recovery and growth

June 24 3:30 pm



A new day and two new lives! Tyler and Parker are doing well. More details in a minute.....

At the risk of boring everyone with too many details, let me go back to yesterday and fill in the blanks. After the second ultra-sound yesterday the condition with Parker's blood flow became evident and emergent. Basically here was the problem: when his little heart beats it forces blood through the umbilical cord and into the placenta. in between beats blood should still be flowing through the umbilical cord into the placenta, just not at the same velocity. Not only was Parker not moving any blood through in between beats, but blood was back flowing from the placenta back into the cord and thus back into Parker. This was putting Parker at a very high risk.........So then came the tough decision for Heather and I to make........if we remove the risk from Parker by delivering him, we have to deliver Tyler (who was doing fine) and put him at risk by being so premture. If we leave Tyler in to develop more, than Parker remains at a high risk. We both agreed to deliver the boys earlier and put our faith in the absolutely fantastic medical team here at UCD. After the decision was made things progressed very very fast. After living in the hospital room for four and a half days I had to pack everything up and get it out of there before the surgery as we would be in a different room post surgery. A whole slough of different people came in to speak with us and just like that they were taking Heather into the OR Heather is so special that she got two spinals instead of just one. Of course nobody relayed that to me......who was sitting outside the OR in medical garb waiting to go in. After 45 minutes i started really worrying about Heather's well being (standard for the past five days!!!) they finally came out and invited me in. I barely sat down next to Heather's head before we realized the operation had begun. About half way through Heather became nauseated and made a deposit into the pan i was holding up next to her cheek. Poor thing had nothing to throw up so had to suffer through dry heaves until it passed. They pulled Tyler out first followed closely by Parker. Both boys were immediately whisked away to the adjoining room to the NICU teams standing by. a total of seven people were waiting for the boys to come out. After they were stabalized and I was convinced Heather was okay, they invited me out to see them and to follow them up to the NICU. Both are very premature but are doing very well all things considered.

The next four hours found me bouncing back and forth between the third floor (Heather in post op) and the fifth floor ( the NICU). Once Heather cleared post op and got settled into her room i took one more trip up to see the boys before heading home. Because she was in a shared room I couldn't stay the night as i have been doing.

We had been told not to expect the production of breast milk for a few days but to attempt pumping as soon as possible. Heather started at 5 am!!! And what to her wondering eyes should appear???? But a full vial of breast milk on her first try!!!! she has since pumped two more times and continues to get milk. Heather also laughed in the face of pain and said "I'm going to see my sons!!!" Okay so she didn't laugh, but she did work through some pain so she could get up to see the twins. As a great mother would she instantly noticed how different they are:) Two distincly different noses and all. The morning saw Heather feeling pretty good, but the mags has since gotten to her. The headache has returned and the lack of liquid intake (regulated heavily by the mags) has again dehydrated her, so needless to say is feeling like crap again.

The boys: the NICU team says they are doing really well all things considered. Both boys are on a respirator but are on the lowest setting:) Parker is on 21% oxygen which is like the air that you and i breath, and Tyler is on 30% so just barely above normal which is great news as it decreases the chance of problems with thier eyes. They are both in incubaters that are covered in selaphane while they are surrounded in tinfoil. Both things help to keep the heat and moisture in. I will try and take some pictures and get them out soon. mOre later:)