A Personalized Message from Peyton Manning: Rub Some Dirt On It....or maybe not

Well, just in case we do come down with the "Rotten Stinky Virus" or any other one for that matter Peyton Manning has given us a personalized message of encouragement. Click on the link to see his pep talk.

Click Here to See Peyton's Message

Perhaps "rubbing dirt on it" has caused The RSV? Interesting concept....Thanks, Peyton.

In all seriousness, I wanted to give an RSV shot update, since so many of you have been praying. Your prayers are so appreciated! It really has been a run for our money - literally. I could go on for pages and pages...but here's the Cliff Notes version:

Brad has spent HOURS (no exaggeration) duking it out with insurance, pharmacies, customer service reps, advocacy groups, etc. I know that he has been able to endure this because of his love for his boys and his desire for them to be protected. Due to his perseverance, our boys should be getting their Synagis shots this evening. (Our nurse, Kim, is coming to our house to give the boys their shots so we don't have have to expose our boys to more germs in the office - Talk about going above and beyond!) That's all pending, of course, upon the shots arriving at our doctor's office. We really are to the point that we'll believe it when we see it. We wouldn't be surprised if FedEx goes on strike and refuses to make deliveries. That's just how crazy the last week has been! Regretfully, this may not be the end of the battle as we learned that Brad's work (that has agreed to approve us) will be completely changing to a new insurance company at the beginning of the year, thus we may have to repeat the entire process. Phewwww...We are ready for a vacation!

However, in the midst all of this ciaos, we have to praise God. None of this has been a surprise to Him! Looking back we see His provision when we thought it was impossible to get approved and yet another lesson in trusting Him. He has heard and answered our prayers!

Here are some verses that have been an encouragement to me this week:

Philippians 4: 4-7 "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Matthew 6:25, 34 "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?.... "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

Do You Think Anyone Will Notice Us?

I know I've kept you waiting for too long.....the surprise is:

WE OWN A QUAD RUNABOUT!

Some of you may ask, what in the world is a Runabout? To quote The Sandlot, it's the "sultan of swat, the king of crash, the colossus of clout, the colossus of clout, the Great Bambino". It's the "Babe Ruth" of all strollers!

The picture explains the set up better than words, but the main gist is Brad or I can take the boys on a walk single-handed! For the time, we are limited to our neighborhood, because the stroller is so big that it only fits in the van by removing seats. That isn't too convenient, since each seat holds a car seat in our van. The manufacturer of the Runabout sells a hitch to mount on the back of your vehicle, but we haven't decided if we will invest in one yet. For the time being, we are just grateful to be able to use the sidewalk for the first time in 7 months!

This stroller was a hand-me-down from our triplet friends, the Schelpers. It was given to them by a quad mom in Louisville. It's really in great overall shape. Some of you remember my post about Crazy Things You Ponder When You Have Supertwins and how I renamed this contraption "The Beast" and "TheRunUsOutofHouseandHome". Thanks to our friends, we didn't have to pay a dime! (New Runabout Quad Strollers cost about $1,000 + shipping!) And as far as my pre-birth attitude about how we "would not own one of these strollers"....well, let's just say that there is no hiding quadruplets. I've learned it's better to embrace the multiple products - they are designed especially for us! We are looking forward to passing it on to another multiples family when we grow out of it, as well!

Thank you Dave, Amanda, Alyssa, Drew, Jack, and Lauren!

The Schlepers and Murray's at their 1 year celebration

Daddy and his boys going for their first walk in the Runabout

We Are Survivors : NICU Picnic

Last weekend our crew had the privilege of attending the NICU Reunion Picnic. I remember this time last year, not knowing if we would be invited to such a picnic, not knowing if we would even bring one baby home from the hospital. Only by God's grace, we brought 4 babies home. I wanted to blog right away all about the picnic, but it was too emotional, and my thoughts were all over the place. Hopefully now my thoughts are a bit more collected. We'll see.....

I remember the first time I heard about this "picnic". I was about 14 weeks pregnant and my doctor was talking about another past patient he had run into there. Then he backtracked and explained what the picnic was about, and then inserted something like, "you'll see, when you guys go next year". That was HUGE! He believed in us, against all the medical knowledge he possessed, and the fight we had ahead of us. That gave me a confidence and peace about our situation. Seeing him there on Saturday and having my 4 boys to show him was exciting, to say the least.

