Week 6—Oct 10-16 Food, Glorious Food

Well, we’re starting to settle into a pattern.  This is Barbara’s second week back to work part-time and we’re getting the hang of the schedule.  It has been nice having Barbara’s mom around to help with a little of the driving, errands and an extra set of hands with the babies.

With Grammy Carol around, I took the boys out on a couple of walks and Grammy came along.  The first day we took it easy and just walk around our block by the house.  The second time we got out, we actually walked around the long block.  The total trip was about a half mile.  We’re trying to get Carol ready for her upcoming trip to India where she may be doing a lot of touristy walking.  She’s getting stronger with the walking and getting to enjoy being out with the boys.  It’s been so wonderful having the grandparents on both sides be able to come and visit with the twins when they first arrived home from the hospital.  We have some wonderful photos of the boys with their doting grandparents and a few 3-generation photos that are priceless.

This week, the boys are 6 weeks old and I took them out shopping for the first time.  I went on some errands including to the Trader Joe’s and did my shopping with the double stroller.  With the nice big pouch on the bottom, I was able to put my groceries there and still shop with the boys.  I’m not sure if it was the fact that I was a dad pushing twins around, or the fact that it was a weekday afternoon, but I got a few odd stares from other customers.  But, I was enjoying getting them out and I also got a fair number of appropriate “oohs” and “aahs” and “how cute—twins!” etc.  They, of course, slept through the whole trip.  But it’s nice that I can take them out on errands as long as it is between feedings.

The boys continue to be well and to grow.  We spoke with the pediatrician last week about the reflux and she said that one contributor to reflux is larger meals.  She said that more frequent smaller meals may help Dexter with the reflux.  So we’re cutting him back to 3.5 oz per feeding (from 4).  It does seem to help, but they’re still not waking until about 4 hours, so it’s decreased the amount that Dexter is eating.  We’ll monitor to see how he does, but for now, between the smaller amounts and the inclined crib and pack-n-play, he seems to be doing better.  Still has some reflux, but it’s definitely better.

We had joined the Columbia Area Mother’s of Multiples club (CAMoM) and one of the programs they have has other mothers of multiples volunteer to make meals for new parents of multiples.  This week one of the volunteers brought us dinner that included a roast chicken, a big container of teriyaki string beans and a big container of rice.  It made two good –sized dinners for the three of us and was truly wonderful.  What a fantastic program.  I know that when we finally come out from under our cloud of sleep deprivation we’ll want to return the favor by doing for other families what this volunteer did for us.   This in addition to food that was prepared for us by family friends has been a lifesaver for us.  We’ve had about 5 friends who have made us food that was truly well appreciated.  Just having food that could be popped in the microwave to quickly eat around the babies’ schedule was truly helpful.  And having all this homemade food was even that much more special. 

Week 5 —Oct 3—9 Working 9 to 5

[Sorry that I'm so far behind, but unfortunately, life with twins doesn't leave me as much time to blog as I'd like.]

So, this week, Barbara went back to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  It was really hard to get used to the schedule.  And with Barbara not driving right now, getting her to work meant getting the kids bundled up and getting them in the car to take her to work.  Then doing it again in the evenings;  getting the kids back in the car to go pick her up.  Mostly the problem is getting the kids ready for the trip.  We want to feed the kids before we go so that they don’t get hungry and fussy during the ride, etc.  But we’ll work it out.  And we are both enjoying the maternity/paternity leave and spending time with the kids.  Wish we could afford one or both of us to be able to stay home with them, but then I bet every new parent feels this way.

So, my parents left on Tuesday.  Mom was so heartbroken to have to leave early but she was too worried about her cold.  She called a couple of times this week to check up on the kids.  She’s thinking of coming back out for Thanksgiving or Christmas to see the boys again.  That’s too far for us to think right now, but we’ll work something out.  However, one big help was the weekend before she left, my mother helped me clean the house and we were able to get rid of a lot of boxes and such that had collected, cleaned bathrooms, floors, vacuumed carpets and gave the kitchen a good once over.  It really helped to get the house in order, something that it was sorely needing.

