Down In The Trenches

From left to right, Colin, Evelyn and Keith wearing their sweaters knit by a friend of the family... oh, and Puppy. Colin is no longer my strawberry-blonde baby! His hair is growing in ash blonde. (PS: you can click on the picture to make it bigger)

We had our second Home Visitor appointment this morning. This is a free service provided by the City of Ottawa Public Health to provide assistance to parents who have additional challenges such as um, drug addiction and/or triplets. We really like our Visitor, Gina. We are her tenth set of triplets - eight from her work in daycare, and her second since starting with the City.

Our Public Health nurse accompanied her. This is another free service provided to all new parents in Ottawa in the days following every baby's release from the hospital. If you think you need an extra visit all you have to do is ask, and they'll be more than happy to see you again. We saw our nurse on several occasions for help with pumping, baby weighing and just to check in to make sure we hadn't fled for the border. She is also amazing and very reassuring.

They confirmed that Colin has colic. This is a little amusing, because colic isn't a medical condition. It is just something that drives parents to the brink of insanity for several months until babies mysteriously grown out of it. There is no cure per se, other than time. The other day, Colin and Evelyn took turns caterwauling from 11am to 9pm. We think Evelyn wanted nothing more than to keep Colin company, because she isn't usually the instigator for all day screaming. Keith is oblivious to most things, including two howling siblings. He likes to stare at his unhappy nursery-mates with a mixture of wonder and disdain - he loves his naps waaay to much to give them up for the sake of solidarity. All in all, the colic should get better in the next few weeks. Should.

Happily, we have had a TON of help, from friends and neighbours, parents, sisters and cousins. Poor Sprocket (never the most social of animals) now has an over-developed sensitivity to any noise that resembles knocking (we have no doorbell) as a result of our Revolving Door reality. I was scraping a spoon against a bowl in the kitchen the other day, and that sent him careening to the front door ready to keep the latest round of invaders at bay. I honestly think the dog takes Edward and I to be more than a little slow. He finds room in his furry little heart to love us regardless, but he simply can't understand why we throw our door open to so many strangers and actually let them in. Surely a sign of stupidity that he has to work very hard to counteract.

Edward and I think the antacid medication is helping Evelyn, but we're not so sure about Colin. Keith is on an over-the-counter medication, too, and he seems to be happier. Happier is a bit relative, however, when babies are fussing for hours on end... but hey! We'll take it :) We are keeping our fingers crossed that things will improve over the next few weeks. But the new smiles and chuckles we are blessed with certainly go a long way to make life in the trenches a lot more tolerable! Pictures to follow.

Pictures!

Jeannie, Edward's grandmother, spends time with her great-granddaughter Evelyn during her trip up from New Brunswick in mid December... more pictures of this extra special visit to come.
Our first Christmas tree, on Christmas morning. Conspicuously absent are the babies, who gave Edward and I exactly 35 minutes to unwrap the presents before they demanded to be fed. Such is life!
From left to right: Colin, Evelyn and Keith wearing sweaters knit by a patient of Edward's father. This was taken almost a month ago, and they've grown even more since...

We're off for our third RSV shot tomorrow morning, and then to the pediatrician to discuss some medication to soothe a few unhappy innards while we wait for the diet modifications to kick in.

A Bad Case of Reflux.... x 2 and a plea

Over the past week, it has been painfully clear to Edward and I that Evelyn and Colin have some serious tummy issues. Truthfully, this evolved over the past month, but matters came to a head about a week ago, and have only become worse. The issue? Reflux.

Now, we've heard a hundred times that all babies spit up. In fact, you'll see references to "happy spitters" in a lot of the literature on reflux; a term used to describe babies who dribble and wet burp with reckless abandon and without ill effect. On the contrary, we have very, very unhappy spitters. We get drenched on regular occasions, deal with screaming babies from about 3-10pm daily, and often have to hold on to our little rodeo champs with a vice-like grip as they contort, writhe, cry and buck while trying to feed them. In short, we are all miserable - except for Keith, who although he has some issues of his own, is generally contented. Not counting yesterday, of course, when he was a screaming banshee. We had to call in the cavalry (Opa and Nana, and Jane our neighbour) because we only have so many hands to deal with the onslaught we faced last night. But, I digress.

We raised this issue with our pediatrician about 3 weeks ago, and he gave us the standard line: as long as they are gaining weight, they will not to anything about the reflux. Right. Lucky for him, he doesn't have to live through our 7 hour shrieking marathon - times two. Both Edward and I conceded that it was getting worse. So yesterday, after discussing the situation with our doula, I decided to call our pediatrician to see what else we could try. He's on holidays, but we managed to get an appointment with the doctor on call who happens to be a gastroenterologist. Off we trundled, Evelyn and Colin in tow.

