Thursday 11/3/11 Tony and Mindy's 4th wedding anniversary. Mindy said,"let's do dinner at the hospital" and I took that literally. Then I'm like, well, I'll meet you there, and she said she only had jeans on. Well, seriously how nice do you need to get dressed up for a hospital cafeteria?
So we will take a few minutes to enjoy a dinner around 6:30 in downtown Des Moines thanks to our babysitters this evening then I'm sacking overnight with Brielle who will hopefully make parole Friday. She's eating around 40 to 50 mL of milk every 3 hours.
She must be so relieved that it doesn't come up anymore! Thanks for your texts, emails, prayers and food! We would have lost it (well, more than we have) without you all! I still remember when I was in the room with Mindy saying awesome, triplets! Um, the idea of having triplets...awesome. Being outnumbered by your children in one birthing, mmmm, not as awesome...
Other two are doing great, really upped their eating and will be at the Biggest Winner weight in this afternoon, we'll update you!
Wednesday - 11/2/11 Slacker bloggers Tony and Mindy G didn't update...Brielle was taking a step backwards not tolerating her feedings very well at first.
Tuesday 11/1/11 5:30 PM. Brielle enjoyed 15mL of Pedialyte and did great with it. Two hours later she'll have another round of 15mL, then real food will be on the way. Mindy's friends have set up a couple of volunteer sites. She asked that I put the link up on the blog. Thanks for your prayers and help, we really wouldn't survive without you all.
*** I know on one of these links it says the front door will be open. For you creepers, there are always two people at home at least, our neighbors are always watching our house and because we have triplet girls, trust me, if there is nothing valuable left and if we did have anything valuable, you'll be stealing something with formula puke on it and we'll be thankful for you to take it. ***
Here's the link to the website for people to use to sign up to help hold the girls.
http://www.SignUpGenius.com/go/triplet2
and if you want to help with food:
http://guerratriplets.pleasebringit.com/events/14572
Thanks again!
Tuesday 11/1/11 12:30 PM Brielle is extubated, waiting for a little while to give her morphine for the pain. She's doing well.
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| Seriously, what does a girl have to do to get some food around here? |
Tues 11/1/11 7 AM - Brielle went in and had a successful one-hour surgery at Blank Children's Hospital to lance a rather large bulge in her pyloric valve. Because her lung function is compromised (why she's on oxygen at home) it took her a little while to come to. She is still intubated at 11 AM as a precaution, she needs to wake up a bit more before they will extubate her. Thanks for your prayers, we are so thankful she's out and hopefully this will make her much better and she can come home in a few days.
Meds: They put in 3.5 mcg of fentanyl to calm her so she wouldn't cough and fight the intubation, gave her an albuterol treatment as she responded with some bronchospasm to the tube and they were going to give her a muscle relaxer to help her lungs. We'll keep you posted.
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| Think: A baby Julia Roberts with a shaved head, birth mark and one of those dentist's water pik's in her mouth |
Mon 11 AM - Doctor confirmed Pyloric Stenosis and the surgeon has been called. Brielle will go in the next couple days. It's Halloween so we didn't want her to miss anything so they are feeding her glucose by IV (D5W) since she can't have any candy.
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| Brielle: Look, I got an orange Halloween sticker for my cannula! And my "laser" is back! I feel like I'm in an Old Navy commercial with my sleeveless fleece! I just need some back up dancers. |
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| Back up dancers: Don't forget, cool onesies 2 for $10 only at Old Navy! |
Sun 8 PM - Brielle had another episode and had to be transferred from the Pediatric floor to the Pediatric ICU. She had to be bagged (given 100% oxygen) and may need to be intubated. We just have no idea what's wrong with her and why she just seems to keep her food above her stomach to prevent herself from breathing.
We go back to our mantra, two steps forward one step back. We have been able to enjoy Brielle, our last one to come home, at the house for a couple of weeks, we want the best and just may have to wait until she's ready, ready to come home.
Thank you to everyone who has been helping. The other two girls are doing great, Kinzie is helping me feed them now.
Sun 8 AM - Mindy went to Blank Children's with the monitor hoping to pick up Brielle today.
