As anticipated, today was the much awaited day of FIRST bottles for the girls. Seeing as how I've had tons of firsts with the girls, I decided (without really talking it over with Matt), that he (Daddy) would the FIRST person to give the girls bottles. I spend plenty of time with them all day while he is at work and we nurse (something he OBVIOUSLY cannot do), so I wanted him to have a first, besides changing clothes and diapers. Even though he WAS the FIRST person to hold the girls while I was still in the hospital. Anyway, enough of my whining... back to today.
After arranging it with Matt that he be at the hospital on time for their 5 and 6 o'clock feedings to make sure he could feed the girls, I talked with Michelle our LPN and our nurse Anita, who were both excited that the girls were going to officially start bottles (this is a HUGE step towards coming home). They both made a point of telling me not to be shocked if the girls don't eat all of their bottles or even very much at all because it's their first time and it's often hard for preemies to coordinate sucking, breathing, and swallowing.
So, how this works/worked is that each of the girls eats 41 militers of breastmilk. Sydney ate ALL but 6 militers of her bottle and Olivia ate all but 3 militers of her bottle! So, they were CHAMPS. I'm so excited! Now that we've given them their first bottles, the nurses will continue to work at bottle feeding them for each of their feedings. Whatever they do not finish from their bottles will be fed to them from their feeding tube. However, eventually they will get rid of their feeding tube and have to get all of their food from nursing or bottles.
Sydney....
Sydney with her first bottle....
Sydney with Daddy...
We're still working on nursing, but it's still hard for Sydney and sometimes hard for Olivia as well to get latched on and consistantly suck while nursing. They'd rather play and look at mommy while she's feeding them. I, however, refuse to give up on the nursing, SOOOOO we will continue to practice and then feed them afterwards to make sure that they are getting what they need to eat. Sadly however, the times that they nurse with me, they cannot be bottle fed (for now) because that would be too much stress on them. :(
Olivia when I arrived today....just chillin'.
Olivia in her new outfit for the day....it's a newborn size. :)
"Mom...I like this sleeper!"
Also, today, PaPa Gale and Grandma Vicki came to visit. Now that the girls (okay, Olivia) is bigger, he wasn't as nervous to hold her. In fact, he was like a little kid in a candy store. It was so cute seeing him hold her! She loved it too, because she was able to eat (through her feeding tube) while he was holding her. Next time Grandma Vicki comes, I promised her she could hold Miss Sydney. Of course, that means we will have to schedule their next visit around her eating schedule because that's the only time the girls are awake and thus allowed to come out of their cribs/isolettes.
Olivia with PaPa Gale...
Other than that, not too much happened today, well, if you don't count guy's night out and my happy hour date with Gretchen... AND my trip/quest to find wooden letters for Gretchen to paint for me. I found some I like today, but they have to order 2 I's and an A and they are not sure if they can do that for me. :( Pains. One of these days Matt and I will discuss the Disney print idea that I had too. Whenever we have time for trivial things like that. :)
Tomorrow we are continuing on our quest of getting the house ready for the girls... We are getting our carpets cleaned, so the boxers are going to Nana Sharon and PaPa Rick's for the weekend. The chemicals are not good for their paws and they have a tendancy to lick them too, so that's bad. This weekend will be a pretty typical weekend running back and forth to the hospital to see the girls and feed them. So, very soon we'll be 'rich' for a week or two because we won't have to use as much gas. Yeah right. Something tells me this endeavor that we've embarked on for the rest of our lives is NEVER going to be cheap! :)
Have a great evening....
J
Itz almost time for them to come home.
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