After weighing and examining them ( Little Miss is 9lb 7 oz, and Mister C is 11lb 2 oz, by the way!), he concluded that their poor tummies are full of gas. This, in turn, is causing pressure that manifests itself as reflux. This makes sense to me, based on what I've observed. He didn't prescribe any medication. Rather, he gave us 6 steps to follow over the next few weeks (sigh...) to see if there is any improvement. He wants to increase the motility of their guts, so we've switched formulas and have started them on 3 teaspoons of oat cereal per day. "The name of the game", I informed Edward after the appointment, "is poo". We are also giving them a few sips of water during their day feeds. Last night found me in the bath, with babies being rotated in with me in the hopes that the warm water would help soothe their tummies. On one hand, I was kinda selfishly hoping for more of a quick fix: stop the acid reflux. On the other hand, I agree with the idea of treating the issue (gas) as opposed to the symptom (reflux). We'll see how I feel about waiting for an improvement today midway through the epic screaming session.

Anyways, we are managing. But if there are a few people out there who have nerves of steel and some spare time in the later part of the day, we'd love some help. It would even the baby : adult ratio, and would go a long way to preserving what shred of sanity we have left. And hey, if the babes aren't screaming their lungs out, there is still the 9pm feed to be done. If you'd like to challenge your ability to remain calm and composed under what amounts to auditory torture, drop me a line at diagriene @ hotmail.com (no space on either side of the "@").

Doesn't that sound appealing??!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Keith, our sleepy candy cane (with reindeer feet)
Colin, our little elf
Evelyn, our tiny sugar plum

My intention was to take some lovely Christmas pictures at home, and put up a few of the "out takes" for a chuckle. Well, true to form, they ALL turned out to be out takes. Nevertheless, we find them to be an accurate snapshot of our daily life: a) someone is always crying b) someone is always outgrowing an item of clothing c) the dog makes everything a lot more... interesting. Video proof to follow.

But most importantly, we wish you all a wonderful Christmas with your friends and families, and a restful holiday season. Relish those quiet moments in front of a roaring fire, a leisurely uninterrupted Christmas dinner, a glass of wine or two with friends... and spare a thought for us - we'll be slogging it out in the trenches, and we wouldn't want it any other way!

Behind the Scenes

I had to show these off first - these are handmade by Edward's mother :)

The making of the Christmas photos, Sprocket assisting:

And finally...

As promised a while ago, here are the babies crying in unison. This was taken about a month ago, so as bigger = louder, you can imagine what they sound like now!

PS - can you tell we just figured out how to upload videos from our new camcorder?! The picture quality isn't the greatest because we needed to downgrade it to get it on here, but the sound quality is pretty good :P

Our Second Trip to the RSV Clinic

Today we bundled up the babies against the -21 temperature and took them to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) to get their second round of anti-RSV medication. RSV is a potentially serious respiratory infection that most children get in their first two years of life - for most babies, it is usually a bad cold and cough. For premies, however, it can be life threatening. If they catch it, many end up in hospital on ventilators... certainly something we've seen enough already!

This anti-RSV medication prevents the proteins from the virus from binding together, and so if they were to catch RSV it should be far less severe. Because they were under 32 weeks when delivered, they are eligible for the treatment. They had their initial dose three weeks ago, and after today will return for a subsequent dose every month until the end of the flu season in March or April. The nursing staff is wonderful, and we were in and out of there in an hour and half. This included weighing each baby in order to calculate the proper dosage. I'm somewhat shocked to announce that Keith and Colin are almost identical in weight: a whopping 10 pounds!! To think they were 3lb 14 ounces and 2lb 12 ounces less than 11 weeks ago (not counting the weight drop that is inevitable after birth) is absolutely astonishing. Evelyn is also on a remarkable growth curve and tipped the scales at 8lb 9 ounces.... the nurses who saw them three weeks ago were equally impressed by their incredible gain.

In other news, we have switched the babies to a four hour feed schedule (1,5,9) which means we've gone from 8 feeds a day to 6. This has been a glorious achievement, as our schedule is a lot less chaotic and we usually have at least one good, usable hour between every feed. This also means we're getting a bit more sleep - although they still wake early to ensure you don't miss their bottle prep! We find they're slowly recognizing day and night, and we try to keep them up a little now during the day on their activity mats which seems to help them sleep better at night.

We also managed to get Christmas pictures done at home in outfits that Edward's mother graciously provided. I'll be posting those a little closer to Christmas, but while they are not studio quality by any means, they are (at least to us) hilarious! Getting everyone corralled was like herding cats - and getting everyone to sit up and look towards the camera was, well, impossible. Edward, my mother and I enjoyed the process; although it's clear that not all the babies shared our enthusiasm... with the exception of our Miss-E. She's happy for a change in routine (and she got to wear a tutu) as long as she gets to observe the situation to her satisfaction.