We were greeted by so many familiar faces and hugs from people who fought for our boys while they endured their NICU stay. It was such a joy to show the nurses and doctors our chubby, healthy, little rascals. We are so grateful for the tremendous care at St. Vincent we received and the people and abilities that God place into each of our boys' lives, when we could do NOTHING.

I think many have too quickly forgotten (including myself) how amazing these little lives truly are and how this is not the "typical" outcome, since they don't look or act much like preemies anymore (which is a great thing)! This picnic was another great reminder of God's ultimate control, His grace, and mercy in our lives. Sometimes we just want to hold on to each of them and weep over them in gratefulness. May Christ be glorified through their precious lives!

DeDe (Henry's primary nurse)

Nataline (Clark's primary nurse) Nataline: You better thank me for your fame! =) Can you tell the boys didn't get their nap?

Brad and I with our "septuplets", where are their parents, anyway? I thought we were posing with them for the picture!

When your babies are in the NICU you have to wear a hospital bracelet for each baby for security reasons. Well, I decided to take a picture of our survivor bracelets that they handed out. The "Tiny Success" onesies (pictured at the top of this post) were given to us by a triplet mom, Diana, who we barely know from Starbucks, but she's been a faithful blog subscriber for a while now. Thank you so much! We'll have to definetly get a picture in them!

Look how far we've come!

February 2. 2007

"Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast.
How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings." Psalm 6:5-7

God always provides…….sometimes through coupons!

The picture you see above is about half of the jars of baby food that God provided for us. Jen found a coupon online for Target that allowed us to get each one of these jars for 2 cents each. So, I went to the Michigan road Target yesterday at lunch and bought everything they had on their shelves. (280 jars!) The total cost for these was just over $6! The original price after all of the jars had been scanned was over $160. (This deal was found on babycheapskate - a great website for baby deals/coupons.)

After getting this deal and telling a few people about it, we had a couple other friends volunteer to hit other Target stores for us to try to get more on this deal. The coupon expired yesterday, so we had to get it before the store closed yesterday. This morning, I found out that Judy (our secretary here at work) and Jayson and Jenn (friends) managed to pick up a total of 234 additional jars of baby food for us. This brought our grand total to 513 jars of baby food, and almost all of it was 2 cents per jar!!

We know that this amount of baby food will most likely not last all the way through, but it will take a huge expense out for us, and we praise God for giving us the opportunity to get in on it. God has provided for every single need we have had so far, and He continues to do so.

Just wanted to share our praise with all of you!

Brad, Jen, Henry, Brooks, Clark, and Isaac

PS Stay tuned…..we got our professional pictures back and we will be posting those images for you soon! (with permission from the photographer)

Home Sweet Home

The air conditioner is up and running, our many bags are unpacked, and we are sleeping in our own beds/cribs. We survived! Actually, we got quite spoiled while we were "homeless" with a down feathered bed, home-cooked meals, feeders for the boys, a swim, and cold A/C!!!! A huge thank you to our host families, the Alexander's and the Gentry's. They opened their homes and loved up on our boys. (The Alexander's moved into their RV, so we could stay in their home. Now that is love!) Nevertheless, we are relieved to be back in our comfort zone of HOME. We really take so much for granted on a daily basis. I had no idea how much STUFF I use in one day. I wish we would have taken a picture of our stuffed van - you could hardly see the babies with 4 pack-and-plays, 2 bouncy seats, 2 boppies, an exersaucer, a gym, about 10 bags, etc. I think I took more with me for the few days away than I took my freshmen year to college! It seemed that the boys grew while we were gone. Clark turned over from back to tummy, acting like it was no effort at all. Henry followed suit just a few minutes later while we were discussing who was going to be next to rollover.

I have more blogging to do so keep hitting refresh over the next few days. Coming up.....bathtime fun and the long awaited professional pictures!

Here's some pictures from the last few days of yet another adventure in our lives.

