Well…I’m not feeling very good right now. I try to keep a light tone with these blogs, but there isn’t gonna be much funny with this one. Just not in the mood. With in the last couple hours we said good by to Meredith, again, for another week. She’s off to Oma and Opa’s in Rock Rapids. She was home for less than 36 hours and she spent 12 of those sleeping. This is getting so hard. We’re doing exactly what we think is best by sending Meredith away, again, but I just can’t help thinking to myself (as I wear my emotions on my sleeve, literally) that I wish I was stronger. I’m gonna need to be.

Thank you so much to Dave, Becky, Katherine (Angela’s Gma) and Debbie (Angela’s Aunt) for all of your awesome help last week. We all met at ANW yesterday afternoon so that Angela could spend some time with M. It was short as Meredith just doesn’t like being confined in that room of Ang’s for very long. Meredith and I had a pretty awesome afternoon together. We went for a bike ride for an hour or two and I made her spaghetti for dinner, one of her favorites. She had a bath and was off to bed by 8:30. She was up 12 hours later. She helped me pack my stuff (I’ll spend the night with Angela tonight) and we just made sure that all of her stuff was still in her bags as I didn’t even bother to unpack her last night. Meredith and I went to the Mall of America (MOA) today to spend a little time together. We also met Eric and Jessica (my brother and his girlfriend) there. I was there for more than 4 hours with her. We walked the entire mall nearly 2 times. If you’ve ever been there or know anything about the MOA, you know that we covered a lot of ground today. Eric and Jess were nice enough to stop in and visit with Angela for a while before they headed back home. Here’s that pic that I promissed yesterday.

In addition to having Eric and Jessica stop by, it was really nice to have Meredith there with Angela before she spends another week away from home. I swear at one point that she said that she didn’t want to go. It tears me up just playing it back in my head. I got a text from Eric and Jess less than 30 minutes after they left. Meredith was sleeping. I hope the trip goes well for them.

Angela is hooked up to the contraction moniter for her evening eval. She has two of these a day. Yesterday morning, she had a contraction every 10 minutes for the hour she was on the machine. Normally she doesn’t feel any of them, but she did feel some cramping. That was quite a bit and more than normal, but not enough to get anyone in too big of a tizzy. Everything seems to be fine now. The doctors told her this week that she is just made for this. They also told her late this week that they’d like her to get to 32 weeks. That’s quite a ways from today and she’s having a bit of a tough time mentally trying to put her head around the idea of spending 5-6 more weeks here. We’re gonna watch some crappy movie and try to relax a bit tonight. As long as Angela can make it, hopefully the next 6 weeks will go by as quick as the past 36 hours did, with the blink of an eye.

Until next time…

YEA!!! Meredith is coming home today. Angela’s parents are in route with her right now. We’re really looking to having her home. We’re gonna meet at the hospital for lunch. Meredith’s favorite: chicken nuggets and fries.

She won’t be with us long so we’re really excited to make the most out of the little time today and tomorrow morning. I’ll try to have some pics up later this weekend or first of the week.

Until then…

Alert the press. I made a mistake and I’m owning up to it!!!

I needed to clarify what Betamethasone is and really does. This is the steroid medication that Angela was injected with the two past days. I said that this shot helps develop the babies lungs. That is incorrect and probable couldn’t be any more wrong. What happens is if Angela would deliver today, the lungs of the kids would be underdeveoloped. Breathing would be obviously difficult and they would need oxygen. Because of the premature nature, the lungs have been described as “sticky” when they inflate and deflate during the breathing process. In order to get them to inflate and deflate properly, they have to increase the pressure on the oxygen. The problem with that is in these underdeveoloped babies, the higher pressure would often cause bleeding in the brain, which would lead to a variety of problems like cerebral palsy (CP). Betamethasone is a medication the helps “lubriacte” the lungs so that they inflate and deflate more easily. This allows the doctors to decrease the pressure on the oxygen and thus decrease the incidence of bleeding in the brain and decrease the incidence of CP and other significant developmental problems.

There you have it, you’ve learned something today. Its early, so go ahead and stay home from work today. Tell your boss that I said it was ok. It will be alright. Really.

Sorry, that was me trying to be funny…a swing and a miss…I haven’t had my coffee yet.

