A Little of This, A Little of That

Exhausted seems to be the overwhelming feeling these days. I know I’m running on fumes when I start to feel nauseous. I’m not sick, just so tired that I feel sick. Blah. Sean and I pretty much live from caffeine dose to caffeine dose (iced coffee, sweet tea, diet Dr. Pepper) these days. I have this theory that our moms purposely withheld information from us about morning sickness, pregnancy pains, and post delivery exhaustion in an effort to increase the population and get grandbabies. Hmm…and I have every intention of doing the same thing to my daughters. 🙂

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I can’t wait for when the babies start talking. I LOVE the cute things that kids say and how literally they take everything. Until then, I have Sean to provide the humor. Here is an example of conversations that happen at our house:

Me: Caleb, you smell. You need a bath.
Sean: Maybe your mom can stay an extra 20 minutes tomorrow and help you give the kids baths.
Me: Wow, you really have no idea how long it takes to give all of them baths, do you?
Sean: It takes longer than 20 minutes??

Hehe! Sean always keeps me laughing, no matter how tired I get!

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The babies’ personalities are continuing to develop. It is pretty amazing to me how different they all are being this small. In fact, Sean and I even gave each of the babies one of the seven dwarves’ names.

Caleb is Happy. Always okay with whatever we throw his way whether it is sleeping, eating, lying awake in his crib, or looking up at his jungle gym. He is so cute when we wake him up to feed him! Most people do that squinty-eyed, blinky thing to try to wake up. Caleb’s eyes shoot wide open and he stares around him like he can’t quite place where he is. Hehe!

Abby is Sleepy. Definitely our baby who sleeps this most. She’s also the quietest and most content to wait her turn to eat or have her diaper changed. She has had us worried since we brought her home because she tires out while eating and won’t finish her bottles. At the suggestion of one of our nurse friends who comes to help me, we switched her to a higher flow nipple on her bottle. It’s done wonders! She is able to get through a bottle without falling asleep now. That is a huge sigh of relief to us. She is also completely mesmerized by her daddy. All he has to do is walk into the room and start talking and you can tell that she cues right into his voice. Earlier today, he started reading Cinderella to her when she was a little upset and she calmed down to listen to him talking to her. Such a daddy’s girl! She also surprised us with her first smile on Thursday! Her first smile went to Grandmacita (my mom), but we’ve been able to get a couple out of her for ourselves since then.

Elijah is Doc. How did he end up with that dwarf? Mostly because all that was left for us to choose from by the time we gave him a name were Doc, Bashful, Sneezy, and Doopy. The last three didn’t fit him, so Doc it is. Elijah is a little bit more high-strung than Caleb, but still the most laid back when it comes to medical procedures…and that boy has certainly had his fair share. Really, as long as everyone respects his personal space, he is pretty content. The little cutie gave me his first smile on Thursday morning as well. We haven’t really been able to get much more out of him since then, but I’m pretty sure it was a real smile and not just a baby twitch. I think Eli is the most bored of all of the babies at this point. I’m excited to be getting some crib toys in the mail from Kami, one of my fellow quad mamas, this week. I think all of the babies, but especially Eli will enjoy them when they get here.

Ellie is Grumpy. She looks like such a little cherub in the pictures, but if she wore panties, they would constantly be in a wad. She’s generally only happy if she is asleep or eating. My favorite nickname for her is The Little Tomato. It is amazing how fast that little girl can scrunch up her face and turn red when she’s upset. A couple of days ago, she was squawking about something in spite of Sean trying to feed her. Finally, he picked her up, held her directly in front of his face and said, “Those two extra minutes in the womb did wonders for your personality!” Ellie makes us laugh the most because there is just no middle ground with her. She’s either completely happy or completely upset. Hey, we have to take the laughs where we can get them in our situation!

Which leaves me with the big question: Will they follow the stereotypical birth order types? Since they were only one minute apart (except for Ellie who got stuck and took two whole minutes to make her appearance), will it even apply?

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Around Christmas time, Abundant Moments was having a gift certificate drawing that people could enter. Low and behold, I actually won! I never win anything! We won a newborn photography package where they take photos 4-5 times during the first year of the baby’s life. The only problem I had with the package was that we had four newborns. They were kind enough to work with us and include all of the babies in the package. Yay!

A couple of weeks ago, Debra came out with her assistant to take the first round of photos. Debra gave me written permission to post a few of my favorite photos to our blog. How cute are these little people??

 

The Babies: Caleb, Elijah, Ellie, and Abby 

The Girls: Ellie and Abby 

The Boys: Caleb and Elijah 

The photo of all four babies was taken right after Elijah peed on Ellie, Abby, and photographer. And the only baby that is really asleep in these photos is Abby. Debra is a very good photographer to get quadruplets to hold still, act asleep, and put herself in the direct line of pee in order to get some cute photos of the babies. We are due for our second session in a couple of months when we get to do a family photo!

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And our last update, but certainly not least is that the Kansas City Star contacted us last week about writing a follow up article about our family. Jenee, who wrote the first article, came out to the house to meet the babies she wrote about back on January 1^st. She wrote another very kind, very well-written article about our family. If you would like to read her article, you can see it here.