We R Refugees, If You Please

Well after "living in a van down by the river" for about an hour,we packed up and headed to some friend's from church (actually my OB, how crazy is that?) basement for the night. It was nice and chilly - a welcomed feeling! It's been great! We have had MANY offers and we are soooooo grateful for how so many of you within hours were offering your homes, fans, your neighbor's nephew's ex-wife's dog's house.....In all seriousness, we have been taken care of well. Our next stop is another family's home from church. We'll be hauling up the boys and their ridiculous amount of "stuff" it takes for their survival this evening. The boys are going to the farm. Actually it's a restored barn made into a house. I'm thinking we'll be staying put there until the air unit is replaced. I'm not sure if we will have internet access from there, so bye for now! I'll post pictures of our great adventure when we are back home.

Cooled down

We are currently at a friends house, the boys are sleeping, all is well. Thank you all for all of your kind offers. Hopefully we will get this fixed soon and get back home! :)

4 Hour Shiftaroo

Sorry for my delay in blogging, but we are trying out the 4 hour schedule with the boys, meaning we have bumped up their feeds and their "waketime" so it's 4 hours between each feeding . It's always a challenge when you switch something in quadworld, but so far it's a go. The boys are eating between 7-8 oz a feeding now! That's almost 2 cans of formula a day! I think Brad and I calculated the other day that it cost about 7 dollars each time we feed the little birds (over 30 buckaroos a day). Isn't that incredible? There's no way we could do it without all the help we've received and we are soooooooooo thankful daily for our stockpile of diapers, along with many other blessings. We can't thank you all enough, so we will continue to thank you on this blog!

We are still thrilled that we aren't taking care of a post-surgery Brooks right now. We all celebrated Friday with a walk along the canal, downtown Indy. Perfect weather - low 80's with a breeze, not your typical July Indiana weather. We discovered that the canal is a great place to take the boys, because people are on the move. Let me explain myself.......when you have quads, like it or not, you are on constant display and interview mode. It's like we wear a t-shirt saying, "Ask us anything that comes to your head, don't worry nothing is off limits". While we love sharing the boys with everyone, and love sharing the story that the Lord has given, it definately makes you chuckle at some of the reactions and questions we get. You want examples? Oh alright....

• Are those triplets? Sextuplets? Whatever they're called
• You've got 2 sets of twins?
• Are they all yours?
• I hope you're done (having kids)
• That'll teach you what to pray for
• (In an Indiana hillbilly tone) D'jew take dem shots?
• And our personal favorite that we hear AT LEAST 10 times an outing: YOU'VE GOT YOUR HANDS FULL!

A girl even ran into a sign one day because she was walking and trying to look back at our babies at the same time. Anyway, it's a hoot, but it does get difficult at times to get from point A to point B. Needless to say, the canal was a very enjoyable walk, because we only got stopped a handful of times, since people are on paddleboats, bikes, even segways. By the time they counted all the babies in the strollers, they had already passed us!

We've been blessed this summer with visits with friends. A great suprise visit was from our friends, the Mathisons who have been in East Asia for the past few years. Amy was my Bible study leader/accountability partner during college.They are dear friends to us. It was wonderful to see their growing family and squeeze them in person.

Some other extra special guests include another set of quad parents, the Benners. We first met them at our first appointment with our high risk doctor during the pregancy. I believe I was about 10 weeks pregnant, and both Brad and I were tremendously anxious about not only having quads, but the mono-mono situation for Clark and Brooks. (If you are new to this "mono" language, Brad posted a great explanation in December on our pregancy blog.) Denise and her quad squad were getting their pictures taken for a brochure for our doctor's office, since she had such an amazing pregnancy. I tease her that she's the "postermom for quads". Just to see 4 healthy babies crawling up on her lap was a realization to us that this was truly possible. God has really used them in our lives as an encouragment and a tremendous resource to bounce questions off of sometimes weekly. It was great to have them love on our babies.

Speaking of quads, please continue to pray for Suzanne. She is hours away from 28 weeks! Remarkable! She is hangin' tough and enduring her hospital stay. Let me tell you from experience hospital bedrest is extremely difficult. Hands down the hardest thing I've had to endure. Please pray for her little ones Ben, Andrew, Savannah, and Ethan to develop and enter this world safely - specifically that their little lungs would start developing, that Suzanne could have the strength and sanity to keep pressing on, for God to give her husband Joe courage, wisdom, and strength for today and days ahead, and that their story would bring glory to God.

