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Believing in Miracles
Within an hour, about 30 doctors and nurses had assembled for the rare double surgery. Three teams were needed: one for the delivery, one for the heart surgery and a neonatal team to care for the babies after birth. The C-section to deliver the triplets began around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, while the heart surgery team stood by, ready to intervene if Roseann's aorta burst unexpectedly.
Joseph came first, weighing only 3.1 pounds, then Samantha, at 3 pounds, then Michael, at 2.5 pounds. The tiny babies had some breathing problems at first. But within ten minutes, they were all stabilized, breathing with the help of respirators.
Meanwhile, Joe and the couple's big Italian family filled an entire waiting room. Suddenly, the doors burst open. "We saw the babies fly by on carts in these little incubators," recalls Joe as he chokes up at the thought of his three newborn children fighting for their lives. "I still didn't know if the babies were okay or if my wife was going to make it."
He had to wait four and a half more hours to learn that Roseann's heart surgery was successful, though the doctors said they couldn't be sure Roseann was going to pull through for another 48 hours. But her recovery was quick: She awoke just six hours after the open-heart surgery.
After the drugs wore off, one of the first questions Roseann asked, of course, was, "How are my babies?" But for the first three days, she was too weak to get out of bed to see them, so she had to be content with her husband's descriptions and digital photos. "He kept telling me the babies all looked exactly like him, but he didn't tell me they were hooked up to machines with bells and alarms going off," she says. "When I finally saw them, on the fourth day, it was a shock. They were so tiny and fragile. We couldn't pick them up, so we'd poke our fingers through the incubator openings to hold on to Samantha's fingers or gently rub one of the boys' tummies."
Roseann checked out of the hospital ten days after her surgery, and by Thanksgiving, the entire family was home for a big Italian feast. "I have my bad days of feeling tired or having pain, but I feel blessed that all three babies came through this ordeal perfectly healthy," Roseann says now.
"Sometimes, when things are really crazy, I have to stop and look back a year to remind myself how lucky I am that my wife and all three of my babies are here," Joe says today. "I wouldn't wish this ordeal on anyone, but it's definitely shored up some shaky faith for me. I'm a real believer in miracles."
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