Brief update…Angela was hooked up to the contraction moniter last night a little longer than normal. She had 6 contractions in 90 minutes. They were all very biref (20-30 secs). She only felt one or two of them, but she didn’t really know what it was till they asked if she was crampy at all. This got my blood pressure up a bit, but they didn’t seem to concerned. The doctor on staff didn’t even get a phone call. I guess were gonna have a lot more of that to come. (This is the place that I would normally say, “No Sh_t., Thanks Captin Obvious!”)

We have another ultrasound here in about 90 minutes. Should be another BPP (BioPhysical Profile). They’re just gonna do a courtesy check to see how the kids look. If there’s anything noteworthy, I’ll get another post up.

Gonna be another busy weekend. Angela’s parents are bringing Meredith back home on Saturday morning! Yea! Eric (my brother) and Jessica (his long-time girlfriend) will be coming up on Sunday to take Meredith away for another week. Hey Jessica, bet you didn’t think I’d get you involved in the blog!!! I have a big week next week at work. This is the week where I will reinterview for my job. Wednesday from 2-5. 3 different 1-hour meetings. I think I’m gonna be fine, but I’d be silly to not prepare accordingly and take this very seriously. So, we felt it would be best to have Meredith with Oma and Opa for the week so that I could focus on maintaining my job.

Nothing clever with to close this time. I’ve gonna go get that cup of black gold!

Until next time…

I just wanted everyone know that I made a change to the site last week that might not be that noticable. You may have noticed that there is a section at the end of each blog post that identifies if there are “Comments.” If you would like to post a small comment about anything following a blog post, you can do it now. In the past I had this protected to avoid a lot of spam. All comments will go to me for an approval first before they are visible to everyone just to make sure that nothing inappropriate shows up. The intent is to allow others to communicate together on the site instead of me just blabbling. I’m working with Matt to get a few more features available on this part of the site too.

Happy Hump Day!!!

Hey, what a great job by Angela last night with her blog. I hope we hear from her a little more as things get further along. I’m gonna push for it.

A few updates from today. Angela had a quick ultrasound today. The stuff that they were looking for today were to make sure that all of the hearts were beating, to make sure that they were all moving around, and to make sure that each of them have enough fluid. Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner; we had all three! The docs start to get a little excited if the babies don’t have enough fluid in each of their sack. They also checked her cervix again. Its a little shorter than last time, but not enough to get the docs’ panties in a bunch.

Every day Angela is hooked up to a moniter to check for contractions. It doesn’t measure their strength, just the length. She never feels them and normally only has one or two in any given hour, but today was special. She had 6 this morning and 4 more tonight. That’s enough to get the doctors involved again, but Dr. Wagner’s panties seem to be just fine.

Tomorrow will be a new development for Angela. She has been on a blood thinner for a few weeks now. Its been by injection and she really hates it. However, tomorrow they’ll be changing to a different type of blood thinner. The half life of her current medication is a little longer than they’d like. The new one has a shorter half life so that the doctors can take the babies quicker if they need to in an emergency. If they don’t switch, they would have to wait until the medication wore off before they could take her to the operating room. This is a really good thing except that Ang will get stuck twice a day instead of once.

Tomorrow is also the completion of the 26th week. She’s doing so awesome!!! What’s that mean…Angela will get a very important shot tomorrow and again on Thursday. Its called Betamethasone. This medication is terribly important, especially if she delivers sooner than later. Betamethasone is a type of steroid that helps the kids lungs develop a little quicker. It has had a tremendous effect on possitive outcomes with premature children since its introduction into the marketplace. This is a major step in the process!

Ok, last update. I and a couple of the nurses moved all of Angela’s stuff (and a few of my things) across the unit to a new room. A room with a view opened up and we took the opportunity. We have no idea how long she’s gonna be here and anything is better than the brick wall she had before. So, as we put a close to the 26th week, we hope to see some sunshine in the morning.

Until next time…

On this 25th day of the 5th month, I’m 25 weeks and 5 days into this pregnancy and I’m gonna take my first stab at this blog thing. We’re getting so close to 26 weeks (Wednesday)! Tomorrow we’re scheduled for another cervical ultrasound and our first biophysical profile. We’ve been told that the biophysical profile is to rate how the babies are doing developmentally. They look for movement, muscle tone, and evidence of exercise breathing. From this point forward they’ll be performing these profiles twice a week, every week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Depending on the babies’ ratings. they’ll determine what course of action to take. It sounds like as long as everything is okay they’ll allow the babies to stay in utero until there’s a change. That, of course, makes us happy, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ready to deliver and move to the next stage of this journey. Basically having been on bed rest for the duration of this pregnancy (the last five months!), I’m ready to get out of this bed!!!!! I miss not being able to take care of Heath and Meredith. I miss being able to give her a bath, read her a bedtime story or even pick her up. I miss being able to be outside in my garden. I miss privacy and freedom!

