO TIRED of coming here every darn day!

Both boys got good reports at the pediatrician today, they are growing well and have no physical problems. Michael has another eye exam tomorrow since his eyes were still a bit immature at the last check, and he'll have to get a hip ultrasound since he was born breech. But other than that we are moving right along problem free.

Help at home is still kind of thin, but I do have someone coming Mon-Tues-Wed evenings starting next week to help, and they are working on finding some folks at church. I'm starting to think about work again, I go back in three weeks. I'm looking forward to it but also sad that my time with them will be over. And I'm definitely not looking forward to catching up on four and a half months of stuff I've missed!

I'll try to get some pics up in the next couple days while I've got helpers around.