Never A Dull Moment

Little Miss Olivia is 27 weeks gestation today. She is as cute as ever and is showing her personality more and more each day. She weighed in at 1 lb 8 oz this morning. After a break for surgery, they started feeding her breast milk again on Saturday. She is getting 24ml a day and this number will increase depending on how well she is digesting. Please continue to pray that she tolerates her feeds! Here are a few pictures of Olivia showing off... Snoozing away. All snuggled up. Really ticked off during her assessment. She does NOT like being messed with! :) Look at that expression! Finally settling down after her diaper change. The score, if you're keeping track, is now Daddy 3, Mommy 2. Already saying her prayers. ;) Have I mentioned how much I love her hands? Daddy calming Liv down. Look who found her fingers! We love you, sweet girl!

Guess who's three weeks old today... Olivia! The nurse she had last night made her a pretty bow for the occasion. Nothing like a tiny girl with a big bow in her hair! The nurses say they can't believe a baby born so early has so much hair already. (The lighting wasn't very good today. She threw a fit when we took the blanket off of her isolette so we quickly apologized and put it back.) We discovered this afternoon that she might sleep with her eyes open like her daddy. I'm trying to be OK with it. ;) Olivia is doing well and still recovering from the surgery. We are hoping that she'll get to start eating again tomorrow morning. You can pray that her gut will be ready and she'll be able to start packing on the pounds. Sucking on a paci for the first time. Covering her eyes from the light. Mommy and Liv earlier this week.  Daddy changing her diaper again last night. And, we thought she needed a three week birthday pr...

Reid got a hundred few good pictures of Olivia showing off yesterday. She must have yawned fifty times after the nurse woke her up to turn her from tummy to her back. Then, during her diaper change she got mad and cried a few times. We can't hear her because of the ventilator, but that face just breaks our hearts. She already has us so wrapped around her teeny little finger. Big yawn for such a little girl. No doubt in my mind its a big cry, too! I can't get enough of her little hands. And, because there's nothing sweeter than a sleeping baby. Olivia had surgery on her heart today and made it through like a little champ. The procedure was to repair a PDA (Patent Ductus Arteriosus). It is basically an unclosed hole in the aorta that is extremely common in preemies. Reid and I were really nervous about the surgery. In these situations I feel like we are way too young to make major medical decisions. But, apparently, we are not. With recommendat...

Look who finally opened her eyes! Reid and I got to the hospital yesterday and found her snoozing on her tummy. We started talking to her like we always do and all of a sudden she woke up and started to open her eyes. I may or may not have shrieked in the NICU. And then I cried. It was such a fun moment for me and Reid. The nurse said that her eyes just "popped" open when they were changing the tape around her respirator earlier in the day. She said Olivia was wide-eyed and looking all around. The nurse had to put her on her tummy for her to finally fall back asleep. I love that her sweet nurse didn't tell us about her eyes as soon as we got there. She made that milestone so special by letting us experience it for ourselves. I also got to do something really exciting yesterday! The nurse let me pick up Olivia while she changed her bedding. When I picked her up she opened her eyes and looked right at me. She can only see about 6 inches so I'm sure I was just a t...

Olivia is 26 weeks gestation today. Last night she weighed in at 1lb 7oz - getting to be such a big girl! The doctor upped her feedings because she is continuing to tolerate them so well. She's getting 3ml every 3 hours. We are so thankful! Reid changed her diaper for the first time today. The bravest I've been was taking her temperature. Reid is officially Super Dad! I'm so proud of what a hands on daddy he already is. Olivia is one lucky little girl. And, due to overwhelming response, here are a few more pictures of livi... :) We thank you for continued prayers!

Olivia Bain, our little Livi. We fall more in love with our little girl everyday. She has quite a big personality for someone so small. All the nurses comment on how opinionated she is for a baby born just shy of 24 weeks. We love our feisty fighter. The doctors and nurses continue to tell us how well Olivia is doing. Her weight is hovering around 1 lb, 5 oz (her birthweight). She is stable, tolerating feeds that are "priming her gut", and is regulating her blood pressure well without meds. Everyday she continues to thrive is a huge milestone. Her eyes are still fused, but she is trying really hard to open them. I'm thinking this week, week 26, will be the week. We can't wait to see her pretty eyes!  Friday, her two week birthday, was the first time she really responded to our touch. She held and squeezed our fingers for a long time. Not being able to hold her has been really hard, but Friday I felt like we finally made a connection with our daughter. H...

Two weeks ago yesterday at 4:07 pm our second little girl, Madelyn, was born. Her sisters, Mary Grace and Olivia, would follow closely behind at 5:31 and 5:32. Reid and I knew on their birthday, delivering babies at 23w4d, we'd more than likely have some tough decisions to make in the days that would follow. I don't think I grasped at the time just how hard those decisions would be. This morning, we celebrated the lives of Catherine, Madelyn, and Mary Grace with friends and family in a beautiful service. I don't think any element could have been more perfect. A close family friend made these beautiful dresses for the girls to be buried in. The detail on them is so precious and they mean so much to us. Reid and I went to the grave by ourselves to say a final goodbye to our babies. We sat and watched as they lowered our sleeping angels into the ground and as the earth gently covered them. It was hard, but it was a sweet time with Reid that I'll never forget. I c...

