Day 91

We have some great nurses, Cindy and Elisha, who last week picked up some rad Halloween outfits for our girls.  So, I'm basically saying that my nurses are better than your nurses.

Naturally, we had to bring in all our kids to the hospital in costume so they could see their baby sisters dressed up too.

Here are Avery and Wren, respectively, dressed up. I only thought it appropriate to give them some trick or treat candy that reminds me of their medical bills.  That's my way of saying "I love you."

Shannon took Penny (black cat) and Logan (Harry Potter) in to see the girls, so I don't have any pictures of that.  I did get to go in with Clark (rocket), though, and snapped a couple of pictures of him watching over his babies.  This kid is usually so loud and crazy, so it's really funny to see him be purposefully quiet and sweet.  It throws you off.  He loves these babies.

What's next, yo

We also met with Dr. Teppits, today, a pulmonologist.  He is here to begin evaluating the girls' respiratory needs over the coming weeks, and to help us determine what needs to be done moving forward to get the girls closer to coming home.  After a short meeting with him, he shared that he feels like the most likely scenario that could play out will likely be Avery going home with a small amount of oxygen support via a bi-nasal cannula on 1/16 L/min or so (this is not much support considering she was on 6 L/min only a week ago).  He thinks she will likely end up needing a G-tube for feeding, but they will monitor her progress to evaluate this further.  A G-tube is basically just a tube that goes directly into the stomach from outside the stomach, and parents and caretakers feed the baby by basically injecting the food via syringe straight into the tube....sounds gross to me also, but I don't think it's as scary as it sounds.  For Wren, he feels like we need to watch how she does for the next 10 days or so as she approaches 40 weeks, but if she doesn't show some pretty significant progress, they are going to want to start talking about performing a tracheostomy on her.  This to me does sound scary, as it involves a commitment requiring some in-home nursing and extra support for maybe up to the first 3 years of life.  It involves putting a hole in the throat that she could breathe through, and would also mean that she would need a G-tube like her sister, and would not be able to talk until the tracheostomy was gone.  There could potentially be implications with her speech and ability to eat food later on once the tracheostomy could be removed.  We are hopeful that she does not need to go this route, but we have learned with this girl, that all you can do is wait and see.

We are grateful to God that we have been blessed with these babies.  If they end up needing to come home with multiple special needs, I know that we're going to need some extra strength.  Extra strength Tylenol?  I don't know, but something.