Tille Family

Very brief update

Hello,

Please bear with us as it’s just been busy here the past few nights and frankly, there hasn’t been anything to report. The kids are all doing great. All of them are gaining weight (a lot of weight) and breathing is improving in those who are still on canulas. We’ll have some support this weekend to free up some time for us to really get some things done along with spending some time with the kids. I will update the “help list” over the weekend and get a new post up with details on the kid’s progress. My goal is to have a bunch of updated info on the “how to help” page with info on volunteering as details are being put in place behind the scenes.

The last thing I’ll leave you with on this very short post is a request to please keep your prayers coming for continued success for the kids’ development. If they continue to do well, they’ll be discharged from the NICU to the Special Care Nursery back at ANW sometime this coming week. The Special Care Nursery is a level 2 nursery where the detailed care wouldn’t be as necessary.

Please stay tuned. Again, I’m sorry for my lack of communication.

Until then…

Status update to “the Honeymoon”

Since I was up till nearly midnight last night trying to update things on the site, I’m gonna try to keep this one brief with an update of how today went for the kids. While I worked from my home office today, Meredith did great with Annie upstairs. Around 8:30 this morning while Meredith was having breakfast, Angela slipped out the front door for her first unaccompanied trip in to Minneapolis to spend the day with the kids in the NICU. It sounds like she had a full day while there. To my surprise, they let her hold all of the babies and this is what she reported back.

Brooklyn did well today. She is still on IV fluids for nutrition and antibiotics as a precaution. The doctor told Angela today that he didn’t feel that she looked or acted like a sick baby so he’s encouraged that she’s gonna be just fine. She is still maintaining her weight in the 3 pound club and is still the heaviest of the kids at 3 lbs, 3 oz. She outweighs Alex by 5 grams, but it translates to the same in lbs and oz. If she continues on a good trend into Wednesday, they will put her back on her feedings. All the while, her breathing has been excellent. This is great news for a little one that potentially could have been very sick.

Lauren has been rock solid. She continues to breathe without any real difficulty and is gaining weight while on her regular continuous feeding by tube. She weighed in today at 2 lbs, 10.5 oz. Great progress as well.

Alex has not had any further issues since vomiting Monday afternoon. Since being put back on his feedings late yesterday afternoon, he has still been on full tube feedings. He is still on his nasal canula, but continues to breathe well while on it without complications. Alex, like Brooklyn, weighed in today at 3 lbs, 3 oz, but was 5 grams lighter.

Emma is gaining weight too. She’s just a bit smaller than the others, but we’re still happy with her progress. She weighed in today 2 lbs, 5 oz. She continues to do well on her nasal canula. It was actually decreased today from a liter to a half liter. She is also doing very well on her tube feedings without complications.

Lastly, but certainly not least, Madeline had an outstanding day. She continues to breathe well on her canula, but the real good news with Madeline is her weight. Her feedings have been going well and she’s decided to join the 3 pound club weighing in at 3 lbs, 1 oz. For those who understand the inside joke here, I slipped her a piece of Iowa Sheet Cake last night with her dinner!!!

Sorry for my blunt nature with tonight’s post but it was kind of a long day. The long and short of today is that it was uneventful. Just like a flight on an airline, uneventful is perfect. The kids all did very well and Angela spent a ton of time with each of them today. We’ll continue to pray for their development, that the days continue to be uneventful, and that their days in the NICU are numbered.

Until next time…

The honeymoon is over.

Here is the blog post as promised. I type this with mixed emotions as the honeymoon period for the kids has obviously ended. They’ve progressively done so well since my last post, but we’ve had our setbacks and today may have been the worst so far. It could be nothing, but it could be something.

So here’s the progress (the good news). As we expected, by the end of the weekend, all of the IV’s came out, including the PIC lines. This is great news. Awesome progress. They were tolerating full feedings on formula and breast milk. I say “were” because things have changed and I’ll get to that a little later. Otherwise the feedings have been going well and we can tell because we have a couple kids in the 3 pound club. That is so cool. I’ve been told that my humor has taken a vacation recently so I’ll share a brief funny story to lighten the mood that’s relevant to weight gain. When I graduated high school and left for college (it really wasn’t that long ago), I was skinny. Very skinny. 140 pound skinny. I had the brilliant idea that I should deliberately gain some weight. I thought it would be cool to join the 200 pound club. There wasn’t a club, I was just being stupid. By the way, I blew my goal out of the water! I used to run a lot back then and I just told everyone that once I got to 2 bills, I’d just start running again and easily lose 30 pounds. Guess who didn’t start running again and didn’t lose the weight. My kids’ weight gain this past week is cool. Mine was not. I’ve regretted it until now but I’m happy that I found a way to humor everyone with my stupidity!!! That’s about it for the funny stuff. Now a healthy dose of reality.

