The first month

The first month was spent at the hospital. Kevin and I were there everyday and night. I would usually wake up about 9am and head over to the hospital while Kevin was at work. Once he'd get off work, he would come straight to the hospital. There were days that we didn't leave till 10:00pm. We wanted to spend every chance we could with the babies, even if it was just to sit next to them while they were in the incubators.

As much as we wanted to spend all the time holding our babies, we knew the best thing for them was to spend as much time in the incubators so they could grow. Once they were in the open cribs, we could hold them as often as we would like since they were already in the open air. We would hold them during their feedings (when we they were feeding through the tube) but when they were finished, we had to hold them still for 15 minutes so they wouldn't spit up.

When the nurse asked if we wanted to hold all 3 of them at the same time... I was thinking.... how am I going to do that. This is how we did it. Talk about a arm full of babies!

Here are a few pictures of how they spent their first month.
 

Ashton Thomas

Brittany Lynn

Ashton and Caitlyn in Daddy's arms

Ashton doing his leg lifts

The Burkett Suite!

Caitlyn

Brittany

Caitlyn Marie

We learned so much from the nurses that took care of them. Since they were born so early, they did not know how to drink out of a bottle yet. They had to be taught how to suck, swallow and breathe by the Occupational Therapist at the hospital. While they were learning to drink from a bottle, we were also being taught how to feed and burp them. I was very nervous at the beginning. It was a tough process because it took them a while to finally catch on.

To be released from the hospital, they had to be able to take all feedings through bottle (which was a total of 8), be able to maintain their temperature in an open crib, not having a lot of Brady's through the day, pass the car seat test and be at 1800grams in weight. When they did the car seat test, they looked so tiny in those big things!

Finally on August 24th, Ashton and Brittany were released from the hospital. Caitlyn was still in her incubator, but on room temperature. She was also not taking all her feedings through bottles. We thought it was going to be another few weeks before Caitlyn would be able to come home. I guess Caitlyn didn't like to be alone because she started taking all bottles and moved into an open crib within 2 days. On August 29th, Caitlyn finally came home! We were complete!!