So, my parents left on Tuesday afternoon and Tuesday evening, Barbara’s mom arrived.  Worked out so that all we had to do was change the sheets in the guest room and didn’t have to set up a second room.  Barbara’s mom is going to be visiting for two weeks.  And about 30 minutes after she arrived, the boys were hungry and Grammy Carol jumped right in and helped feed them.  Boy was she excited to see them.  And on Thursday, it was helpful that she was able to take Barbara to work in the morning and that really helped with the schedule, not having to feed the boys a little off-schedule and then try to get them packed up to go send Mom to work.  In the evening, we didn’t want her to have to drive in the Washington DC rush hour, so the boys and I went to pick up Barbara, but the evening was much easier as it wasn’t in the middle of the boys feeding schedule.  With Barbara’s mom staying for 2 weeks, she will also be able to help with this next week.  We’ve also got a number of errands that we’ll send her on since she can go out without having the bundle up the kids and take them out.  And it’s nice to have an extra pair of hands around when both boys are screaming, fussing or need to be fed.

Hard to believe that the boys are already a month old, but they are.  On Thursday, we had the boys’ one-month pediatrician visit.  The boys had been eating a lot and they seemed to have gained a lot of weight, but we weren’t sure how much.  We were surprised to find out that Dexter weighed 7 lbs, 13 oz (up 2 lbs from birth) and Spencer weighed 7 lbs, 8 oz (up 1 lb, 8 oz from birth).  Wow!  They’re still light for their age, so the doctor wants them to stay on the higher calorie Neosure formula, but they’re definitely gaining faster than normal and catching up on their weight.  Otherwise they’re pretty healthy and we’re pretty excited about them.  The only concern is that Dexter is having a bit of a problem with reflux.  He isn’t spitting up too much, but just a little and getting that burning feeling that often wakes him up and sometimes keeps him from falling asleep.  But we don’t want to medicate him if we can avoid it so we’ve started to incline his crib and the pack-n-play that they sleep in during the day.  We have a large bed wedge that we had for back problems that just fills up half of one crib and we put that in the crib.  Dexter will sleep on the wedge from the waist up and Spencer sleeps on the side without the wedge.  We’ve got a pillow in the pack-and-play under the mattress that makes the mattress slope.  So far, these things seem to help with the reflux. 

At this point, we’ve increased the amount that the boys eat and so they are sleeping slightly longer.  We can feed them every 4 hours instead of every 3 hours and that really helps our sanity and exhaustion.  Whichever of us is on baby duty can sometimes slip in a catnap while the boys are sleeping longer.  That wasn’t possible with the every 3 hour feedings.

Week 4 – Sept 26 – Oct 2 – We are Family

So I started back to work this week.  I am now working part-time Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays through the week of Thanksgiving.  Then I’ll go back full-time.  Barbara will start working part-time next week.  She’ll work Tuesdays and Thursdays until just after Thanksgiving.  This way, one of us will be home every day until the boys are about 3 months old.  I have the usual problem as a new first-time parent.  I want to spend the time with my kids and not go back to work.  But, I do like my work, I’m just fascinated with being a dad right now.  Oh well, I’m not the first, nor will I be the last to feel this way.

One piece of good news is that this weekend, the boys started eating more and were finishing their 3 oz quickly and still being hungry.  So after a week at 3 oz, we increased them to 3.5 oz.  And when we increased the amount, they’re now sleeping a little longer and eating about every 4 hours instead of every 3 hours.  That helps a lot.  It means that sometimes between feedings we even have time to get things done around the house and maybe even catch a quick nap.  The boys now eat at rough 3:00, 7:00 and 11:00 (both AM and PM).  For now, we are trying to keep up as they did in the hospital of feeding them consecutively one after the other.  We also keep to the schedule of bathing them every 3 weeks.  We purchased a bathtub with a hammock/sling that holds the baby.  Wow!  It was worth it because the sling makes bathing the kids SO much easier.

The hard part here is working out our sleep schedule so that one of us is always available to take care of the boys.  We’ve tried a few things, but it seems to work best with Barbara going to sleep about 7-8pm and sleeping until 3am.  I sleep from 3am until 7-8 am.  I’m starting the 3am feedings and when Barbara gets up, she takes over.   Next week, when Barbara goes back to work part-time, we may have to shift things a little so that she can get enough sleep before going to the office for the day.