It was clear over the weekend and again today that the kids’ honeymoon period is over. Last week, I spoke about the breathing troubles of Alex, Madeline, and I focused on Emma’s issues in detail. Well, the breathing issues took another a small dive this week. Over the weekend, Emma had another setback. If you’ll remember, she had a nasal canula added last week after having an apnea spell. However, it got a little worse over the weekend as she needed some assistance in addition to her canual. She stopped breathing for a few seconds where they needed to intervene and help her out. After getting her breathing back to normal, they cleaned out her nasal cavity which was full of goop (that’s a technical term) that affected her ability to breathe. So what do you do…they increased the flow of the air she’s getting and added humidity to it. She’s been solid since then without any notable issues. Alex and Emma (still on canulas) have been fine with their breathing since last week. The breathing of Brook and Lauren is still stellar. What isn’t stellar are the feeding issues that I noted near the top of this post. Yesterday, we were told that Brooklyn got sick. They told us that they’d just observe her closely, but not to worry. This morning, we were told that she had blood in her stool. They pulled her feedings and started an IV again. She’s getting all of her nutrition and some antibiotics through the IV. I guess my comment earlier about the IV’s all being gone was a bit misleading. They were all out, I promise. All of her blood tests and multiple x-rays today came back good. To throw salt in our emotional wounds, we were told late tonight that Alex also got sick this afternoon. They pulled his feedings for a few hours, but started back up once they felt he was stable. They are obviously watching him closely given his sister’s earlier complications. The doctor told us today that he isn’t worried. It’s our first complication of note, but as far as he’s concerned, it’s nothing that we should get too worked up about. Dale and Vicki Slack (family friends of ours from Rock Rapids) were here in Minneapolis with their daughter for the weekend. They stopped by for a quick peek and they can vouch that the kids are a lot smaller and frailer than their pictures make them appear. It’s clear that these kids are not just gonna move through the NICU without complications. I can honestly tell you that I had not worried about the kids in nearly two weeks, but as I sit here and write this all out, I’m nervous about what’s going on. Please continue to keep all of the kids in your prayers.

I’m back to work this week so I’ll do my best to keep everyone up to date on their progress this week. By the way, I added some more pictures. Click here for a peek.

Until next time…

Holy Bumkins Batman!

As promised, this entire post will be about our affection for the folks at Bumkins. Click here for a direct link to the Bumkins Website.

A couple weeks ago, a very nice person from Bumkins contacted me by email after hearing about the Cherubs and checking out our site. She saw Meredith at the top of the media page on our site wearing a Bumkins bib. She asked if it would be ok to send us some things. This was the first case that any manufacturer reached out to us and we were a bit skeptical about what to expect, but obviously told them YES. A few days later, we received a package and opened it up. They put together two gift packs for us.

The first pack was for the quints. It contained some bibs and quickie bags. There were 5 different designs so each of the kids will get their own bib and bag. It won’t be their last bib from Bumkin, I promise that. There were also some onesies in there for each of the kids. A ton of the stuff from Bumkins is Dr. Suess related. The first set of onesies was from “Horton Hears a Who.” There were 4 pink ones and 1 blue one. The thing that took the cake was the second set of onesies. We had seen these in the past but didn’t think that there would be any way to get them. Each of the kids will get their own. “Thing 1, Thing 2, Thing 3, Thing 4, and Thing 5” We will eventually get pics of each of them in their Thing Onsie, but you’ll have to take my word for it that 2-3 of them would fill one onsie at this point. If you’d like a preview of what I’m talking about, click here. The reason we’re so happy and thrilled is that in the hand written note from Bumkins, they told us that they put this package together specifically for us and told us that only a handful of people actually have 1-5 as they only sell Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Now you might be saying, “What about Meredith?” They didn’t forget or neglect her either. Package #2 was just for her. They gave her a Horton T-shirt to match her brother and sisters. They also gave her a big bib and matching tote bag and a pencil pack. Here’s a few pics of Meredith in her new Horton shirt. When I put it on her tonight for a picture or two, she wouldn’t let me take it off and put her jammy shirt back on so she’s sleeping in it right now.

