Happy Due Date!

Today is the triplets' due date! They are 103 days old. On Day 100, Liam weighed 6 lbs 8 oz, Taylor weighed 6 lbs 4 oz, and Malachi weighed 5 lbs 10 oz. Liam has outgrown all preemie clothing (he is so long!), and Taylor and Malachi are starting to outgrow preemie clothing as well. Our babies had a busy week this past week, and it hasn't been the easiest.

 

One of our primary nurses made "100 DAYS" banners at home for each triplet 

which even included their footprints  

Liam Josiah:

Liam's blood sugars were stabilized this past week because he has been receiving extra sugar/calories in his food to keep the numbers from dipping too low. The IV from last weekend was slowly weaned off early this week, while more sugars were added to his milk so as to have a less invasive way to stabilize his sugars. In the meantime, he continues to be poked at least once every 12 hours to check his blood sugars. On Saturday evening, Liam had another low blood sugar, even though his milk was still fortified with extra sugars. This was really disappointing, as he had been stable for a full week. The testing continues with the endocrine team monitoring Liam as well. So far, only one test has come back abnormal, and that is that his insulin levels were a bit high. We hope and pray to have some more answers in the coming week, and that it is nothing serious for our little man. It is somewhat unsettling to have not only the unknown blood sugar issues, but also the unknown jaundice issues...

In terms of respiratory needs, Liam has not been weaned down again this week. The respiratory therapists tried to turn down a setting this week but Liam needed to go back up. This was also disappointing for us, as Liam has been "stuck" on the same settings for a few weeks now. 

All the triplets had immunizations this week which was a bit hard on them. They also had their weekly eye exams, which showed that Liam's eyes have become a little worse over the past week. To put it simply, his nerves are not developing properly in his eyes, as is a common problem for micro preemies. This will of course be monitored closely, and again we hope and pray that it does not become any worse and require intervention. 

Lastly for Liam, we had some troubling news that a recent X-ray showed 2 fractured ribs. Naturally we were quite alarmed, especially since we don't know the cause. It is likely that the fractures were during a period of time when Liam's bones were very weak due to being born so prematurely and therefore fractured very easily. This probably happened a number of weeks ago, as the X-rays show that he is healing. We feel so bad for our little boy, especially because he was likely in pain and we didn't even realize it. It does appear that he is healing well now and doesn't seem to be in any pain.

Taylor Joy:

On Tuesday morning, our baby girl was transferred to a different part of the NICU. For the 103 days that they have been in the NICU, they have been in Level 3 care, which is the most intensive care. Taylor isn't quite graduated to Level 2, but is in between these two levels in a "step down" area. We were quite disappointed because now we have to split our time more deliberately between our babies, instead of being able to hang out in one area. However, we are very thankful that none of our babies have been tranferred to a different hospital yet! This is a very real possibility in the future, as the healthcare team has recently warned us again. The team will do their utmost to keep our sweethearts together, yet it all depends on the amount of beds available in the hospital and the level of needs of the babies coming in. 

During this week, a plan was formed to try Taylor off of all breathing support next week Wednesday. We were so excited to see how she would do! On Saturday morning, Jodi walked into Taylor's bedside area and had a beautiful surprise: no CPAP on our baby girl! It was almost surreal to look at our little sweetheart's face, hair, head... was it really our baby? We hardly recognized her! We had seen her without her CPAP for short periods of time, but her face was always quite squished from the CPAP mask. We cuddled and stared at our sweet baby girl a lot that day, but in the evening Taylor had to go back on some respiratory support because she was breathing too quickly and working too hard to breathe. This time, she was put on support called High Flow, which is a tube under her nose giving some pressure or flow to help her breathe. The respiratory therapists tell us that it could be another 2 weeks or so before she will come off, but it all depends on her. In any case, it is an exciting step in the right direction!

Snuggles with Daddy

The size of Taylor's handprints and footprints on Day 1 compared to Day 100

Malachi John:

Our littlest guy also had a busy week. On Wednesday, the doctors ordered a chest X-ray to look at Malachi's lungs, since he was not having high oxygen saturations (he was not able to take the oxygen into his blood at a high enough percentage). The chest X-ray unexpectedly showed that his lungs were hyper inflated. The doctors discussed that this could be from too much pressure support and decided to try drop his pressures drastically, change the type of support he was receiving, and see how he did. This all happened in the evening and we went to bed a bit nervous... how would our little man do? The risk of collapsed lungs is something we know well with our Malachi, yet we also knew that the respiratory therapists knew what they were doing. Overnight, Malachi had to slowly go up on the pressure supports as his blood CO2 levels were too high and he needed more support. The healthcare team finally decided to try get Malachi back on the machine that the hospital trialled a few weeks ago. They ordered the parts and got him set up by Friday afternoon. Although the software is technically expiring (the trial is over), the team is doing their best to advocate for Malachi to stay on it. 

The other big issue that Malachi faced this week was that his nostrils kept collapsing while wearing the CPAP mask. He has had this problem before, but it happened a lot more often this past week. When this happens, he needs to have nasal prongs on instead of the mask. However, this makes him very upset and unsettled, most likely because he is in pain. He has had several nose bleeds from the nasal prongs already. Between the painful nasal prongs, nose bleeds, high pressure constantly flowing through his nose/mouth, getting hot and sweaty from the heated air coming through the CPAP machine, excess humidity dropping on his face from the humidified CPAP air... our hearts go out to our poor little man! He has to put up with a lot every day.

As of Sunday evening, he is much more settled on his ventilation and the doctors are happy with how he looks back on the trial program. He still loves to be cuddled and touched, and so he got lots of extra cuddles this week because he needed the extra love! 

Malachi's first time in a vibrating chair. The nurses were trying to settle him while

he had the nasal prongs in.

Lately we have been receiving a lot more requests to come visit and hold our babies. We really understand and appreciate the care and love for our babies! However, we again want to stress that babies born at around 25 weeks have immune systems and development in general that is very much behind other babies. While they are now full term, they are not nearly as resilient as normal full term babies. All of the triplets also have chronic lung disease at varying degrees (Malachi, of course, has severe chronic lung disease, while the other two are not as severe). In all their cases, sicknesses for our little ones are way more serious than a "regular" baby. Yesterday, a nurse told us that if Malachi catches a simple cold or influenza virus at this stage in his life, he would most likely need to be intubated for a minimum of a month before starting the whole CPAP journey from the beginning again..! We have also heard many scary stories of other micro preemies getting sick during the first few years of their lives. 

All of this means we have to be germaphobes to protect our babies' lives. Constant hand washing and hand sanitizing, clean clothes, showers, and limiting our visitors are all ways that we need to protect them. Some doctors and healthcare professionals recommend no visitors or trips to public places for months, if not years after we go home... So we hope that you can understand why we turn down most visiting requests. We would love to "show off" our adorable triplets, but it is simply not an option yet. One day, the Lord willing, they will catch up developmentally to their peers. We are told that this will take a number of years but generally before they go to kindergarten.

We are forever grateful for your prayers and your support! We are so often reminded of our wedding text: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding..." (Proverbs 3:5-6). We are entirely dependent on our Heavenly Father in every moment.