On Tuesday, Grandma and Grandpa Ying (they go by the Chinese nicknames, Nai-nai and Yeh-yeh) came to visit.  They’re planning to stay for 3 weeks until October 18.  They were so excited to get back to the house and finally meet their new grandsons.   They immediately wanted to help with the kids and with two babies, sometimes both wanting to eat at the same time, they got their chances.  Mom also helped with cooking and dishes and laundry, all very important things.  While Mom was here to help with the kids, I was also able to get more tidying around done.  It had taken 2 weeks, but I was finally starting to excavate the house enough that we could see the flat surfaces like tables, counters and floors again.   Then an unfortunate occurrence happened.  We had a cold snap over the weekend and Mom caught a cold.  She was very worried about infecting the babies, especially considering the cautions that we had gotten from the pediatrician about not exposing them to sick folks.  So, she asked me to reschedule their flight home and they would leave early.  It was so hard for her to keep away from the grandkids.  She wanted to hold them and would still react every time one of them would cry out and would want to go and soothe them.  They’ll leave next Tuesday, but we’ll make arrangements again either Thanksgiving or Christmas for them to come back to visit again and see the kids.

But they had a wonderful week visiting and helping us out.  Meanwhile, Barbara and I were still sharing shift duty so that one of us was always there to care for them.  But, it was nice to have the help around the house and with the twins.

Looking back to our backplash (Aug 2010)

Well, since John and Sherry Petersik from Young House Love were talking about the tile that they bought for their backsplash, I decided to go back and post some photos of our backsplash that I did last year.

We started out with generic builder grade walls but after 4 years of living with it, the awful mess that trying to clean drywall (even semi-gloss painted drywall) behind a stovetop, we finally gave in.  After a few months of searching, we found this lovely tile and trim at Lowe's of all places.  We love that it is close in texture to the floor of the kitchen although the colors are slightly different.  Close enough to go together, but far enough apart not to be too matchy-matchy:

So once we had the tile, I did some layout work. But, between one thing and another, a few months passed before I finally got down to business.  I tried buying a tile cutting blade for my jigsaw.  No dice.  The blade was nowhere near hard enough to cut the ceramic tile.  So I rented a wet saw from Home Depot for a day and was able to cut and put up the backsplash and ended up with:

The hardest part was doing cutouts for the outlets, phone plugs, etc.  It took a little planning so that all of those would end up on the edge of at least one tile so that I could do the cutouts from the edges.  I have no idea how to do the cutouts in the middle of a tile.  It's amazing how easy this was with the wet tile saw.  I was able to do the whole wall in about 4 hours and the 8 hour rental was not that expensive.  We loved how it turned out.  The only problem was that we also had the other side of the kitchen which now looked unmatched:

So a few weeks later, we wanted to do the other side.  But in the months that it took me to do the first side, our tile had been discontinued.  Boo!  Hiss!  I hunted around and was able to find a great store in Wheaton, the Wheaton Tile Center, and they were able to hunt down 5 boxes of this discontinued tile in some warehouse somewhere.  They ordered 2 boxes for us and we were back in business.  So, one more day trip to Home Depot to rent the wet tile saw and we ended up with:

And now the whole kitchen matches.  We love the final result.

Week 3 – Sept 21-25 – Home Sweet Home

Well, it was good to finally have the boys home.  And it was nice to get home on Wednesday.  I was set to return to work part-time on Monday and this gave us five days at home with the boys before I had to go back to work.  Unfortunately, Spencer was having a little trouble adjusting to the car trip and the change of environment and he started eating less.  He was only eating about 1 - 1.5 oz per feeding (30 ml is 1 oz—they use ml in the hospital, but once we got home, we did everything in oz).  It was a little discouraging at the time and we were worried.  We didn’t know what was causing it and whether there was something wrong, and being afraid of the worst—in other words, being first time parents.  J

