A Day of Firsts....

Today was an interesting day to say the least.

Some of the firsts for today include:

1- Daddy held BOTH girls for the first time...see below (note that is Sydney who is sleeping and Olivia who is smiling (yes I know it's just gas)).

2- I discovered and experienced that Motherhood is not always glamerous (you know besides all the morning sickness, hormones, gaining weight, being in the hospital numerous times, giving birth, and attempting to lose baby weight)...add to that being PROJECTILE VOMITED on. Yes, it was gross. But hey...Olivia felt better afterwards and I was completely soaked (my sweatshirt, t-shirt,undergarments), you name it, she got it. Poor baby, hey wait...poor me, it was COLD in there today!

3- The girls started pepcid for their reflux/gas issues. Hopefully this helps and they will eat better.

4-the word going home potentially next week was mentioned, no date of course, but it was mentioned.

5-NG tubes will be pulled on Monday, but maybe this weekend if the continue to eat well.

6-We nursed for the first time since we've all had thrush...Sydney was a champ (which would explain why she was so tired for her next feed, she nursed, ate 1/2 her bottle, AND NG'd the rest..poor baby was FULL), Olivia was just gaseous. :) We'll do more tomorrow.

7-We successfully survived the FIRST of my THREE due dates for the girls! :) Yes, my due date changed 3 times. They certainly are cute for babies who were just DUE today, and tomorrow, and Saturday! :)

8-I FINALLY Own my first car. Paid for entirely by me, well, and Matt. It's his THIRD car, but my first officially owned car that I bought and paid for, it's an awesome feeling of accomplishment. Can't wait until I can say the same thing about my other car AND eventually (in a gazillion years) about my house. :)

Olivia

Sydney

Without my Paci, I am lost. :(

As you can tell things are going. We're playing the waiting game and praying like all heck for next week and a home date to come! IN the meantime the nursery will be officially finished this weekend, the rest of the clothes that our family and friends have so generously given us will be washed and folded and we'll finish all our other fun things around here so we are READY. FINALLY. Not that we weren't ready weeks ago.

Hope all is well!

J

They are official!

Well, we received a piece of evidence that the girls really exist according to the government today. We got their birth certificates! This goes along with their social security cards we got a few weeks ago. So, while many may believe that they are figments of our imagination since few people have actually seen them in person, they do exist!

Nothing else too exciting in the lives of our girls. Jeni worked with our nurses and their speech therapists to introduce a new type of bottle for Olivia. This will hopefully help her eat a little bit better. We were also told that our doctors may have the girls' feeding tubes removed next week to challenge them to eat on their own. This is a little 'tough love' for the girls to push them to work harder on their own to eat. Hopefully over the next few days the girls will figure it out on their own and they'll have their tubes taken out because they aren't needed anyway...

Oh well, keep your fingers crossed!

Here are some photo shoot pics from today! :)

Sydney....

Olivia....

M

Just Another Manic Monday....

For the girls, Mondays are their worst day of the week. Why, you ask? Well, they do labs on Mondays and the girls HATE getting their blood taken for labs. They are often more crabby and tired on Mondays than any other day of the week. I expect Mondays to be especially fussy.

That said, today was a 'GOOD Monday'! The girls are starting to pick up on their feeds, which is cool! As normal, we have good days and bad days with eating. I'm hoping that today is starting a NEW trend of good eating that will get them sprung from the slammer (as I now refer to the NICU).

This morning (as usual), I was up at 6:45 and called the NICU. Much to my surprise our nurse had GREAT news for me. Sydney had eaten all but 10 mils of her bottle at 11 and Olivia had eaten ALL of her bottle (a first for her in quite a few days), but then at 2 & 5 Sydney ate ALL of her bottles while Olivia ate half or 32 mils of each of her feedings. This was super encouraging for us to hear and Matt and I were both very happy. Of course throughout the day they continued to have good and bad feeds (feeds where they were given breaks and just tube fed). We are, as always, hoping things pick up so they can come home soon!

Today, on my way to the NICU I had our carseats installed in the Tribute. It was neat to learn how to install the seats and how to take them out. The carseat installer taught me how to make sure that carseats are as tight as you can possibly make them, for which you need a lot of arm strength AND your knee. I was happy to see the amount of room left in my car, but there's still not enough space left for our other babies. :( Oh well, someday we'll have a bigger car, but not just yet.