Friends and family are so valuable to us these days. It's been a challenge to stay "connected", but please know that we love you all!

Hope you enjoy the pictures - does that bring back any memories from the ole viewmaster days? Personally, I loved The Incredible Hulk reel. What was your favorite?

A GINORMOUS Praise!!!!!

We went to the hospital today to have Brooks examined because Brad noticed that his hernia had really changed in appearance recently. We were hopeful that perhaps the severity had decreased and that we could postpone the surgery until Brooks was at least a year old, since he would have to go under general anesthesia and just the trauma of a surgery at his age. After talking to the surgical nurse, she assured us that it would be something to consider, but would be highly unlikely to get better or go away on its own. We really felt like since we have 3 other boys to compare him to, it would be worth looking into before taking him in Friday morning for surgery. We had awesome news after the pediatric urologist read the ultrasounds and examined our Brooks. Praise God - his hernia has disappeared! We are amazed once again that the God that we serve can do the IMPOSSIBLE! Thank you so much for your faithful prayers - we are so grateful!
Rejoicing Together,
Brad, Jen and the BOYZ

Bulkin' Up

Well, for those of you curious about weights we had our 4 month appointment on Friday and according to our pediatrician their gains are "phenomenal".

Henry: 11lbs 4oz (2lbs 12oz at birth)
Brooks: 11lbs 14oz (3lbs at birth)
Clark: 11lbs 14 oz (3lbs 7 oz at birth) - yes, Clark finally caught up to Brooks, he's been working hard since his hospital stay
Isaac: a whopping 14lbs (4lbs at birth) He's unashamed of his flabby thighs. =)

The shots went alright, just low grade fevers and a bit of fussiness. We were very encouraged by our pediatrician. They are truly doing great! God is gracious!

"But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deed which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." Titus 3: 4-7






Isaac, Brooks, Henry and Clark all in their race attire in celebration last week for the Indy 500!

Our Family of 6 is Complete!

Friends and Family,

Wednesday evening we finally went up and got Clark and brought him home! We are so excited to finally have our family at home complete. After over two months in the hospital, we finally have no reason to go to St. Vincent Women's Hospital anymore. We want to thank everyone at the hospital for the amazing care that Jen and the boys received.

We took our first trip out with all four boys yesterday since Clark got home. The boys went to the pediatrician for a check-up and weight check. Our boys are thriving and continuing to gain weight.

Updated Weights:

Isaac: 6lbs. 13oz.
Brooks: 5lbs. 11oz.
Clark: 5lbs. 1oz.
Henry: 5lbs. 3oz.

This will be the final post for this blog. We are so thankful for everyone who has followed our progress here for the past 7 months. God is so gracious and continues to provide in amazing ways for our family. If you would like to continue to follow our family, please check out our new blogspot, I will be posting pictures there in the near future.

(Post Copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

Praise and H-E-L-P!!!

Friends and Family,

First, we want to praise our God for the amazing work He has done in allowing our boys to develop quickly enough to come home before their due date. It is truly amazing to bring all four of my boys home without any monitors or other assistance. Our doctors tell us that they plan to send Clark home to complete our family sometime tomorrow. This is just simply amazing. My son Clark, who came so near to death a few days into life, is coming home more than two weeks before his due date!!

Also, we are so thankful as we prepare to bring Clark home that our family, church, and co-workers are beginning to pitch in and help us get through these rough early months. We already have many, many people signed up to take shifts, day and night, for the coming weeks and months. I would like to specifically thank Carolyn Terry and Cindy Hamilton for their organizing work to begin this journey, we would have very little done without them.

I wanted to come back again and extend an invitation to any of you who would like to take a shift to help take care of our boys and have not been contacted about doing so. Please e-mail me and give me your phone number, and I will pass that on to the ladies mentioned above. We need a few more people to ensure that Jen has help during the day so that I can return to work, and we are also accepting evening and night help from those of you who are willing.

Please e-mail me at bradley.g.murray[at]gmail [dot]com to be added to the list. Please be sure to include your name, phone number, and the times of the week/day that you might be available to help.