As I try to go out of my way to thank the wonderful people at Bumkins, the last thing that I want to leave you with is that after going through everything, Angela told me this, “I liked Bumkins as a company before, but now I love em.”

I promise that I will have updates on the kids tomorrow night. We had a busy weekend with family in town and we were really trying to finish some things up here at home today as I go back to work tomorrow. The long and short of their status is that they are progressing as expected with a few hiccups (very minor) along the way. I’ll have a new photo album with updated pics of the kids with Angela and myself to accompany the post.

Until then…

Happy Humpday

The week’s half over now and we’re that much closer to the 4th of July. It’s been kind of quite here, all things considered. On Sunday, Angela’s mother went back home and left Angela and me alone with Meredith. Man how things have changed. It’s been so long since we were alone with her, just the three of us. As I mentioned in our last post, the girls were sick over the weekend so Angela stayed home with Meredith on Monday while I went in to see the kids. On Tuesday, we had Annie come over and stay with Meredith during the day so that we could spend some time with the kids. While we were there, I met up with Dr. David Vandersteen. He’s a pediatric urologist (a client of mine), but also a friend. He and his wife donated some goods to our cause. Thank You!

On Tuesday afternoon, my parents made the trip from Rocky (Rock Rapids) to River Falls. They came up to help out with Meredith and with some things around the house so that Angela and I could spend some time at the hospital and not have to worry so much about what’s going on at home. They helped out a ton already. I’m starting to get used to accepting help, but it’s still hard asking. My pride is a huge pill to swallow. They’ll be here for the rest of the week and they’ll go in tomorrow to see the kids. We’ll meet some fellow Rocky residents (and family friends (Mr. and Mrs. Slack)) there as well. We’re looking forward to the weekend too as my brother, Brad and his family, will be coming up to visit. It just never seems to be boring around here and I don’t think it ever will be again.

So I’ve got some updates on the kids. No one is reading this to hear about my day and my plans so on to the kids. The updates are really small in scale as I mentioned earlier that things have been kind of quiet. All of the kids are tolerating their feedings extremely well. They are progressing well and we expect that all of them will have their IV’s removed by the end of the weekend. The IV’s are there to supplement the nutrition that they would normally get with full feedings. We’re working towards the full feedings and Emma may be off her IV by as early as tomorrow. To add to the good news, with all things being equal, the doctor told us that by the end of next week, we might be discussing moving all of them out of the NICU to a Level 2 Care facility, which will be back at ANW. That is so awesome! Level 2 Care is just not quite as intense of observation by the staff and the goal is to fatten em up so that we can take em home. Now, we have to assume that all things will remain the same to achieve these goals and we were dealt a little dose of reality today that things don’t always stay the same. As I previously stated in an earlier post, we felt that all the kids would be off all oxygen support by mid-week. Well…things change. Not only did Alex and Madeline not get off their nasal canulas, but they had the oxygen levels in the air that they’re getting increase for additional support. To pile on to this little hiccup, Emma had a canula added today while we were there. She’s our little rock star. It can’t happen to Emma! She’s supposed to be the fighter! The staff felt that this is totally normal and they aren’t worried at all. They expected this kind of thing to happen. One of the doctors told us over the weekend that they were supposed to have breathing trouble and we were just so far ahead of the curve. Like I said, they feel just fine about things, but this was kind of a blow to us. I saw one of these apnea spells for the first time yesterday. There are bells going off every once in a while in our wing. Our wing is quiter than most, but I still look at the computer monitor when every alarm sounds. I may have to look around to find out who it is, but I always look and watch. It’s always something minor and it isn’t uncommon for the little thing on their belly to come loose as they wiggle around causing the monitor to light up. It really caught my attention when the bells went off this time and I saw Emma’s heart rate drop from 170 to 69 and the oxygen level drop from 98% to 49%, and it quickly wasn’t coming back to normal. I was scared, but no one in the room seemed too worked up about it, which helped a little, but it was the first time I saw it. Now, Emma eventually recovered just a few moments later on her own, but it’s been happening too often in the past two days so the nurses added her canula. Same goes for Alex and Madeline. In the great big world of quintuplets and preemies in general, this was absolutely nothing, but it was a regression to us.

Lastly, I want to recognize a company that went out of their way to help out the Tille family this week. One of the reasons that we have a personal website/blog was so that we could feel good when we recognize companies and other that have help us out along this journey. Because you were the first, Bumkins, you will get your own post (my next) to recognize what you did. You will get the free and very well deserved publicity. Thank you! Everyone please visit, www.bumkins.com.

Until next time…