Twenty one days old

Christopher, the big guy, skipped the CCN entirely.  This afternoon Christopher leap frogged his brother and sisters and was discharged from the NICU into our care.  Yesterday, mommy and daddy took the infant CPR class as part of the discharge ritual.
 

Twenty four days old Daddy (with his weekend look) feeding Christopher.
Christopher says: "Stop bothering me, I'm trying to sleep!"

Twenty four days old Christopher says: "If you keep pointing that camera
at me, I'm going to break it."

Twenty four days old Christopher says: "Stick a fork in me.  I'm done."
 

Thirty days old

Christopher had a pediatrician appointment on Friday.  The doctor said he never saw a quad baby in such good health.  Christopher weighed 6 lb 4 oz.  Daddy still does day and night shift duty with Christopher while mommy recovers.  Christopher does a pretty good job at sleeping through the night and is currently on four hour feeds.  Mommy is still a bit slow but feels better every day and is able to walk through Walmart with no assistance.  Mommy's opened wound is healing nicely and is unpacked and repacked by daddy every two days.  Today was daddy's first Father's Day.  Yipee!
 

Thirty days old Christopher's "couch potato" look.  He takes after daddy.

One month, one day old

Emily was discharged!  Woohoo!  ... on an apnea monitor.  Oh, no!

One month, four days old

Alyssa was finally discharged from the CCN yesterday with an apnea monitor.  We now have three of the four babies ready to go home -- we're just hanging around for Nicholas, now.  With feedings every four hours and diaper changes more frequently than that there was little sleep to be had last night with Emily fidgeting and screaming for hours for no apparent reason.

Alyssa, who was the only baby to show signs of Retinopathy of Prematurity, just had her eyes retested a few minutes ago.  The test was negative -- no corrective surgery required.  Premature babies have a 24% chance (10% risk for full term babies) of having lazy eye, crossed eyes, or needing corrective lenses.  The next eye checkup will be in six months.
 

One month, eight days old

Until now, we've had triplets under our care.  Triplets seem relatively manageable.  Daddy diapers, feeds, and burps two babies while mommy does one.  Everybody is "processed" within forty-five minutes which provides mommy and daddy about three hours to sleep at night between feeds, which isn't bad.  Daddy gets more sleep now as compared to his former "no kids" life but he'll have to sadly cut out his computer hobby in order to make time for the rug rats.

Nicholas was discharged today with an apnea monitor.  It's official -- now we have four!  We might have to start feeding in two shifts since mommy might be unable to handle two at a time.  Uh oh... there goes our sleep!

Mommy's recovery has progressed very well.  She is more mobile, now, but is still slow getting out of bed and walking around.  The incision wound is healing slowly.  Daddy still unpacks and repacks it every two days.  It is expected to eventually fully close on it's own -- no stitches, no staples.

Now, it's just a matter of getting home from here.
 

One month, eleven days old

Daddy took Nicholas and Emily to Phoenix Pediatric Associates yesterday -- quite a trick getting two babies with car seats and apnea monitors into and out of the doctor's office.  Christopher and Emily had prior visits.  Nicholas was having trouble breathing and the doctor wanted to measure Nicholas' O2 level but the oxymeter at the doctor's office was not effective on babies this small.  The doctor suggested that we get an oxymeter reading at the CCN, so we did.  The reading was 97-100% which was good.  Nicholas' congestion is best handled with saline drops to the nose followed by suctioning.

The babies had us up most of the night.  We packed last night and early this morning for our trip home.  We chose a Thursday flight to avoid the weekend 4th of July holiday rush.  Four full sized seats were bought (by Good Sam Hospital, I believe) for the babies.  Yesterday, I returned the rental car and exchanged our round trip tickets for tickets on today's flight.  Details of the flight home were kept hush-hush in order to avoid a lot of commotion when we arrived home.  Mommy's sister and brother-in-law flew from Edison, NJ to Phoenix last night to help us fly back with the babies.

We were met at our room at about 7:00am by Deb Carter, a hospital case manager along with Carmen Mayer, a triplet mom who was staying at hospital guest lodging next door.  They helped us load up and get down to the hospital lobby in order to meet hospital security at 7:15am.  We loaded a minivan and a security car with luggage, babies, and four adults and we were off to the airport.  Upon arrival at the airport, we checked the baggage in and transported three of the babies to the gate on a flat cart.  The fourth baby was transported on the wheel chair that we were taking back to Pennsylvania.  Baby car seats were totally covered with receiving blankets in order to avoid distractions from airport onlookers.  There were many comments as we passed by fellow travelers.

At the gate we found out that the 9:30am America West flight to Philadelphia was running over an hour late due to bad weather on the east coast.  Yesterday the America West ticket agent was not cooperative in providing us with bulkhead seating and she neglected to tell us that each baby needed a window seat for the car seat.  We only had two window seats.  While we waited at the gate, two crew members approached us to ask about our special needs.  They were very nice.  One of the crew members was well acquainted with premature infants since she had one on oxygen a few years ago.  They told us that we should grab the window seats on rows 13 and 14 and that they would take care of the two passengers that we displaced.

The flight went pretty smooth.  The babies had no problems with take off or with landing.  All babies were fed on the plane about half way through the flight and were well behaved.  At the end of the flight a crew member made a public announced that the Deschler quadruplets were arriving home for the first time.  We received an ovation from folks on the plane.  It was a very surprising moment.  People were congratulatory and very nice and nobody was intrusive.  We were met at the gate in Philadelphia by a porter with an electric cart.  Daddy tagged along behind the cart with a baby on the wheel chair.

We arrived at the baggage claim and found that our limo van was not there to meet us.  After two phone calls and an hour and a half of waiting, the (sub contracted) driver showed up blaming a traffic jam.  The limo office blamed the changing airline schedule.  Stagecoach Limo sucks... and the van rode like a stagecoach... no kidding.  We finally arrived home at about 9:00pm, babies screaming due to hunger.  We were greeted at home by six neighbors and two relatives -- there were sixteen people in all.  The house was cleaned last weekend by the grandmothers and the neighbors decorated the house and stocked it with supplies for our arrival.  Luckily, we have very nice neighbors.