Babies!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE BABIES HAVE ARRIVED!
(Now with pictures!)

At around 9:55 AM today, September 8 2010, Heather and I became the proud parents of:

Eliza Lynn (1 lb, 4 oz)

2 days old, basking in the bilirubin lights

2 days old

Charlotte Ann (1 lb, 1 oz)

At birth - see how tiny they are!

4 days old

6 days old, in the bili lights

Oliver Franklin (1 lb, 3 oz)

One day old in the bili lights

One day old

Around midnight last night, the cramps and contractions started up again in force. The doctors started Heather on magnesium sulfate again, and by around 3:30 AM they had settled back down enough for us to get a couple of hours of sleep. Then, around 5:30, they started back up again. After a couple of hours with no relief and no response to magnesium and terbutaline, the doctors decided that at this point, the risks of continuing to try to stop the labor (especially since they thought it likely the labor might be caused by a developing infection) outweighed the risks of delivering the babies (since we were now past the magic 24 week milestone), and so they scheduled Heather for a C-section this morning. Heather went into the operating room around 9 for her epidural, I was allowed to join her at 9:30, the babies were delivered in rapid succession at about 9:53, 9:54, and 9:55 (and then whisked off to the NICU by the neonatologists), and we were in the surgical recovery room by 10:30.

After Heather had finished recovering from her epidural, we helped her into a wheelchair and took a trip to the NICU to visit the babies. They're really tiny, and as 24-week preemies, there's a lot that can go wrong for them, but they seem to be stable at the moment and being well looked after by the NICU staff. At the moment, they're each in individual isolettes (incubators), hooked up to ventilators and heart monitors, and swaddled in little blankets. Their eyelids haven't opened yet, and probably won't open for a couple of weeks. They'll undoubtedly be in the NICU for many weeks, but we're hopeful that they will grow and thrive in there and come home to us in due time.

Today has been a lot for us to process, and it still feels very surreal and unreal in many ways, and there are still many uncertain times ahead, but right now we're just happy that the babies are alive and relatively healthy, and we're looking forward to getting to know them better in the days to come.