Sat 10:45 PM. Mindy reports that Brielle is doing well and chomping hard on her pacifier. They will be doing blood work and x-rays.
We are so thankful for our CPR training and the time all of the good health practitioners took to make sure we understood what needed to happen in an emergency. I detailed everything step-by-step that anyone who has a child that needs CPR can help their child as well.
Brielle and I were watching the Texas Tech/Iowa State game when the three red LEDs on her apnea monitor lit up and the alarm sounded. The noise, identical to a smoke alarm, is deafening. There are many false alarms for a loose cable, a held breath for a poop or too much sneezing. However, this time, she foamed at the mouth while her color turned pale. I flicked her foot hard, the recommended response when a child stops breathing, and she gurgled the horrifying muffled cry of a child that can't get a breath.
I screamed for Mindy to come but she was pumping in the Master bedroom about 40 feet away. The timing couldn't be worse as she couldn't hear me yell for her because of her electric toothbrush.
I flicked her foot again but she began turning a deeper shade of purple, the monitor beeped steadily and Rianne and Teagan began crying. I shoved my finger down her throat to try to clear the obstruction with the sweep action and she threw up a combination of formula with small strings of blood. Still, she gurgled and continued to turn purple.
I ripped her onesie in half, pulled off her velcro monitor band and I started CPR. I began by trying to get a breath in and it didn't go in. After a few compressions, I yelled for Mindy again. I should have turned her around and patted the back of her but with obstruction you must decide to perform CPR or remove the obstruction. It's not possible to both at once.
Our NICU nurses at Mercy told us over and over again, look at the baby, not the monitor, and that made it much harder.In CPR class you look at a hard, pink plastic baby, you have the instructor right in front of you to correct any errors and it is a very calm atmosphere.
In real life, Brielle lay soft, purple and limp as I cried uncontrollably and prayed that God would not take our child. We thought we had failed, we thought we had lost her.
Mindy came over and asked, "what should I do?" I said, "call 911." Then Mindy talked to the operator, gave our house number and came over and gave breaths while I gave compressions and we switched. We wiped splattered formula from her nose and mouth and used suction to try to get it out of her nose. It seemed like it wasn't working.
I completely forgot that with an infant you have to cover the nose and the mouth but with another breath in, a convulsion came and she threw up. Her blue eyes groggily came out.It's like that pivotal moment in a movie where you aren't sure if the person is going to make it back, you hold your breath at the same time until with a gasp, they throw up, spit up and finally breathe. But this real life moment carried desperation, not entertainment.
The Churchill "never, never, never, never give up" is all I can think of for the moment.
I switched oxygen compressors to get her more oxygen. We have two compressors, one that feeds Brielle's line that only goes up to 1 liter and another that feeds Teagan's line. Although Teagan is only on 1/4 liter, she has a device that converts a 2 liter flow to a 1/4 liter flow. However, if you bypass the device you can get up to six liters in. That much air is like having an all O2 box fan in your nose.
It all took about 45 seconds to 1.5 minutes maybe two, I think, I don't know, it felt like an hour. We would have known for sure if I hadn't ripped off her monitor band.
As she was turning pink a very competent officer came in followed by the fire department. The Ankeny officer was very good, he was doing all the right things without the frenziedness that we felt telling us to keep her on her side and it was so calming to have someone asking good questions, doing the right thing in a practiced manner.
But it was scary as &*&#.
I just wanted to thank all of the people that wouldn't let us go home without proper training.
The respiratory therapists showed us how to use the oxygen converters step-by-step. Our nurses in the NICU showed us how to turn up the oxygen when something happens. We have seen them bag Brielle before and knew exactly what to do with her oxygen.
The Mercy team taught us infant CPR, so even under this duress, we were able to do enough things right to keep oxygen going to her brain and get the formula out of her so she was alert and pink in the ambulance as she rolled to Blank Children's Hospital. I remember thinking what a pain it was to take infant CPR because I am CPR trained, but the specialized training, the extra points saved Bri's life.
We'll keep you up to date through the blog and Facebook. It was just a scary time and we're just so fortunate that we knew exactly what to do and were able to do it.
Keep us in your prayers.
The family is with Mindy at the hospital. I'm going to start feeding Ri and Teagers.
I just need to hold my daughters.
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