I was happy today that our NP Michelle was back from her vacation to Florida (she didn't have to be evacuated thankfully). I missed her, as did the girls, who were showing off for her. :)

I have to admit that I am getting QUITE worried about the state of the economy in the U.S. I watched the Today show this AM (which is my new morning show between pumps and napping). It's depressing to think of ALL of the money our parents are losing in investments. While Matt and I have QUITE a bit of time before we retire, it's still scary to see us lose money too. I heard on the news that over 700 billion dollars was lost on Wall Street today. God that is DEPRESSING. :(

I also learned how HORRIBLE all the flooding was in STL from the leftovers of Hurricane Ike. My heart goes out to the many families who lost someone, had property damage, or even lost power due to the storming. All Matt and I suffered was a slight inconvenience of traffic due to flooding, thankfully. Hopefully the rain stays away for a while. I have to admit though, that I am loving, loving, loving the Fall like weather that has come from Ike. Have I mentioned yet that both Matt and I LOVE LOVE LOVE Fall? It's such a great time of year.

Oh well, keep saying some prayers for the babies that they will be out of jail soon. :) Matt and I have a bet as to when they will get sprung but we are NOT going to mention that anytime soon! We'll let you know when we know something official. What I do know is that I see a trip to a Mexican restaurant in my future this weekend! AND that we're going to get the rest of our ducks in a row this week too so that we are READY when they tell us that the girls are coming home, which is hopefully sooner rather than later.

Here are the girlies from today!

Olivia..

Sydney....

Hope All is Well,


J

Another Weekend Comes & Goes...

Just a few weeks ago, while speaking to our Nurse Practitioner, Jeni jokingly said "You can send the girls home whenever, just make sure its not on Sept. 11. I'm going to the Kenny Chesney concert that day." Not sure if she doubted my abilities to handle the girls alone or not, but I think we both thought they'd be home by then or pretty close to it, so if they were home, it would be my first "test". However, as you all know, they are still not home... :(

People ask us every day "So, when are the girls coming home?" It used to be we could say "Oh, probably in the next 2-3 weeks." Or we could say "Probably late August or early September." Well, honestly, now I don't know what to tell people when they ask this. The fact is, there's no timetable (or "time horizon" as our President likes to say) on when they'll come home. It's not a matter of a date or age anymore... its simply when the girls decide to eat. And when I say eat, I mean eat like all other newborns where they wake up, cry, and basically demand to be fed. Our girls don't do this... And that's what is the most frustrating part is that there isn't a magic fix to this problem... We are just basically waiting on them to 'get it'.

So Friday was pretty standard. We visited the girls, headed home afterwards, and had some tilapia & rice for dinner. The usual, boring Friday night around our house...

Saturday morning, Jeni met Nancy for breakfast while I hung out at the house and Mike came over to watch the Mizzou game. When Jeni got back from visiting the girls at the hospital after breakfast, we headed over to my Dad's cousin's Karen & Don's house in Sunset Hills to visit with some relatives I'd hadn't seen in a really long time. It was nice to see everyone! Later that evening we stopped by to visit Keith & Amy and Baby Caroline before heading home.

Sunday morning I set my alarm early and went down to spend the morning with Olivia & Sydney. I swung by our favorite coffee place and picked up some coffee and breakfast for Jeni before getting on the highway. Unfortunately, Hurricane Ike (or what was left of him) decided to pay a visit to St. Louis at the same time. So, my usual 15-20 minute drive down to the hospital took me nearly 35 minutes as I avoided flooded out portions of the highway and the wind-driven rain.

I was able to arrive in time to give Sydney her 8 AM & Olivia her 9 AM feedings. They did better than they had been, but still no consistency. While I was there, I met with the girls' new pediatrician in the NICU. He said he was very happy with the girls' progress but totally understood our frustrations. He assured me that once they start taking their feeds, it will only be a few days after and then they'll be released to go home. That was good news...

I spent all morning with them until Jeni arrived at around noon. I left and went home to spend my Sunday afternoon watching some football. Jeni made it home around 6 tonight and we had some stir-fry for dinner. We finished the evening just being lazy on the couches... Again, typical boring night. I used to relish the boring evenings... now they just depress me because I think about what we should be doing with diapers & crying babies. Oh well... Keeping my fingers crossed that the 'eating fairy' will visit the girls sometime in the next few days and suddenly they will totally get it.

Until then.... more pictures.

By the way, there's a new problem that has cropped up... Now that the girls have put on more weight and their faces have filled out, it's VERY hard for us to tell them apart in some of these pictures... I honestly feel like a bad parent not being able to tell them apart always...

Anyway, here are our little lazy eaters...

Sydney (I think)

And Olivia (I hope)

Olivia was the clown this time... We'll see who is tomorrow...

M