The past few days have been good. Reid and I usually visit Olivia twice a day - once during the morning/ afternoon and again at bedtime to "tuck her in" and say her prayers. :) She is still stable. The neonatologist told us that she's doing really well for a baby that's so small. Those words give us so much hope. I've been battling a lot of guilt this past week (and I don't share this to try to get you to tell me I shouldn't feel this way). When it was time to leave the hospital last Monday afternoon several people said things like, "I bet you are so relieved this is over," and "Aren't you so glad you finally get to go home?" The truth is, I wish I was still lying flat on my back in antepartum. I wish I was still on magnesium in L&D. I wish I was still pregnant, feeling my babies move and kick inside of me. As nice as it is to be home, I wish I was still at the hospital. On Saturday when we walked in the hospital there was a ...

My mom passed away very early Tuesday morning. I feel so happy and relieved for her - she's finally healthy and whole standing in the presence of her Savior. I would give anything to see her beautiful smile and hear her laugh. She was the most incredible mom and I'm so thankful she was mine. My cousin and sister wrote the obituary and I think it is such a special tribute. Mary Allan Dickey Bain, 60, went to be with her Heavenly Father April 10, 2012. She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to the late George W. "Skeeter" Dickey and the late Mildred Allan Neal Dickey on June 11, 1951. Mary Allan attended Forest Park Elementary, Pulaski Heights Junior High and Hall High School. In her early twenties, Mary Allan went to work as a travel agent for Poe Travel where she had the opportunity to see the world. In 1983, she married Jim Bain and together they had three incredible children, Mary Virginia, George and Eleanor. Her three children were truly the joy and loves of he...

For the first time in my life I feel like I'm truly living one day at a time. Reid and I had a pretty good day yesterday. We were able to sleep in which was wonderful. Reid made us lunch and we sat outside in the backyard. It was a beautiful day and being outside did a lot of good for my mental health. :) There were still a lot of hard moments as memories from the night before would come rushing back to mind. We miss our sweet babies so much. Olivia had a good day yesterday. It was uneventful (which is a very good thing in the NICU) and they were able to turn down some of her medicine. We call every morning to check on our sweet girl and her nurse was quick to tell us how feisty our daughter is. We picked up on that in her first day of life, but it was funny to hear that someone else had observed the same. We are so in love with our feisty little Olivia. After we left the hospital, Reid and I went on a dinner date. It was so good for us to get out and feel like we...

At 2:00 am this morning, our sweet Mary Grace was welcomed to Heaven. We found out this afternoon that she had a large brain hemorrhage. Reid and I spent three precious hours holding our daughter tonight. The nurses wrapped a pink bow around her little head and we swaddled her in a soft pink elephant blanket. During those hours, we told Mary Grace how proud we were of her fight, how she fulfilled our dreams of one day having a daughter to call "Gracie," and we even took a little nap, snuggled together as a family. If we told her we loved her once, we told her a thousand times. We prayed over her and gave her back to the Lord. We miss her more than words can say. I feel like we were punched in the stomach today and left with the wind knocked out of our lungs. Its so hard to understand "why?" in all of this. Tonight when we left the hospital, Reid turned on this song by David Crowder Band and we listened to it on repeat the whole way home. Its the exact state of our...

I really don't even know where to begin or how to write this post. I've put it off for several days hoping that maybe if I let things sink in a little more it would be easy. This will never be easy. As you know, we welcomed three beautiful little girls into the world on Friday afternoon. We had hoped to continue to "buy time" and hold off on delivery for several more weeks. God has always had a plan much bigger than either Reid or I could ever imagine. I have to chose to believe, everyday, that somehow this all fits perfectly into that plan. We knew from the time of her delivery that Madelyn was struggling the most. The circumstances surrounding her birth caused a lot of trauma to her tiny body. After a day of fighting for a positive outcome, the neonatologist came to visit with us and told us it was time to let her go. Late Saturday night we went to the NICU to hold our precious baby for the first and last time. She was absolutely perfect and looked just like h...

Reid and I are finally getting situated into "normal" life again. I had lots of emotions about leaving the hospital - as absolutely horrible as the circumstances were for us being there we could not have had better people taking care of us. Nurses we had in L&D spent the weekend coming to visit us, checking on my recovery and the status of the babies. I'll give an update in another post later this week. For now I wanted to leave you with a quote from a book I started reading by Jennie Allen called "Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul." "To risk is to willingly place your life in the hands of an unseen God and an unknown future, then to watch Him come through. He starts to get real when you live like that."

13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, makincg peace the blood of his cross. Colossians 1:13-20

Friends and Family, Late this afternoon we became the proud parents of three little girls. Madelyn Barrett: 1 pound Olivia Bain: 1 pound, 5 ounces Mary Grace: 1 pound, 10 ounces The babies are stable in the NICU  tonight and we are hopeful that God is going to move mountains as they grow and thrive. Madelyn's (Baby B) amniotic sac ruptured on Sunday night. We had a sonogram done each day this week to check her heart beat, fluid level, and position. The doctors told us Friday morning that she was not likely to make it and that delivering her was not an option as it put too much risk on Mary Grace and Olivia. Once again, we were told to wait and see. Around 4:30 Friday afternoon I delivered Madelyn. The NICU team was here immediately to begin working on her. When the doctor checked on the status of the other girls, he saw signs of infection and he immediately performed an emergency c-section to deliver Mary Grace and Olivia. We have seen the Lord's mercy through each to...