Now being first-time parents, we had had no idea how to find a pediatrician.  Once again, CAMOMS (Columbia Area Mothers of Multiples club) came to the rescue.  I searched through the web-archives of the CAMOMS bulletin board and found a thread where one member was looking for a pediatrician in Laurel and some members had recommended one practice which was pretty close to home (actually even closer to where we used to live).  So we decided to go with Primary Pediatrics in Laurel.   So, on Friday, 9/23, we had our first well-baby checkup with the pediatrician.   The boys were 18 days old.  We found that Spencer had lost a little weight from his discharge weight, but they were still healthy and above average in weight.  Dexter was 6 lbs, 9 oz (up 11.5 oz from birth) and 18.75” length (1/4” shorter than birth).  Spencer was 6 lbs, 7 oz (up 6.5 oz from birth) but had gained more before and lost some in the last few days.  He was 19.25” length (1/2” longer than birth).  We expressed concern that Spencer wasn’t eating, but the doctor said that it was not uncommon for babies to have adjustment issues when coming home from the hospital.  She said the monitor him and if his appetite had not gone up in a few days to call the office again.  If need be, we could schedule an intermediate appointment.  Otherwise, we had a good visit and the doctor was pleased with their general health.  We set our next appointment for 2 weeks later when they would be one month old. 

We took them home and by the next day, Spencer was adjusting.  Suddenly both of their appetites went up.  On Saturday, they both started eating enough that by Sunday night, we had increased them to 3 oz of formula for every feeding.  What a relief to new parents!

Now I know that this is probably completely uninteresting to anyone but new parents, so, for those who have no interest in diapers, please skip this paragraph.  J  First, we thank our friends Jen and Casey who were kind enough to gift us with two large boxes of diapers.  What a wonderful gift to new parents of twins.  We were going through about 15-20 diapers per day with the two of them and the two big boxes of diapers helped a lot (and helped us get through our first week at home)!  However, we decided that we were going to try to find which diapers worked best for us.  The NICU had gotten us using Pampers Swaddlers, but they’re the most expensive.  First, we wanted to try the eco-friendly brands.  We tried Earth’s Best, but the materials were not very good and I found that with a struggling baby (and neither one of them liked their diaper changed, so usually both struggled during a diaper change), that the diapers ripped easily.  Next.  We tried Seventh Generation and they were pretty good, although the tabs on the side were really wide and made for an awkward fit, especially while the boys were newborn size.  They were usable, but not the best.  We tried both Huggies little snugglers and Huggies Pure & Natural (the P&N were the eco-friendly option).  We did like the wetness indicator, but they did not fit snuggly.  We also had a couple of accidents because the waistband did not close tightly.  If we pulled the tabs so that the waistband was tight, then the boys were uncomfortable, squirmy and we needed to release it.  We also had a couple of times that they soaked through.  The other major problem was that everything on Huggies brand were white.  White on white.  And that meant that it was very hard for Barbara to see where the tabs were and slowed her down a lot.  Not good when you have two squirmy, squally babies to change.  We tried Target brand.  And while we liked the wetness indicator, they also were too much white on white and harder for Barbara to see.  They also didn’t fit perfectly.  They were okay, but not great.  So after all of the trials, we ended up going back to Pampers…oh well.  At least I can get them in the large quantity at Sam’s Club for a cheaper price per diaper.

One nice thing was that the weather was nice on Saturday and I wanted to get the boys out in the nice fresh air and try out our fancy-schmancy stroller.  We saved on a lot of things by getting hand-me-downs or buying used at consignment sales, but the one item we splurged on was a fancy stroller.  We got a Baby Jogger City Select stroller because our car seats snapped into the frame with the car seat adapter and we could move the boys from car to stroller easily if needed.  We also loved a ton of the other features on the stroller including the telescoping handle (so that we would both be comfortable pushing this), the brake system, the large wheels (especially good on bumpy terrain including bumpy walking paths) and the option to switch the seats so that both boys could face forward or backwards or each other.  I had planned to take some walks with the boys and their grandma when she came to visit and I wanted to “test drive” the stroller before she arrived.  So off we went and the stroller was great.  It had no problem when we had to go off the sidewalks or on uneven pavement and the boys slept the entire walk.  Oh well…they’ll be up and active all too soon.  The one “lesson learned” was that I needed to put sunscreen on the boys for these walks.

The Rainbow Connection

So, as we move into the next phase, I will probably only have weekly updates instead of daily updates.  And, of course, I'm already a couple of weeks behind, but that's life with twins.  But, since this is supposed to be a sort of diary for us later to remember what life was like now, it's fine for us.

