Babies were 3 months old yesterday and everyone is rockin' 6 lbs! Woo hoo!
Sammy's eye exam on Monday was the worst news we could have gotten. The ROP had advanced to stage 3 with plus disease in almost 6 clock hours in each eye. In English this means that his blood vessels are swollen and growing in abnormal patterns for almost 50% of his eyes. The eyes are divided into 3 zones, and Sammy's eyes are only developed through zone 1 and into the beginning of zone 2. This left us with two treatments to decide on. The most common is laser treatment, which kills all of the eye that has not developed in order to scar it to keep the retina from detaching and causing blindness. This is a great option for babies that have grown into zone 3 and have a lot of the eye developed when ROP sets in because it only sacrifices a small amount of peripheral vision.
In Sammy's case this would mean killing more than half his eye, leaving him with narrow tunnel vision. The other option is an eye injection with a medicine that halts vessel growth. This would make the abnormal vessels retract, and allow normal vessels to regrow and let his eye continue to grow normally. Sounds great, except halting vessel growth is not really good for the rest of his body, he needs new growth in his lungs to replace the damaged lung tissue from the ventilator. The doctors say the eye is self contained, so minimal amounts of the medicine get into the bloodstream. But still you ask - save his eyes or his lungs? Add in that this is a new treatment, so it is not well known what the long terms effect of this medicine is. There has only been one large study done, and they told us that several babies in the study died. Well that's reassuring. Granted we need to keep in mind they are doing this treatment on micro preemies, which can have a plethora of other issues that can lead to death, so are the deaths from the drug or from a combination of other factors. So after some team meetings with the doctors, we decided to do the injection. They did it within the hour after our meeting, and so far so good. There are no signs of infection at the injection sites and we should see the vessels retract by next week's eye exam. Keeping our fingers crossed this leads to better eyesight over the next year. Danny and Elsie had their exams as well, and both of them have premature, but normal results.
Moving on to more upbeat news, both the boys got a bath this week as well. Now we have 3 good smelling babies! And miraculously they all loved the bath! Yaaa! Let me just say it is really great to be taught everything that I don't know as a new mom by our great nurses. Learning some great tips and tricks to help do things more efficiently will be very helpful when we get home.
We now have a feeding schedule down. It works out great, I change a diaper, feed a baby, change the next diaper, feed the next baby, change the last diaper, feed the last baby. 3 hours and 40 minutes has gone by at this point, so I have 20 minutes to eat, drink a liter of water, pee, and be ready to start baby number 1 again. Oh ya and I pump in there as well. So what really happens is I change Danny's diaper, nurse him while I simultaneously check my bank account, pay bills, and catch up on facebook. Then feed the rest by bottle. Then I pump one boob while I down a bottle of water. Then I change Elsie, and nurse her while I shove a tuna sandwich down my throat. Then finish her feed by bottle. Pump other boob while I respond to emails and write a blog update. Change Sammy, run to pee, then nurse him while I knit 10 or so rows of the sweater I'm working on. Then finish his feed by bottle. Then I cuddle with whatever baby falls into the 20 minute break and take a quick nap. And repeat. Whew, I'm tired just writing about it. lol.
Ok here are some pics from this week:
Sammy
Sammy giving Mommy the 'I love you' sign
Danny
Elsie
I think she looks very French in this hat :)