Thank you all so much!

(Post copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

Our Little Henry is Coming Home!!!!

Friends and Family:

Awesome news to share with you, Henry is coming home!! They told us last night that Henry was ready to join us in Pittsboro today! We are so excited to get this much closer to having our family all together. God has been so incredible in supplying our every need the past few weeks as we learn to care for babies for the first time. We are ready and waiting for our little Henry to come home to us tonight.

Could you pray that the transition would go smoothly for him and for us? We are handling two babies pretty well now, so we are hoping that Henry will now fit right into the schedule. Please also pray that Clark would join us soon also. Clark continues to have digestive issues, but will hopefully come home in the next week or two if those clear up as they expect them to. The doctors recently took him off of his feedings for a few days to give his intestines a rest. They have now resumed a full feeding schedule for him and hope that his body will begin to function correctly after this rest. I guess I think of it like your computer locking up. You have to shut it down and let it cool off, then restart and hope for the best. Hopefully Clark just needed a restart!

Thank you all for your prayers, support, and help with physical needs.

Brad, Jen, Henry, Brooks, Clark, and Isaac

(Post Copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

Brooks and Isaac are HOME!!!

Hey all,

Not much time, but I wanted to post a quick message to tell you all that Isaac and Brooks made it home last night at about 8pm. Jen and I decided we wanted to spend our first night home with the boys alone, but after one very fun and exciting night, Jen's mom is coming up this afternoon to give us a hand.

It is an amazing joy to have two of our boys home so quickly, we are praising God for this amazing day in our lives.

Please pray for Henry and Clark. They are doing well so far, but need to begin gaining weight and eating better. They are really having trouble getting them to gain, so we ask you to join us in going to the Great Physician to allow them to begin to grow as needed.

Thank you all, here is our first complete family picture since the boys were born, then one of Brooks and Isaac when they got home.

First Family Photo!



Brooks (left) and Isaac (right)

(Post Copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

Another Praise...

Friends and Family,

I wanted to give you all a quick update. Once again, it seems as though God has chosen to answer our prayers with a "YES". Clark's last x-ray showed a significant improvement in his intestines and they were finally able to get things moving with him last night also! It looks as though he will begin to be given milk again today. They will be starting him very slowly and watching him as his digestive tract starts back up again. Please pray that his body would be able to handle the food better this time.

Thank you all, to God be the glory!

(Post Copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

Miracles and the Media...

Family and Friends,

Just a quick update, then we are off to the NICU/ Press room. Channel 8 and the Indy Star are coming out tonight to do a story on the miraculous work that God has done in this pregnancy. Would you pray with us that God would be glorified through this story? We will update you when we find out when these stories will show up in the media. We do already know that our story will show up Wednesday in the West Side edition of the Indy Star. Channel 8 is still unsure about when they will air our story.

Also, Henry and Brooks continue to thrive, while Clark and Isaac have made miraculous improvements! We now have four boys who are breathing with absolutely no assistance!! Also, Isaac’s PDA heart valve has closed without surgery, and according to initial tests, so has Clark’s!

God is to be given the glory for the amazing recovery our boys have made from these difficult circumstances. The NICU deserves some credit as well, they are getting wonderful care. Praise God for providing such wonderful people to care for our precious little boys!

More later…..

Brad, Jen, and the Blue Crew

(Post Copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

4 Days Old!

What an amazing day!!!!! This is JEN (aka quatro mama)writing!!! I was so excited to update you all for the first time in months. (It helps that I can actually fit a computer on my lap now. My ridiculously HUGE belly kept me from that for months!)

First to update you on CLARK....He has had his best day ever. So great, in fact that they couldn't keep up with his progress. He was switched back to the "regular" vent today, weened off all blood pressure medicine, and his ventilator settings are turned to low (meaning mostly room air). He is also off the paralytic medicine and off the billirubin lights. (Although I must admit it was pretty cute to have all 4 of them lit up in blue for the Colts game!) Please continue to pray - there is still some danger ahead we are afraid for this little guy, because of his heart valve and the fact that they have not diagnosed what has caused his trouble. Perhaps this will be another unexplainable work that God will show Himself through, as the doctors and nurses cannot explain what has caused him to improve so much today.

