Tomberlin House: NICU

Well, it has been a LONG time since I sat down to write a blog post. What can I say....we have been a bit busy at the Tomberlin house! I thought I would try to catch up on important events by first blogging about our stay in the NICU at St. Francis Children's hospital. I can't say enough good things about our experience there!

Obviously after 85 days of bed rest because of unexpected pregnancy complications we understood that there was a good chance of our babies being admitted to the NICU, but we chose to pray the entire time that hopefully we would be able to avoid the situation entirely. The night the twins were born, they were taken to NICU because of their prematurity. This was difficult because we were not told much for the first 3-4 hours after the birth because they had teams of nurses and doctors doing full assessments to make sure each baby was stable first. This was definitely not how I imagined my birth experience when I found out I was having twins! Both babies required CPAP overnight on room air. All of the steroids I was given obviously did their job because they never required supplemental oxygen and graduated to strictly room air after about 12 hours. I think being a nurse helped me to manage the stress of being in the NICU but it was still difficult to see my babies stuck numerous times for blood draws and IV's. Looking around at many of the other babies however, we knew that we were so blessed that ours did not have much more serious issues to deal with. They are truly little miracles.

Our entire stay lasted 17 days and we were able to spend the last 1.5 weeks in the big NICU where we had our own private twin room. In order for the babies to be able to go home they had to regulate their body temperature on their own and take all of their feedings in a certain amount of time for 48 hours. We also dealt with jaundice which was expected because they were premature. We were very fortunate that both of our babies cooperated enough that they were able to go home on the same day which is not all that common with twins. And....just in time for their first Thanksgiving!

The nurses that took care of the babies were wonderful! I thought to myself several times that maybe I should have started my career in the NICU and not the adult ICU because who wouldn't want to take care of adorable babies all day long. It was also neat to see familiar faces of several of the parents who were once neighbors of mine while in the hospital for preterm labor that were now also visiting their little ones.

In looking back to last November, I can definitely praise God for His faithfulness in keeping these babies in until just 3 hours shy of the 34 week mark when our specialist told us from early on that we would be lucky to make it to 28 weeks. Praise God that the babies are so healthy and it is hard to believe now that they were once so tiny!!

Here are a few pics from my phone-