Many people have said….”enjoy this time now because this is the easy part!” I find this comment particularly ironic seeing that these individuals have never: A) gone through this experience and been on bed rest for this length of time and B) never delivered and raised quintuplets of their own. I’m not trying to imply that post-delivery is going to be easy, but trust me when I say that this is no cake walk either! I have been very lucky that I only recently started having to deal with physical pain, but I have had to endure 5 months of nausea and vomiting and am absolutely psychologically stir-crazy! I pray to God several times a day that I’ll make it through the day. So far he’s been there every step of the way, especially on those days when I don’t think I can take it anymore.

Meredith is again with my family for the week. It’s so hard to see her go and not feel like we’re abandoning her, but our options are extremely limited right now and we’re trying to do the best we can. Heath did get a chance to bring her in to see me at the hospital before going to grandma and grandpa’s house. We got to have lunch together and it was fun to watch her try to drink her first juice box from a drinking straw. She was so impressed with herself and her new found skill, but even more excited when she found out that if you squeeze the juice box juice will come shooting out of the straw. It’s little moments like this that I miss so very much. Please pray that God will continue to give us the strength, patience and perseverance to continue on until his designated time.

I want to extend very special “thank you” to Dale and Vicki Slack. Dale and Vicki are family friends of the Tille’s from Rock Rapids. This weekend they celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary by making a trip to the cities. During thier trip, they took the time to stop in and visit with me for 30 minutes. Thank you so much for taking time out of such a special time in your lives with me. I really appreciate it.

Until next time…
Angela

Hey everyone.

So here I sit. I’m finally done with things around the house and sat down to check out the score of the Twins game, have a “Cow” (my favorite beer), and get an update on the blog. Opps, game over. Since my last post, the Twins have managed to lose 4 straight to NY and again tonight to Chicago. Very frustrating…

I’m gonna get right to the point with tonight’s blog. Its been a very long day and I’m gonna leave out a ton of details about my day that no one will care about. Its just me complaining and no one wants to hear it. Just know that everything was difficult today. BTW…It was 97 degrees here in Minneapolis today. Yuk!

Angela had another ultrasound today to measure the growth of the 5. It was scheduled for a couple hours for today and a couple more tomorrow. Based on prior visits, that seemed appropriate; but the senographer got the entire thing done in 30 minutes. Ang seemed to be fine with that. I was upset. I felt that things were rushed.

So here’s the results (estimated weights and developmental % compared to a normal singleton pregnanacy)
Baby A: 1 lb, 13 oz 61%
Baby B: 1 lb, 7 oz 43% (the only boy)
Baby C: 1 lb, 6 oz 35%
Baby D: 1 lb, 6 oz 35%
Baby E: 1 lb, 10 oz 52%

There is no cause for concern. The doctor we saw today told us that he would get concerned if any of them were in the 10th percentile.

Sorry, but there really isn’t anything else that’s notable.

A big thank you again to my Mom, Gma, and Gpa for your help last week. Becky, thank you so much for your help over the weekend. Meredith will be at home with me for the rest of the week. Over the weekend, I will leave Meredith with Angela’s parents for next week and then to Rock Rapids for the following week.

Additional update to the blog…A couple weeks ago, my friends came up to help out with some things. We went to a Twins game that night. I finally have a pic and added it to the May 5 blog entry.

Oh…almost forgot. One really good thing did happen today. After the ultrasound, I met a woman in the parking ramp at ANW. Given my line of work, it was obvious that she was a sales rep so I approached her to introduce myself. Turns out that she works for one of the baby formula manufacturers. What luck! I’m gonna need a lot of baby formula. Like many reps, she has product fall out of the back end of her car from time to time for special customers. I have her card and she’s very interested in getting to know the Tille Family. We’re gonna be very interested in getting to know her too!

Until next time…

I hate the Yankees!

I thought that I’d give a brief update to close out the week. Meredith finally went to bed and I’m just sitting here watching the Twins give it to the Yankees. For those who don’t know, I love baseball and the Twins. I hate the Yankees, so its a big night. Lets hope I don’t jinx them.