Now to ISAAC.....He was taken off the vent this morning and put on C-PAP. Brad was able to help keep him calm during the transition process, therefore they didn't have to sedate him. Brad was able to place his hands under his head and on top of his precious body and rock him gently in his hands for about a 1/2 hour. He calmed down in his hands. What a sweet memory! Isaac is also off the billirubin lights. The only stinky news is that Isaac also has the unclosed heart valve and started his medicine tonight. Will you pray that Clark and Issac both respond to this treatment and will not have to have heart surgery?

HENRY...I like to call him King Henry, because although he's the little guy he's the show off. Today was my first day due to my fever being down for 24 hours to be able to touch our kids, and Henry fell first in line. I can't describe how precious his little head was to touch.


BROOKS....Best part of the day. I was able to hold my own sweet Brooks tonight. He even showed Mommy and Daddy his pretty eyes
for quite sometime. Then as he got snuggled in those eyes got too heavy to keep open and he fell right to sleep in mama's arms. Daddy got his snuggle time next. I cannot describe the sweetness of those 20 minutes.

An update on me.....I will most likely be released tomorrow, if my blood pressure is not too high and as long as I'm not getting too faintish because of my low blood count levels. (Sometime I'll have to fill you in on an interesting story this morning of trying to sit in the laundry basket in the bathroom because I was passing out - what an adventure this all has been!) I cannot believe that I have been here in the hospital for over 4 1/2 weeks! Please pray for me during this transition home and as Brad and I are away from our boys. We know that we cannot be with them here constantly - so please pray that we are able to leave them in the great care they are in and for me to start this recovery process from such an extreme pregnancy. My body has quite a bit of adjusting to do after going through the war. (I've already lost over 35lbs in 4 days, though, so perhaps I should have went for that "Biggest Loser" audition.)

Also many of you are asking when the boys will come home and that is a question not even being considered at this point. They ALL have many things to accomplish in NICU first. Specifically:

1.Maintaining Body Temperature on their own in an open crib
2.Ability to Feed
3.Ability to Gain Weight
4.Breathing on their own

They say plan on them coming home around their due date (March 30), some come home a bit earlier, some later. Most likely they will not all come home at the same time. They are 5 days old tomorrow, so we're just taking one preemie step at a time.

Alright, time for my vitals...Brad is sleeping - what is wrong with this picture? Didn't I just have 4 babies?????? Just kidding. What an awesome example Brad has been to love his wife as Christ loves the church. I am so blessed!

(Copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

Clark is Starting to Improve...

Friends and Family,

Join us in praising God that our precious little Clark has turned the corner and has had a better day today. They finally got control of his blood gas levels and got them normalized. Meanwhile, they have been able to wean him off of many of the medications that he was on last night and continues to improve.

That's the good news, the bad news is that he has a problem with his heart that is more common with preemies born at 25-28 weeks, not 32 weeks. There is a heart valve that is open only during pregnancy that is suppose to close off within 24 hours of birth. Clark has been so sick, his body has not done this important task. So, they have started him on a medication that sometimes closes this valve for him. If this doesn't work, the only other way to fix it would be surgery, which is not possible at this point because of how sick he is. The doctors are telling us that this is more likely to be a result of his problems, not the root of his problem. Unfortunately, they still cannot figure out why he is having such problems ventilating. Please continue to pray for Clark. He is less critical today, but a long ways from being out of the woods.

More good news:
Jen is doing remarkably better today. Her fever has all but disappeared and she seems to be on the road to recovery. She FINALLY was able to go up and spend some quality time with our beautiful boys this afternoon and tonight. She was lovin' the time with her baby boys! Please pray that this continues and that tomorrow is an even better day for her.

Also, Henry, Brooks, and Isaac continue to thrive and are doing wonderfully. Isaac has been on a vent since the evening of his birthday, but he is doing very well on it and they anticipate him coming off of the vent in the near future. Henry and Brooks are doing wonderful and seem to be starting the race for who gets to go home first. Isaac may join them in that race in the near future. Since he has over a pound on him, who knows, he may beat everyone home once he comes off that ventilator.

We praise God for four days of life for our four little boys.

