Holly is in the Hospital

This is were Holly will spend the rest of her pregnancy (hopefully 2.5 months)

Many of you have asked us for updates on the triplets, so here is the latest. On Friday, April 10 Holly and I were at our monthly ultrasound appointment to check on the progress of our three babies. Since there are three of them our appointments often last two or more hours. This appointment was no exception and after two hours of measuring every inch of our babies, the last thing the ultrasound tech needed to do was check Holly's cervical length. As the tech was measuring her cervix, he suddenly dropped his equipment and said "don't get up, I need to call your doctor." Within minutes, our doctor had been called and they were wheeling Holly out in a wheel chair to head to the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital just minutes later, the nurses were expecting us and rushed Holly straight into a room. They hooked her up to several monitors and within minutes after this our doctor walked through the door.

Too make a long story short, Holly was contracting every two minutes and her cervix had dilated to less than one centimeter - she was in preterm labor. At 22 weeks of pregnancy, delivering the babies would have meant no chance for survival. So our doctor pumped Holly full of several different kinds of medication to try and stop the contractions. And after a very tense 48 hours the contractions finally stopped.

It has now been five days, and no more contractions. Holly's cervix length is irrepairable and therefore dangerously thin. That means that Holly is on permanent bed rest in the hospital for the remainder of the pregnancy. For the health of the babies that needs to be at least 6 weeks, but we hope we can make it 10 weeks (32 weeks of prenancy). Holly is allowed to get up to use the bathroom, but other than that she has to stay in a laying position on the hospital bed.

Thankfully we have a lot of support. We know several triplet families that have gone through similar ordeals which helps to ease our fears. At this point we are just trying to take it one day at a time. Once we get past 28 weeks (6 weeks from now) we will be able to relax a bit. Every day we can keep our little ones in their mommy's womb is a good day.

- Robert W. Bennington

robertandholly@earthlink.net