A very over due update on my incredibly adorable little preemies

First off, I just need to apologize to all of my friends and family and others whose calls/emails/texts I haven't returned. I love each of you and I'm so sorry to leave you out of the loop. I hope I haven't offended anyone. I appreciate so much your concern and prayers and I will be getting a hold of each of you soon.

So, let me introduce you to my beautiful girls. Penny, a wonderful NICU nurse took these pics.

Meet Lia, aka "baby A." She was the first born at 8:01 am. She has always been the biggest and was born weighing 3 lbs 14 oz. Despite being our biggest, initially she had the most trouble. She only scored 6/10 on her APGAR and they had to put her on a ventilator to breath for her. Fortunately, she was able to come off the vent the next day. She is now only on 1/2 L of Oxygen. She is gaining weight and doing so well. She is our furry little monkey and has fuzz covering her shoulders :)

Little Brynn, our "baby B" was born 1 minute after her sister at 8:02 weighing in at 3lbs 8 oz. She initially was doing great and scored 9/10 on her APGAR. The next day she took a turn for the worse and had to go on the Ventilator, but that didn't last long either. She was off the vent the next day and is now just on 1 L of oxygen. She has shown the most personality. One nurse described her as "feisty." She very much prefers breast feeding... something a little unusual for how young she is (usually is takes them awhile to get used to the sucking and Lia and Claire have been moderately interested) This little one just goes to town. Her little mouth opens SOO wide and she sucks like there's no tomorrow. :)

And last, our little runt Claire was born at 8:03 am. She was the tiniest weighing 3 lbs 4 oz. Even though she is our smallest, she has had the fewest problems. Apparently that's common for the smallest. They've had to fight so hard that often they are the strongest. She scored 9/10 on her APGAR and has never needed the ventilator. She is now on just 1/2 L of oxygen. I cant even express how happy and grateful that my girls are here and doing so well. If all goes as planned, they should most likely be home in about a month.

So, I'll back up a little and tell you about the craziest week of my life. Like I said in my earlier post, the news that they were coming so soon was a complete surprise. I barely slept Thursday night. I laid in my hospital bed in shock. I felt my babies moving in me just overwhelmed with what the morning would bring. It felt too soon... I had expected to carry these babies for several more weeks and knew that 32 weekers are still very premature and have the potential for serious issues.

The C-section is like a nightmare I don't even like to think about. I was terrified. I think I just really was not mentally prepared for this yet. Everything had happened so suddenly. I was shaking uncontrollably. They kept putting warm blankets on me until I was sweating. I wasn't cold, just terrified of the procedure and terrified for my babies. A C-section is so surreal. I heard them announce that they were going to start cutting and then it was a lot of pulling, tugging and ciaos. The only baby I saw was Brynn for a split second and she was the only one I heard let out a cry. After they put me back together and stitched me up, they wheeled me through the NICU to see my girls. This is all pretty fuzzy in my mind.

Over the course of the next few days I got really sick. I had lost half of my blood during the surgery and had to have a blood transfusion. My oxygen sats kept dropping down in the 70's. I'm not sure why my body wanted to stop breathing. I had some internal bleeding as well. After the blood transfusion I got really sick. I remember holding my stomach so afraid that my incision was going to rip open because I was throwing up so violently. I had an elias (which I guess is where the bowel twists and blocks after your bowels are put back in you after surgery- not sure if that's the correct spelling either) which was tons of fun too. Every nurse or doctor that would check my abdomen would gasp and say something like "I've never seen bruising like that" or "What happened to you?" Even my doctor and the resident who did the c-section seemed so puzzled as to why my bruising is so terrible. It covers my whole abdomen, wraps around my back and goes down the side of my thighs. Needless to say, those first 3 days of my babies lives were a nightmarish blur, but little by little I started getting better. I am a world better know and just so incredibly grateful that my girls are doing so well. They are so sweet, so adorable and I can't even express how much I love these three little tiny people.
I have more pictures to post later, so stay tuned!