Sleeping Arrangements

Quick update about this weekend. The kids are all sleeping more, we are averaging 1 stint of about 6 to 7 hours at night. Of course this means I'm still getting up at 3:30 or 4 am to do a feeding, but it is nice getting a longer stretch of sleep. I still have to get up a couple of times to find a pacifier, but the kids go right back to sleep when they get it. And I've been trying to be the one to get up so my wife gets plenty of sleep during that stretch. She trades by letting me sleep in on weekends.

I've selected the next videos to upload, their first bath while they were in the NICU. I have to splice together 4 or 5 short videos to make one so it will be a day or 2 till it's up.

I also got some video of Charlotte "singing" last night and I'll try to have that up by the end of the week.

NICU Videos

I added 2 more videos to Youtube today, both are from the kids second day in the world. Because of some weirdness with the video clip widget I was using, I took it out and just made a link to all my videos on Youtube over on the right.

Video 1

Video 2

Creating Videos

I finally figured it out and there is now a video up on YouTube of my wife reading to our triplets.

My camera is a JVC Everio, nice camera with a big roomy hard drive and an easy interface. It's only drawback is that it creates all it's video in .mod format. Youtube doesn't recognize this format (in fact, a lot of things don't recognize it) so I had to convert it to an avi file.

I'll skip all the stuff that didn't work and jump right to what does work:

1. I downloaded MPEG Streamclip from http://www.squared5.com which supports all sorts of formats.
   
2. Streamclip needs a codec from Quicktime that you can pay Apple for...or download KL QuickTime Alternative 1.81 for free (I like free). Note: newer versions don't include the MGEG-2 codec you need.
3. If you go with the Quicktime Alternative, you will need to uninstall Quicktime before you install the alternative.
4. Install the software and enjoy. Be sure to read the document, it helped

I may be crushing the videos down a bit too much, but I'll experiment with that when I have more time.

Green Eggs and Ham

My wife read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss to the kids last night and I got it on video. I'll upload it to YouTube as soon as I can figure out how to make it smaller. It was nice watching how interested the kids got as she showed each of them the pictures.

Art of the Swaddle

So, it was kind of a long weekend...or at least it felt like it.

As the kids get bigger, we started trying to put them to bed without being in their swaddle. [side bar: I highly recommend the Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe. They made swaddling so much easier than fighting with receiving blankets at 2am.] So far, the boy, Trevor, has been doing great. Even though he started out the smallest, he seems to have the most mature nervous system. Charlotte does ok for a bit, but about 50% of the time she gets very cranky about going to sleep and only calms down when swaddled. Rebecca however, can't seem to do without the swaddle at all (so far).

What makes all this worrisome is the fact that the kids are getting really close to rolling over on their own and we want them to have their hands free if the roll in the middle of the night. Trevor rolled completely over last night, but it was while we were getting ready to feed him so my wife was right there and flipped him back over very quickly.

Stuff about Bottles

Weights as of yesterday:

• Trevor = 10 lbs
• Charlotte = 10 lbs 13 oz
• Rebecca = 11 lbs 10 oz

Got 2 things today.

First, we got some special bottles for Charlotte. We were using Dr. Brown's Natural Flow® Bottles for the kids since they were in the NICU. C recently started randomly refusing both the breast feeding and the bottle and we were worried that she wasn't getting enough to eat. She is also the only one to have moved off the hospital pacifier and really seems to like the MAM pacifier we got her. We got her some Sassy MAM 9-oz. Bottles which have similar nipples to the pacifier. She really seems to like it, and even though she is breast feeding most of the time again, my wife is worried that she will stop soon because it's just easier and faster for her to use the bottle.

A few things about the bottle: 1) the bottle is leaky unless you are really careful about putting it together. 2) The ones we got came with level 2 nipples which means a faster flow. In fact, with warm water or milk in it, you get a solid stream like if you were to poke a hole in a water bottle. 3) The vent in the bottom doesn't seem to do anything. C still has to stop and let air back in through the nipple.

And finally, my wife read in a Parenting magazine that breast milk has antiseptic qualities which made it good for things other than feeding. Trevor has had tiny little white spots on his nose since birth and we were told they were basically newborn acne. My wife has been putting some breast milk on his nose for a few days and his nose has cleared up.

First Post

Just starting this blog. I'll be posting stuff about my current life which includes work, my marriage to my wonderful wife and our latest challenge --- our triplets.

Just briefly, My wife and I were married on January 23 2007. In April we found out she was pregnant. Because she is listed as "high risk", we got a sonogram at 6 weeks from her last period and that's when we found out about the triplets.

We had 2 girls (Rebecca and Charlotte) and a boy (Trevor) on November 2, 2007. They were carried by their mom for 34 weeks. Rebecca and Charlotte spent 21 days in the NICU and came home Thanksgiving day. Trevor stayed a few more days till the next monday.
All 3 have been healthy and have not needed medical intervention, they just started out really small.

Birth Weights:
Rebecca = 3lbs, 10 oz
Charlotte = 3lbs, 13 oz
Trevor = 2lbs, 9 oz