Each baby has a memory box that we like to add special things to. Their micro-preemie knit hats, tiny blood pressure cuffs, articles written about them, and onesies with their names on them will all end up in their boxes. Hopefully, someday they will enjoy reading the blog about their first months of life and seeing the little things that we are saving for them.

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Thank Goodness It’s Friday

I am so happy that it is Friday! This week has been particularly long and exhausting for us as we’ve hauled various kids around to doctors’ appointments this week.

Tuesday, I took Abby to her ophthalmologist appointment at Children’s Mercy Hospital South. We’ve been taking her every 2-3 weeks, so this was our 3^rd appointment since she has come home. While all of the other kids have been cleared until their next eye check-up at age 3, Abby has had some issues getting her right eye to fully develop (her left eye is fine). We saw a new doctor this week as her old doctor moved away. I really like her new doctor since she explained everything to me about how her eye has progressed since she was born. The concern is that her retina may detach from her eye, but this last check-up showed that it looks like it is starting to get to point where we may be out of the woods! The doctor said that hopefully she will only have to go back one more time, and then they can discharge her officially until her next check-up at age 3!

Wednesday was an even longer day. I didn’t get much sleep the night before and we had a full day of appointments. I took Caleb to the cardiologist in the morning. Children’s Mercy South is getting used to seeing me walk through the door! Caleb has a small PDA opening left in his heart and he also has a hole between the top two chambers of his heart. Due to the hole, his blood flow is not as efficient as it should be. We were told that he would most likely need surgery to have it plugged next summer. However, after the cardiologist did a heart echo and examined him, he said that there is a chance that we can skip the surgery! He said that it isn’t an all or nothing kind of thing. If it’s small enough, he will be fine and they won’t have to make any interventions. He also told me that it won’t be a full on surgery if they have to do something for him. They can fix it with a simple same-day procedure where they use a heart catheter to quickly plug the hole. They would fix the PDA at the same time if they were in there for the other issue. Caleb’s next appointment is in 6 months where we are hoping to hear that he won’t have to have the procedure done at all!

In the meantime, while I was at the hospital with Caleb, I had three wonderful helpers at home who were feeding and getting the rest of the babies ready to head back to the NICU at Saint Luke’s for their Follow-Up. Sean worked a half day and met me and Caleb back at home where we loaded up the whole clan and hit the road. Their follow-up went really well! Elijah and Ellie were both taken off of their monitors, so we now have three babies who are free of cords! Abby got to start weaning off of her oxygen today, and we should be done with that process by Tuesday. She does have to stay on her monitor awhile longer to make sure that she fully tolerates losing her oxygen, but we don’t foresee any issues with that. Truth be told, she hasn’t really been using her oxygen much in the last three weeks. We certainly do our best to keep the cannula in her nose, but she is very good about pulling it right back out as soon as we turn around. Sneaky little thing! It’s so nice to have fewer cords around here! Our next follow-up will be in about 4 weeks when they will look at changing the type of formula that the kids are on. We are hoping to move them from Alimentum, which is a hypo-allergenic formula, to Neosure, which is a formula made specifically for preemies.

One of the highlights of our visit was getting to see some of the nurses who took care of our kids during their time in the hospital. We also got to see their primary neonatologist (high-risk preemie/sick baby doctor) who was the admitting doctor in the operating room when they were born. She was kind enough to risk her very nice outfit and let four babies with severe reflux sit on her lap for a picture!

Dr. FlorendoEllie, Elijah, Caleb, and Abby

 

The really fun thing about having Dr. Florendo as their primary doctor is that her husband, Dr. Gibbs, was the maternal-fetal perinatologist (high-risk obstetrician) who took care of me while I was pregnant. They make quite the team! We were really blessed to have two such fantastic doctors taking care of all of us!

Yesterday (Thursday) we took the boys back to the NICU for their 4 month shots. They had such bad reactions to their two month shots that we didn’t want to risk bringing them home right away. The NICU kept them under observation for about 24 hours and they came home early this morning. We are happy to report that no one turned blue or quit breathing this time! The worst thing that happened was that Caleb had a fever. That, I can deal with!

And with that, we have completed most of our initial doctors’ appointments for the babies. We, of course, have more follow up appointments in the future, but we won’t be as inundated from here on out. Each baby has their own particular issues. Caleb sees a cardiologist for his heart, Abby sees an ophthalmologist for her eyes, Elijah will have a repeat video swallow-gram study in a couple of months for his swallowing difficulties, and Ellie sees a dermatologist for her hemangioma. (Someone left a comment asking what the spot is on Ellie’s head. It’s a hemangioma or birthmark. It will get bigger until she is one or two years old and then will most likely completely disappear by the time she starts kindergarten. She is seeing a dermatologist to make sure that it doesn’t get so big that it starts to affect her left eye. If it looks like it is getting too big, there is a laser treatment that they can do to encourage it to shrink faster.)

Now, my week is finishing up well! Our pastor, Tom, is coming over to take the night shift with Sean and babies. I get to sleep ALL OF THE WAY THROUGH THE NIGHT!!! I’m so excited that I can hardly stand it! It’s been so long since I’ve had uninterrupted sleep. I’m taking Tylenol PM so that I don’t wake up automatically after 2 or 3 hours.

Everybody have a great night! I know that I will!! 🙂

–posted by Becca

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