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Triplets safely recovering in NICU

Mother has unusual experience giving birth
Johnston Triplets

The busy Johnston home will now be even busier and louder, after Trevor and Danielle gave birth to triplets in July, in an ordeal that took several hours and ambulance rides to complete.

The couple already had four children at home, ranging in age from three to 15, and they knew that triplets were coming. Danielle was checked over at a hospital on July 16 to see how the pregnancy was going.

“I found out that everything looked good, and they didn’t think they would come too early,” said Danielle, adding that she was told two of the babies were breached.

She went home to their farm near Griffin after the checkup and had laid down after putting her younger children to bed, and began starting having contractions, which greatly concerned her. She told her oldest, Dillon, who’s 15, that she needed to go to the hospital, and needed an ambulance right away.

“I was on the bathroom floor in a lot of pain while he called 911 for an ambulance, and told them I was in labour,” said Danielle, and shortly afterward, a baby girl was born with Dillon’s help, and she wasn’t breathing. She began to perform CPR on the baby, and Dillon took the family van to the highway to wait for the ambulance, so they would know where to turn in.

“My husband was coming home from work and met Dillon at the turnoff, and he told Trevor that I had had a baby,” she said, noting the ambulance came in shortly after, about 45 minutes after the initial call had been made. “I was having contractions the whole time I was doing CPR, and then the whole way to Regina. By the time we got to Regina, they were a minute apart.”

The ambulance initially took her to the Weyburn hospital before sending her on to Regina, and she gave birth to her two boys by C-section shortly after getting into emergency at the Regina General. A separate ambulance from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) had taken her daughter in for care, putting her on oxygen as soon as they arrived to care for her.

The triplets were stabilized, and remain in the NICU as they had been born at 32 weeks gestation. Danielle said the babies weighed about 4.5 pounds each, which she was told was good for triplets, and will likely be in the NICU for another couple of weeks before they are big enough to be sent home with their family.

The first baby born was named Karlee, and the boys are named Jack and Liam, and they will have different birthdays, with Karlee on July 16, and her brothers on July 17.

This wasn’t Danielle’s first time to perform CPR to save one of her children, as when her daughter Kate was about 10 months old, she was buried in sand while the family was visiting Mainprize Regional Park. She saved her daughter, and today Kate is a healthy nine-year-old, the second oldest of her children. Their other two sons are Samuel, five, and Luke, who is three years old.

All of the kids and Trevor have been in often to see their new babies and to hold them, said Danielle, and are excited to have them in the family.

“I let the kids come every day to see them,” she said, and related a comment her five-year-old told her: “I’m just so happy you’re okay, mama.”

The staff at the NICU have been very accommodating, said Danielle, noting they have provided the use of a hospice down the hall from the NICU so she doesn’t have to leave the hospital while her babies are being cared for.

“They’re in the best place possible. They’re amazing. You’re not going to get a better place than that,” she said.