Babies Have Arrived!!! February 24, 2008

What a wild ride to say the least. The babies were born on 12:00pm on Friday, February 22nd. Here are the names and stats:

Elsa Marin Woolsey
3lbs 11oz

17 inches
12:01 PM

Violet June Woolsey
3lbs 3oz

17 inches
12:02 PM

Preston James Woolsey
3lbs 10oz

17 inches
12:04 PM

I was in severe pain all night Thursday night. I couldn’t sleep and getting comfortable was completely out of the question. My Baby C (Preston) and Baby B (Violet) were up in my ribs, and I later found out that my intestines were shoved up there also and my ribs felt like they were going to break and I couldn’t breath. I surrendered to the pain at 5:30 Friday morning. I called my nurse and told her that I could no longer take this pain. She put the babies on the monitor for 20 minutes to make sure their heart rates were good and then gave me a Norco pain killer. Thank goodness! About 20 minutes later I felt relief. My doctor told me that today should be D-Day because I had gone quite far enough and there was no reason for me to be in pain. We told the families that the delivery would probably be sometime today and they started getting prepared to come down to the hospital. At exactly 10am my doctor came in and said you are delivering today in one hour. I cried a little. I couldn’t believe that this part of the journey was closing and the new one was beginning. I was scared to be cut open and have three babies ripped from my body. I was scared that the babies wouldn’t be healthy.

At 11:30 I was rolled into the delivery room and the spinal was immediately given to me. The spinal was so much better than the epidural I had when I was in labor with Ava. I hardly felt anything and they were done in 5 minutes. There were teams of people in the delivery room ready to help in the operation and when the babies were delivered. Chris and Brenda, a friend and a wonderful professional photographer, came in the delivery room beside me. The anesthesiologist asked me if I wanted him to tell me when they begin. I hesitated, but told him yes. He said they started 3 minutes ago. I couldn’t feel anything! What I did feel was when they pulled the babies out. Elsa was pulled out first, and she made a sweet little cry and then Violet and lastly Preston. Chris said he peeked over the curtain and my doctor had her entire arm up to her shoulder up in my belly trying to get Preston. As she reached up and grabbed him by the legs and pulled him down Chris said I let out this big strange moan noise. The weight that was pulled out of my body was amazing. I was immediately 35 pounds lighter. Each baby cried a little cry and the doctor let the babies peek over the curtain so I could see them. I was expecting they would wisk them away in incubators instantly tubed up. Instead, Chris got to hold a baby and then, as you can see in the picture, I got to hold all three babies just minutes after they were born. I cannot describe my elation. To have them all in my arms healthy and beautiful was overwhelming and wonderful.

My mom and dad and sister got to see them as they were rolled by from the delivery room to the nicu, which was special for them. The girls didn’t need any help with anything but little Preston needed a little help with breathing. He was hooked up to a breathing device which I can’t find the name of in my brain, and had little tubes running from his nose. It is really common for preemies to need a little help with breathing at first, although Chris almost passed out when they were putting the tubes up his nose and I wanted to cry when I saw him with it on. The two of us are quite the pair. It is a good thing all Preston needed was a breathing tube!

We have mainly had family and close family friends visit so far. Chris’s parents were up from SoCal and were so happy to meet their need grandchildren. My parents and Auntie and Uncle Nima have been regularly to see the babies. Ava has seen her brother and sisters and loves them already.

We got to hold the girls for the first time yesterday and they are so much smaller in my arms than they are just looking at them in the incubator. They are just the sweetest little babies. I am told that Elsa looks just like me while Violet looks like Chris. Chris thinks that Preston looks like him also but I am going to go hold him for the first time in about 10 minutes and I will also be the judge 🙂

We will post more pictures and updates as soon as possible! Thanks everyone for taking this amazing journey with us. We love you!!!

About Last Night. . . February 21, 2008

I am floating along smoothly and without drama and I start to get very confident, throwing out statements like “Baby A and C never have any problems with their heart rates” and “I haven’t had a decell in a long time” (meaning about a week) and then of course something will happen to shake me all up and make me nervous again.

I was being monitored at 10:00 last night and was just about done. The clock, which I monitor closely, anxious to be done, was nearing 11:00. I called my nurse in because I was having these terrible gas pains. Apparently the spicy chorizo black bean soup and the bean nachos were not sitting well in the belly – go figure. So, I was having these agonizing gas pains which I was afraid were going to start causing some contractions. My nurse came in and we were talking Maalox when Baby A’s heart rate started to decell out of the blue. I did the ol roll over on one side, roll over on the other and when nothing worked it was back to my favorite – the dog position. That didn’t work either so I rolled and layed almost flat on my back and up went her heart rate to like 180 beats per minute. Her heart was overcompensating for its previous slow beats. By this time there were about 4 nurses in the room and I was on oxygen and the IV was about to go in to get me hydrated. My nurse called my doctor and relayed what she saw to him and he didn’t like it. He said I havge to stay on the monitor for 4 more hours and if it happens again we were taking the babies out – emergency C-section style.

As you know, I am not a big fan of the IV. They dug around for 5 minutes in my left arm and gave up. Then they went into my right arm without the lidacane this time and they found the vein. I was proud of myself because through this recent drama I was able to remain calm and not freak out and start to hyperventilate. I called Chris and told him I think he should come down. Molly was again our lifesaver and came over at midnight to stay with Ava and Chris drove down. The babies stayed on the monitors until about 2am and then my doctor said they looked so good that they could come off of them. The drama had ended for the time being. Chris went home.

