As you know, the Strumolo clan has been occupying one whole wall of the main room in Beth Israel’s NICU since the day they arrived on April 2nd. Well, not anymore! As they move into their second month, the triplets have been relocated to their own private room. A deluxe suite! Really, it’s just one of the smaller NICU rooms (N2 as opposed to N1), but because there is only room for three in there, we have it all to ourselves! It also means that Henry, Jack, and Sophie will share one nurse. Sharing a room and a caregiver? Perfect practice for when they finally come home.
Sophie arrived first.
Then Jack.
Henry on the move!
The happy trio, reunited at last in N2!
Other changes:
Miss Sophie had been rocking a cannula-free nose for nearly 36 hours, and boy, was she happy! Sadly, her solo breathing grew harder and harder towards the end of the evening yesterday, so she was back on the CPAP before we left. You should have heard her cry when nurse Carolyn reinstated the oxygen support. She is still leading the pack in feeding, however, taking 28mL over one hour.
Enjoying her last few hours sans oxygen support. I swear this is a different photo from yesterday’s.
Henry continues to have his moments, and the nurses are trying several new tactics to try and help him maintain higher oxygen levels–one of which involves propping up his neck on a custom-made neck pillow. Custom-made out of preemie Pampers! The nurse practitioners attempted to reduce his feeding time to 1.5 hours, but he wasn’t having it. We have already established that when Henry isn’t “having it” he will let us know. He and I did snuggle for a long time yesterday, and he was mostly agreeable. It seemed that as long as I was singing, “Away From the Roll on the Sea” he was happy. Unfortunately, I only know two verses (very short verses, I might add) to that song, so I was a little bit like a broken record player. My apologies to the nurses and other babies who have now probably memorized the tune and the lyrics. It’s a good thing we’ve moved into our own suite!
Jack, our mostly mellow fellow, is still just that. Not much has changed for him in the past few days except that they’ve shortened his feeding time to one hour instead of two. This is good, since two hour feeds times three babies times eight feedings a day is 48 hours, and we’re going to need to spend a little less time on feeding when the trio gets home if we hope to fit it all into a 24-hour period. Notice I did not say, “If we hope to get anything else done.” We have already established that that is not going to happen!
Settling into our new digs.
Sophie
Henry
Jack
