1 week old!

Our babies are 1 week old today and we are so proud of them! Side note: I started this post yesterday, sunday 9/1, but wasn't able to finish it so they are technically 1 week and 1 day old now! :) I want you to know in advance that this is going to be a long post...we have a lot to catch you up on!  I was hesitant at first to put pictures of them on here because the boys are so small and it is scary to see all the tubes and wires attached to them, but I know a lot of you want to see what they look like and we have strict limitations on NICU visitors, so I changed my mind about posting pics on the blog. Now for the first week summary...let's start with kangaroo care. Kangaroo care is skin to skin contact. Basically the nurse gets them out of their isolette and puts the baby right on your chest so they can hear your heart beat and gets some body warmth from you. As you can imagine, this treatment is very beneficial to baby and parents! Thomas & I have been in heaven when we have gotten the chance to hold them. All three boys did great with kangaroo care! The nurses keep an eye on their stats to make sure they maintain body temp, keep heart rate steady, continue breathing, etc. We have gotten to hold the boys for a whole hour each time and were so glad that they seemed to enjoy it and didn't have negative bodily reactions. Thomas has only gotten to kangaroo with William so far and I have gotten all three.  Here are pics of kangaroo care.

Stokes:

Ryan:

William:

Here are a few notes about their health for the first week of their lives...
All three boys were put on a ventilator as soon as they got to the NICU. On their first night, they all got transitioned to CPAPs, which is a step up. The CPAP helps them to breathe but doesn't breathe for them.  We were so proud to hear that! The CPAP is a tube over their nose and has straps that cover their face and head to keep the tube in place.  Each of the boys has been on and off the phototherapy lights, which treat jaundice and other issues. When they are under the light they wear these black masks over their eyes. Thomas and I love it when their light is off and the CPAP is off so we can see their faces!

Stokes-the nurses all call him our "feisty" one and tell us he is going to be a troublemaker. He acts like a sweet angel when we are around! :) Apparently he has a temper and will let his nurses know when he is mad.
He did great in his CPAP and got to come off it during the entire hour I held him on Tuesday at 3 days old and was breathing entirely on his own. Pretty impressive!
As of today, 9/1/13, he was put on high flow oxygen, which is similar to the CPAP but only has the plastic tube with the inserts that go into his nose, instead of the big tube and straps everywhere. Hopefully he will continue doing well with it so he can stay on it!
On Friday we were notified that his blood work tested positive for bacteria and he immediately got put on antibiotics and got more blood tests started. The doctors were worried there was a chance that he might have meningitis. We heard yesterday that his 24 hour culture came back negative and heard today that his 48 hour culture was negative, too! Praise God! It appears the antibiotics are doing their job.
During his antibiotics he wasn't able to feed with breastmilk and was only on IV fluid (not great for trying to gain weight and get big!), but he is back on milk today. Good stuff.
He definitely has the darkest hair and coloring and his skin looks red! He is starting to lighten up though. Thomas had dark hair as a baby so he definitely didn't get that from me. Haha!

Ryan-this little guy had a lot of trouble with breathing during his first few days. The nurses prepared us and told us that he might have to go back on the ventilator at any time because his little body was just working too hard to try to breathe. But guess what....he is doing better and has yet to go back on the ventilator. He's holding strong on his CPAP. His chest was initially pretty concave and you could really see what a struggle it was for him to breathe, but we can already tell a big difference and are so proud of how far he's come!
The doctors did find an issue when they did his echocardiogram (heart scan). Forgive the lack of technical knowledge, but one of his values or ducts had not developed and sealed together. This is very common with preemies and the doctors were only mildly concerned. They gave him a 3 day dose if meds to help the heart heal and will do another echo soon to retest and see if the meds worked. Only time will tell.
During the three days he was on the heart meds they weren't able to give him breastmilk either so he has spent three days on the IV only. We can't wait to him to get back on breastmilk and start putting on some more weight!
Ryan's general demeanor is fairly laid back. He has these beautiful loooooong fingers and is always doing something funny or cute with his hands, fingers outstretched. It's adorable. His coloring seems to be the lightest of all three but his hair is fairly dark as well.

William-although he was born the smallest, William sure is tough! He was initially struggling a little with his CPAP, but is doing much better now. In fact he got on the high flow oxygen tube for about five hours the other day and did really well.  He couldn't get on full time yet, so they put his CPAP back on, but it's good to know that he is making progress towards the high flow tube.
William has a tendency to forget to keep his heart rate up due to lack of breathing consistently, which is called a "brady". His heart rate will fall out of normal range and his monitors start beeping. Thomas and I were scared to death when this happened for the first time during a visit, but the nurses are very calm about it. They give him a few seconds to self correct it and if he doesn't the reach into his isolette and jostle him a little to give his heart a reminder to pump.
They say sometimes the smaller babies do better in the NICU and the doctor made a comment the other day along the lines of William being a little more stable than his brothers at this point. He has been on breastmilk while his brothers have been on IVs and the nurses bumped his feelings up from 6 hours to 3 hours. As long as he handles that well, they will increase the amount of milk he is getting and then eventually add some extra calories. We told him that he might not be our smallest for very long!
William has a little bit of feistiness in him as well and one of his nurses told us that she fell in love with him while taking care of him the other day. :) He is already a ladies man! His feet are really big, like, almost as big as his calf/lower leg! They are just perfect. He was kicking his legs yesterday and I was just staring, especially when he would show me the bottom of his feet.