When my other doctor came in this morning to check on me I told her what happened and she reviewed the monitoring strips from last night and really didn’t find anything very alarming after all. My doctors want to push ahead and get the babies to 34 weeks and then talk about delivering between 34 and 35 weeks. Things are so crazy around here sometimes.

On a different note, the Director of the NICU came to see me yesterday and asked if I want to go see the babies in the NICU. I was so excited! This would be my first journey out of the hallway in 19 days. I got in my wheelchair and we saw some babies that were born at 32 and 33 weeks. She said, “aren’t those nice sized babies?” I told her that they looked pretty small to me. She told me that to the nurses in the NICU those are very big healthy babies. She showed me a set of twin girls born at 33 weeks and said that my babies would probably look like that. They were small indeed, but not shocking. They were such sweet little babies, one on her back asleep and the other on her belly all curled up with her little bottom sticking up in the air. I was very grateful to get to go in and really look at the babies. I still can’t imagine how I have 3 of those sized babies in me right now but I soon will.

Chris is going to take some new pictures of the big belly today and post them. It will be interesting for me because I can’t see my belly well and I don’t have a mirror in my room. I am sure it is alarmingly large. Amazingly, I don’t have stretch marks. If I get stretch marks now I will be so disappointed – to have made it this far and get them at the end seems unfair 🙂

Well, the mothership is signing off until next time.

My Unpredictable Life February 19, 2008

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve written and I have a few things that have happened over the week. First of all, I thought I may have the babies last Friday or Saturday. Thursday night my doctor came into my room and told me that she was busier earlier when I was doing my ultrasound but when she got a chance to review it she was concerned because Baby B, my high maintenance child, had only gained a few ounces from two weeks ago. My doctor wanted to do an indepth ultrasound Friday and see if maybe Baby B isn’t in a good environment to thrive n the womb ianymore. I called Chris in tears because I thought I was going to have the babies Friday or Saturday and I was disappointed that they were such tiny little things. The women in my triplet chat room reminded me that the most important thing is that the babies pass their gestational milestones rather than how much they weigh. That made me feel better. So, we had our families on standby and ready for the babies to come. I had my ultrasound on Friday and what my other doctor told me was that the babies’ growth has slowed down but it is not at all unusual for that to happen with triplets. I was also told that the placentas, umbilical cords and everything else was looking good. Baby B’s placenta is just showing signs of getting tired out but my doctor said the babies are for sure better off inside than outside at this point. False alarm! That is how it is around here. Things here in the hospital can change so quickly from day to day. The incident did buy me another monitoring each day, which means I have to be monitored 3 times a day rather than two.

So, here I am at 33 weeks living this surreal life in my hospital room trying to make these babies as healthy and big as I can so they can have an easier start at life. I do want to go home very much. I miss my family and I miss just being in my house and living my normal life. But really, I probably only have another week here, maybe two at the most. I will get another ultrasound in a week and we will take things from there. I can’t wait to have my body back and not be so uncomfortable all the time. I think Baby A is sitting on a bunch of nerves that run through my groin and it is so painful when I move my right leg or walk around. Baby B and C are up by my ribs and sometimes they push their little bodies so hard up against my belly that it feels like a major contraction that lasts a long time.

Well, I had a nice day yesterday with lots of visitors which made my day so much more interesting and fun. Today is a quiet day and the weather has turned cloudy and it will rain soon. I will watch the rain from my window and probably just eat, eat, eat.

Until next time, the mothership is signing off!

An Eventful Day February 15, 2008

I had my ultrasound at 11 this morning and Chris was here to watch since it was a big one. It went really well and all the babies look great. They are so smooshed in there that I feel sorry for them. The ultrasound tech did measurements to determine the weights and they are all around 3 1/2 pounds but at this point they are so big and smooshed that it is hard to do much with accuracy. The ultrasound was very painful and uncomfortable. I’ve noticed that my belly has become very sensitive as the babies press against it so much. The ultrasound tech was pressing the wand so hard into my belly all the way down to my very sore groin. Not fun. But the good part was that all the babies passed their test for now. I was secretly hoping they weighed 4 pounds but I knew in reality that it was too much to ask for. My overenthusiastic and very bored male nurse was in the room to observe. Luckily for him, I am not very modest because it was all pretty much all out there for the world to see. I realized at one point that one of my boobs was fully exposed for who knows how long. It is the least of my concerns at this point.

My sister came down and the three of us visited for awhile. We ate our lunches and then I went on the monitors. I started having very regular contractions like I always do when they put me on the monitors. It is all the pressure of the monitor devices and the girdle I have to wear to hold them in place that contributes to my discomfort. And then just sitting in one place for an hour is very hard for me. Anyway, my nurse didn’t like my contractions and told my doctor that I was having painful contractions, which I wasn’t. She ordered an IV for me. That is when I rebelled. I told the nurse that I have those contractions every night and they give me an extra dose of medicine and take me off the monitors and my contractions go away. I also told her that my contractions aren’t painful, which is a big deal. I begged her to take me off the monitors and let me relax a little and they will go away. She reluctantly conceded and before she even had me off the monitors, my contractions had greatly improved. I hate getting the IV more than anything because it hurts going in and for me it hurts the whole time I have it in. I also knew that once I got the IV in that I probably wouldn’t get it taken out until after the babies were born. Hospitals are funny like that. So I in the end, I think my strong mental anti-IV powers worked to stop the contractions.

Oh and I know everyone is on pins and needles about the outcome of my dreadlocks. Well, it took about 10 minutes, but I brushed through all my dreads and actually got in the shower and washed my hair. It is now nicely braided.

Well, enough typing for me, I don’t want to bring on any contractions!