Welcome to the world new little men!

The last 48 hours have been whirlwind so I will try to do justice to our boys' birth story, but I'm sure I'll miss some important details!

Victor Orin Kokes

Oscar Ralph Kokes

Mylo Martin Kokes

On Saturday afternoon Baby B's (Victor's) monitoring continued to be a cause for some concern, but were improving a little from the night before. Dr. Saul came in to do dopplers to see how his cord was doing and for the first time we started to see not only some points of absent flow, but also some reversal, but then the little guy passed his BPP with flying colors and got an 8 out of 8 for all of his exercises and having a little more fluid than he had before even got him those points! We were pretty excited and I thought surely this meant we'd be a couple of days out. We were two out of three: his BPP and monitoring were improving, so it was just the cord blood flow that we had to be concerned with. Overnight, the monitoring continued to show some improvement so I woke up very hopeful that we'd be moving back to antepartum to wait out delivery for a little longer.

On Sunday morning that all changed very quickly and the waiting was over. Dr. Thorson and Dr. Saul came in together to look at dopplers on the cord for little man B and this time the reversal had become something that was happening 90% of the time and our littlest guy just wasn't responding very well to his BPP so, while I was expecting after our upswing during the previous 12 hours, that we'd be told all is well and we are going to wait a little longer, instead Dr. Thorson turned around and asked if the 23rd sounded like a good day for a birthday. I, of course, wasn't ready for this question and asked, "is that today?" and sure enough the answer was "yes." At this point, the whirlwind began and I couldn't even begin to describe the range of emotions that we (well really I-Marty was calm and ready to go)  had  from there. I was somewhere between tears of joy and excitement and tears of fear and worry for the next half hour as they assembled the delivery team and when you are delivering triplets it is a BIG team! There were probably 10 people in the delivery room watching over the whole process from the delivery standpoint and then, in the attached resuscitation room for the babies, each baby had a team consisting of a nurse practitioner and two nurses while Dr. Heokstra, our babies first neonatologist were standing by to care for each of our precious little guys on the way out.

Once the assembly was complete it was time to bring these little guys into the world. Marty was by my side and held my hand while they began the initial part of the surgery and at this point we were both just very excited to meet our boys after all of our waiting. The time from there has flown by! With minutes Dr. Thorson was telling Marty to get his camera ready and he did an amazing job photographing the delivery so I didn't miss a single minute of our boys life. Victor Orin (our little Baby B) was born first, which was exactly as it should be so he could get quick care since he was struggling from the get go. So little, but older brother Victor was born at 10:18 am and he weighed 2lbs 1oz and was 13 1/2" long! (I was pretty excited to hear that those couple of extra days had gotten us to the 2 lb mark!) Next out was Oscar Ralph (which we think was baby A, but we can't be certain). He was also delivered at 10:18 am and weighed 2lbs 11 1/2oz  and was 15 1/4" long and is our middle child. Our youngest son waited a whole 2 minutes after his brothers to be born and Mylo Martin arrived at 10:20am, weighing in at 2lbs 11oz and measuring 14 3/4" long. (Notice, Mylo, is spelled with a "y" since daddy and I had envisioned it differently before birth).  After they were born, Marty was able to go into the resuscitation room, to give the boys a proper welcome to our family and make sure they all got their names. He is such a natural daddy and you can just see the pride in eyes when he looks at his little men!

After the boys were stabilized and ready to head to the NICU, they wheeled Victor and Oscar together in an isolette through the OR so I could get a little peek, but I couldn't see them very well and just had to trust that it would be just a short time later when I would get to meet them both. Mylo was ready to go when it was also time for me to go to recovery so I was able to meet him in his little isolette in the hallway and was even able to reach in and give him a little mama love, before he and daddy rushed over to the NICU.

Marty got to stay with the boys as they got settled into their rooms over at Children's and they were able to bring me over as I was recovering about an hour later. It's difficult getting in and out of their little rooms with all their equipment when you are on a stretcher and my driver kept running into the doorways, which is freaky when half your body is numb, but the important part is I got to meet each of my little dudes and even give each of them a little mama love through their little openings in the isolettes. They each have their own little room at Children's but Oscar and Mylo's rooms are adjoining. I then had to come back for a little more recovery time and Marty was able to introduce Grandma and Grandpa Kokes to their first grandchildren. I was able to spend a little time with them later yesterday evening when I had gotten my legs back and Marty was able to give me all of the news from the day. He's a super attentive papa and does a great job of keeping up with what is going on with each of our boys as they start their long road into the big, outside world.

Today, the boys continue to do well and we were able to spend a lot of time over in Children's with them. We're very excited that little Mylo and Victor both are opening their eyes to the sound of our voices (especially Mylo to Marty's laugh), Oscar's trying really hard to keep up in this area, but his eyes are still fused closed, but he raises his little eyebrows so high trying to get those eyes to find us, I'm sure it will be very soon.  It's so very hard for me to come back to Abbott when I need to get pain meds or eat or whatever, because I just want to be there with them, but I'm grateful that they are only a little tunnel ride away so that I'm able to be with them even while I'm still in recovery. I've been able to read them stories and we were able to start giving them some colostrum on a little q-tip to give them the antibodies that mama's good stuff has even though they don't get to have it as their actual nutrition yet. It's been tricky balancing time with the boys, with eating, pumping, resting, and pain meds and it's always hard to come back to my room to take care of me when I just want to be with them, but I know my recovery is important to my ability to care for them, too so I'm trying to listen to my body so I can do that.

This is quite a long and babbly story, but hopefully it gives all of you a little window into the first days of our little boys lives. We are so thankful to have had such wonderful support from our family, friends, and others who are simply following our story through this whole process. Our babies are perfect in every way and they are feisty little guys so they will grow up to be big and strong, but our next few weeks are certainly going to be a wild ride as we strengthen these little guys up to come home to their little orange room in Columbia Heights!