More later,

Brad, Jen, and the Blue Crew

(Post Copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

The Plan - The Measurements - The Needs

Friends and Family,

I have not been able to get on here to give you our latest updates, so this post is a three part post.

1. The Plan

We now have the timing down of the plan. Thursday morning our doctor will perform an amniocentesis to determine lung maturity. The test takes most of the day to get results, so we should find out the results on Thursday evening or Friday morning.

If their lungs are mature to ours and our doctors satisfaction, he will deliver our boys on Friday or soon there after. If not, we will need to decide whether we need to risk delivering babies with immature lungs, or wait for mature lungs and risk a cord accident. This decision will be difficult, so please be in prayer for this as well. But, most of all, continue to pray that their lungs are mature. Everyone agrees that we should deliver if their lungs are mature.

So, the exciting part here is that we may be talking about babies being born this week!!

2. New Measurements

Our babies got measured today for the first time since January 5th, here they are!

Baby A: 3lbs. - 2oz.
Baby B: 4lbs. - 4oz.
Baby C: 2lbs. - 12oz.
Baby D: 2lbs. - 12oz.

These are excellent sizes!

3. The needs list

Many people have ask us what our needs are when the babies come home. We have been so overwhelmed by the number of people who have told us that they would like to help once the babies come home. So many, in fact, that we are sure that we do not remember them all. So, here is the list. We have had a couple friends volunteer to organize the help once the babies come home. (you know who you are)

So, here is the plan:

If you would like to help take care of our baby boys and us as we adjust to having four infants at home, please look through this list. Pick out any of the things that you would be willing to help with and e-mail those things to me along with your name, phone number, and days/times that you are available. After we get the list compiled, we will contact you when then needs arise.

We know that all of you are not going to be interested in holding, changing, and feeding babies. But we will appreciate ANY type of help that you might be able and willing to give in this awesome time in our lives. Also, if you want to offer other kinds of help that we didn't think of, feel free to add to the list!

Things to do.....
1. Making us meals
2. Bottle cleaning and preparation
3. House cleaning/laundry
4. Feed and change babies (morning, afternoon, evening, and night shifts)
5. Grocery Shop / Run Errands
6. Yard Work (in the spring/summer)

Things we need.....
1. Diapers (or gift cards to buy them with)
2. Coupons for diapers and other baby stuff
3. Preemie Clothes
4. Double Stroller (we have one coming, need one more)
5. Registry items at Target/Babies R Us
6. Financial support

Please contact me at my email.

We only post this list because we have had so many people ask. You all need to understand that we expect nothing of you. If you are our best friends now, and don't have time to help, you will continue to be our best friends! :) We love you all and if all you did was pray for our babies, we are indebted to you for life. God has been gracious to us and we will depend wholly on Him to provide us with our needs. If you want to be a part of that provision, that's awesome!!

Brad, Jen, and the Blue Crew
Go Colts!!
(Remember, we ask you all to pray for a Superbowl birth/berth for us and the Colts, but now we would like to revise that request. Could you pray that the birth be timed so that Jen and I could both watch?)

(Post Copied from www.triplet-update.blogspot.com)

31 Weeks = Crunch Time!

Friends and Family:

We come to you today only with a prayer request. .

Dr. Sumners says that these groups of multiples typically have larger and smaller babies. The smaller babies almost always do better at birth than the larger ones. They are not certain why this is, but it is almost always the case. There is a theory that the smaller ones have had to fight for resources for so long that they are just better fighters.

The Plan:
So, here is the plan. One week from now, Dr. Sumners will perform an amniocentesis on the two larger babies, baby A and baby B. This test will be done to determine lung maturity. He says that if babies A and B have mature lungs, then babies C and D (our identicals) are almost sure to be okay. If this is the case, he says it will be time for birth!!

If babies A and B have lungs that are too immature for safe birth, we will be forced to wait another week, and try it again.

First, praise God that we even have to go through this process! We would have never dreamed that we would need to make a decision about when to do the c-section based on these variables. It was assumed from the beginning that we would just go as far as Jen’s body would allow, then deal with extremely premature babies and pray for the best. At this point, our babies will still be preemie’s, but not the extreme preemies