As I mentioned in our last post, we had a few guests during the week to help out. My mom, gma and gpa made the trip to River Falls for a few days. It was the first time my grandparents have been here in more than a year. Tons of changes. Back then, we didn’t have anything; not even grass. They helped out with some things around the house, cooked up a bunch of food to freeze and helped out with Meredith for a few nights so that I could spend some time with Angela. Thank you so much!!! Meredith had her 18 month check up this week. She checked out awesome and actually increased on her growth chart a little. I must not be doing too bad…Dr. Davis has agreed to take on the quints as well.

Late this afternoon, I took Meredith in to ANW to see her Mom. After a little while (when Meredith was finally getting into way too much stuff in Angela’s room), we went down and had some dinner at the McDonald’s at the hospital. Angela really needs the calories and McNuggets are Meredith’s food. Its getting a bit old for my taste, but its easy. The big moment this afternoon was when Meredith gave her Mom a hug and pulled her tight. If it was half as good for her as it was for me when Meredith hugged me back for the first time, she’ll never forget it and it may bring her to tears when she thinks about it tonight.

Meredith and Dad have a big weekend too. Angela’s mother is in route to River Falls right now and should be here in an hour or so. If the weather cooperates, we’re gonna take Meredith to some garage sales tomorrow morning and she needs her 18 month pictures taken. Should be an full Saturday. Wish us luck.

Angela will have ultrasounds next week Tuesday and Wednesday. They’ll do measurements of the kids. They’re getting so big now that they need to break the ultrasound in to two different days. It will take hours each day. At the very latest, I’ll get our next post up next week after the ultrasounds have been completed.

Bottom of the 9th for the Yankees. Twins up by 2 with Joe Nathan coming in to close the door. Say goodnight, Gracie.

Hello everyone.

The delay in getting a new post is totally my fault. Just a lot of things going on. So what’s been going on since our last post that’s been keeping me so busy…

Meredith came home on Friday night (actually very early Saturday morning) as Angela’s parents drove Meredith back home so that Angela could see her on Mother’s Day. Dave, Becky, Mark and Katherine; thank you so much for your help!!!

Mother’s Day was a very full day. Meredith is at that age where she just won’t sit still for anything. Church with Meredith is nearly impossible if Angela is with me. I didn’t stand a chance on my own. I made the effort anyway and met some nice women who apparently have an interest in rocking babies. What luck!!! After church, Meredith and I made the trip in to Minneapolis to spend a little time with Mom. Meredith had a chance to climb all over Ang for a while as they really haven’t seen each other in a couple weeks. Angela took this time to try to do a little reading with Meredith. Its still one of her favorite things.

Meredith is at home this week and Annie (our neighbor from next door) has been helping out with M during the day. I had a very important work day on Monday with an executive from Coloplast. It was an awesome day, but it took a lot out of me to prepare accordingly. To add to my stress level, I was notified over the weekend that Coloplast will be re-evaluating the entire sales force, that includes me too. People will get let go during this process. I think that I should be fine, but making assumptions with out preparing accordingly would be a huge mistake. The whole evaluation process will be completed in the next 3-4 weeks. So…if I didn’t have enough on my plate…

Yesterday was another good day for Angela. They took another very quick ultrasound to peek at her cervix. Again, it’s unchanged. Awesome news. She will have 24 weeks complete on Wednesday. That’s a huge accomplishment!!! Angela also had a minor change this past week in some of the medication that she’s taking daily. From the outside looking in, I think its made a good change with her emotionally. Also very good news.

Today was a huge day for us. We finally decided to take a tour of the NICU at Minneapolis Children’s today. It was great to see the high level of care. The place is just full of tiny babies just like the one’s that we’re gonna have. We also had a great opportunity to talk with Dr. Hoekstra. He’s one of the neonatologists there. He was featured in the most recent edition of People Magazine and will be seen on Good Morning America in the coming week or two. I’m confident that we will be in one of the best places in the midwest, if not the entire country. It was truely amazing.

So, for the rest of the week; my mother, grandmother, and grandfather are here with me. They’re gonna help with Meredith for a couple days and with some things around the house that I’m just having trouble keeping up with. The real reason that they’re hear is so that I can spend a couple nights with Angela at ANW. I miss her so much. I know that she misses me and we just need a couple nights to talk and spend some real time together. I’m sure that we’ll have more to share a few days from now.

Until then…