One month

Tummy Time at 3 1/2 weeks

We've been trying to do a little "tummy time" with the girls every day to improve body awareness and neck strength. Most of the time they just lie there and grunt, but sometimes they surprise us. Especially Zora, who is a wriggly one and moves herself about. Here are just a few shots.

btw, soon after this photo, Zora destroyed her PJs with one enormous, explosive poop

Zora checking out a pig rattle

Noemi choosing to nap instead of exercise - just like her mom!

A visit from Oma

Meg, Katy's mom, was in town for the past week helping us to take care of the girls.  Can't express how great it was  having her around to help with feedings as well as other things around the house.

Week 38 = 3 weeks!

Introductions to the animals have gone well.
Though Mowgli, who loves kids, doesn't know what to make of the girls.  

Tummy time

Home

On Tuesday morning in the hospital at my 5:30 am feeding with Zora, I asked the nurse how long she had gone without the feeding tube.  (Our benchmark was 24 hours.)  The nurse looked on her electronic chart and told me it had been almost 36 hours.   I asked if we could go.  She said she'd check with the pediatrician.  When Katy, Noemi, and I came back for Zora's 8:30 am feeding, they had already begun putting Zora through the first discharge tests.  By 11:30 am, we were walking out to the car with the nurse who was making sure we had car seats and knew that we shouldn't put them in them upside down.

We spent the first afternoon and evening getting back in the swing of things, putting away piles of clothes that had gotten tossed about in the frenzy of the morning we had gone to the hospital.  The cats were slightly interested in the girls but made sure to keep their distance a bit and definitely didn't want to sleep on our bed - as they usually did - with the girls sleeping right next to it.

Yesterday (Wednesday), we all went to the pediatrician for the first time and had a few good photo ops with the marine life on the walls.  They both checked out well.   And then today, we just hung around the house.  Mowgli came back after his two week vacation with Ryan and Jamie.   He likes kids but doesn't quite know what to do with the girls at this stage.    

Finally...

...we're home.

More to come after some zzzzzzs.

Getting ready to leave the NYI

K & the girls in their seats

in the car

under mom's watchful eye

lounging in our bedroom.  Zora on Katy's lap.  Noemi in the co-sleeper

Same old, same old

 We're in a bit of a holding pattern here with both girls putting on good weight and eating. Zora now just needs to string together 24 consecutive hours of feeding without using the NG tube and then we can start thinking about home. Getting there!

The Routine

Fun with babies!

 2:30
 5:30
 8:30
11:30
AM & PM

Our lives for the last nine days have been chunked into little segments that revolve around these times.  Feedings for the girls happen every three hours.  Katy takes one, I take the other.  We're getting to know most of the staff here.  We get a lot more Hellos in the hallways and have seen some nurses for three night shifts in a row who have then had off for four or five days who return refreshed to work and seem like old friends.

More fun with babies!

For the last couple of days, the strategy with Zora has been to not try to breast or bottle feed her at each feeding because the doctors thought it was tiring her out.  So now at one feeding, Katy breast or bottle feeds, and then at the next one, I feed her through the NG (nasogastric feeding tube through her nose).  She has started to respond to this by increasing the amount of food she's been taking in and finally by gaining a little weight.  Wednesday night we were told that she had gained 1 ounce that day and then last night, we were told, it was 50 grams, then tonight 2 more ounces (30 grams = 1 ounce).  So, we're heading in the right direction.  It sounds like she needs to continue gaining weight and then after a few more days of that, she will have to continue gaining weight without the use of the NG tube.   So we still have a little ways to go.

Celebrating the Phillies' opening day win

Noemi has been doing alright.  Until early afternoon, she had strung a handful of feedings together where she was taking in less and less - which was worrisome.  But the last few feedings, she has perked back up and started eating more again. 

One of the big issues in our stay at the hospital has been that Noemi really needs to go see her pediatrician.  Typically, I've learned, new parents are supposed to take newborns in for a checkup around day 3 and then again day 14.  Because she's been discharged from this hospital, she can't be seen by pediatricians here - even though the place is crawling with them.  To get Noemi to our pediatrician, we'd, of course, have to take her off this floor, which would mean that she wouldn't be allowed back in the same room that Zora is in - the NYI (intermediate nursery).  We've been trying to problem-solve with the doctors here. They've mostly been very understanding.  Today, though, a doctor that I hadn't met before who has jurisdiction over the NYI this week, said that she is going to need to go see her pediatrician on Monday or Tuesday - even if that means leaving.  Hm...  Not, what we wanted to hear.  Our pediatrician has been wonderful - calling to check in on Noemi and us.  Being supportive over the phone.  So today I called asking if there was a chance that she does house calls and could come up here sometime soon to check out Noemi.  Her assistant, who I talked to first wouldn't say either way, but Dr. Suzanne Holbrook called back mid-afternoon today and said that she'd be happy to come up tomorrow.  Which is a great relief for us.

Baby cart/Shopping cart

Who knows how long we'll be here in the 2:30-5:30-8:30-11:30 routine.  Gina has started the Meal Train back up - we originally put it on hold when we realized that we would be in the hospital for a few days - waiting til we got out of here.  We've had friends bring some dishes by, which has been wonderful.  The hospital cafeteria food isn't bad, just not all that healthy nor does it vary very much.  Yesterday we decided that we should reboot the Meal Train, so it begins again on Saturday.  Yay!

The girls are 1 week old today!

Here's a quick video of Noemi and Zora getting some "sister time" in the same crib (although it quickly devolves into "sneeze time"). We try to get them together like this at least once a day and we often sit side-by-side with them in the Intermediate Nursery (NYI) where Zora's staying. Despite its size, we hope we can keep the Twilight Room as long as possible so we can keep doing this. You can see Zora's NG tube is still in.

[For those of you only reading this in the email digest version, I think you'll need to go to the blog itself to see the video. Just click on the title of the post above and it should take you there.]

Things aren't going as smoothly as we'd like with either girl's feeding and weight gain, but we're hanging in there. It's a lot of ups and downs, hopes and disappointments, but the girls are real troopers. We're hoping to bring Zora home soon, but a lot needs to happen before we can do that so we're taking it day by day. Thank you all for your continued support and good wishes - it's awesome knowing we have such loving family and friends to lean on.

Getting in our hospital groove

Katy & Noemi sleeping

 Tonight will be our fifth straight night staying at the hospital.  Friday evening we moved from our nice room to the "Twilight Room," which is small and windowless.  It's actually been better than we had thought it would be.  Since Katy and Noemi have been discharged, we don't have doctors and nurses coming by every half hour or so and so we can actually sometimes string an hour or two of sleep together.

I (Mike) have left the hospital twice to get some things at home, check on the cats and chickens and also to get some supplies at the store

View from the window of our first hospital room

The Twilight Room

 We have had ups and downs the past few days.  Noemi is feeding better and better.   Zora is still losing weight at a level which is a bit worrisome to the doctors.  They put her on an NG (nasogastric tube) so they could feed her without her having to work to take the food in through her mouth. 

  On Friday, they put that in, but shortly thereafter, the doctor decided that it would be better for her to have to learn to suckle in order to get food, which meant that we would keep the NG tube in, but not use it unless we had to. 

Noemi  &   Zora

We started to get optimistic but then today she took in so little and lost still more weight that they decided to start her on the NG tube again at her 2:30 feeding.  Our 5:30 feeding went better, so even though we're trying to have the longer view of it all, we're getting optimistic again.

Off to nap before our 8:30 feeding.