Before I get into what our first week at home was like, I thought I'd take time to show off our nursery.  Many of our local friends got to see the nursery at our Open House.  However, since many of the blog followers are out-of-town family and friends, here is a set of photos to show the nursery.

In proper DIY fashion, I'll try to start with what the room looked like before we began.  It was pretty vanilla with all the walls in basic builder's white, with a few odds and ends furniture.  It was the extra room with work space for projects.  Nothing special.

Even before we knew the gender of the babies, we knew that we did not want to go traditional blue or pink.  We also wanted a room that could last for a while without redoing it.  So we thought of hot air balloons.  We found this wonderful large wall mural on-line and loved it.

With the vibrant colors, we also decided to add rainbows and do the room in rainbow primary colors.  Wonderful.  We ordered paint to paint the walls, we had an old set of drawers that had been left by the previous owner of my first house (16 years ago) and were dingy white with red handles.  We thought we'd repaint the drawers like a rainbow.  Then after we started, I tried to find the mural.  The first place I tried, had to reimburse my money because the mural was out of stock.  The next place I tried said that the mural was discontinued.  Hopefully someone would have one leftover in stock.  Not the third, or fourth...I tried six places (that's all I could find) and no one had it.  *sigh* back to square one.

So then after another couple of weeks of hunting, I finally found the wall mural that we ended up using.  And the room turned out fantastic!

Here's a close up of the wall mural:

But the best part of all of this is that the wall mural and the cribs are about the only things that we had to buy.  We found almost all of the rest of the decorations while going through decorations that we had.  For example, many years ago when Barbara was able to do more crochet, she crocheted the curtains and put them into storage.  The hot air balloon hanging over the brown dresser Barbara bought at the hot air balloon festival when she lived in New Mexico.  I got the idea to take the closet doors off and use a curtain instead from my one of my favorite DIY blogs, Young House Love.  The orange curtain that we used was actually Barbara's old bedspread from when she was growing up.

The colors in the room are brighter than they look in the photos.  They are bright, Crayola colors.  We had this odd bump-out in the corner behind the table.  So we decided to go with yellow on the long walls, blue on the short walls and have green stripes in the corners to transition between the blue and yellow.  We love how it turned out.  And then we used the same colors and added two more for the dresser drawers.  After cleaning it up and painting them, the dressers look brand new.  People have asked if we bought those for the room.  Talk about "use what you have"!

And now that the room is occupied, it feels even more right.

W3-D3 Homeward Bound

So, after getting up in the middle of the night, Barbara decided to skip the 6:30/7:30 AM feeding.  It was just going to be too short a night.  Since we had many of those to look forward to when we got the boys home, we again took advantage of the staff at the NICU to take care of our boys (and in this case, us as well, by letting us sleep).  Barbara went in at 9:30 and I went in at 10:30.  We were greeted with the news that today was the day.  First thing in the morning, they had decided that the boys would be ready to discharge that afternoon.  So, after discussion, we decided that we wanted to try to get everything ready including packing the car up.  Then we’d do one more feeding, bundle the boys into the car and get outta Dodge and try to make it home as fast as possible and see if we could make it all the way for the next diaper change and feeding.  We had roughly 3 hours between feedings and the trip home was about 2 hours and 15 minutes.  I also remembered that we did not yet have a baby monitor for home, which we’d need when we got there.  So, we figured that we’d go to lunch, and get the baby monitor, come back do the 12:30/1:30 feeding, then pack up the car, do the 3:30/4:30 feeding and get on the road.

So we went for a quick lunch at the Pennsylvania Dutch place, picked up the monitor, made it back and did the feeding.  Then we scrambled to pack our things up (fortunately, having moved the night before, we were pretty close to ready), and headed out to pack up the car.  Got that done and made it back just before the 3:00 feeding.  But the amount of paperwork needed to discharge the boys was prodigious and we were trying to juggle feeding the boys during this.  So with us trading off feeding duty and paperwork, we got everything done and managed to get ready by 4:30ish…pretty good.  Since the boys had to ride in wheelchairs for discharge, we each took one baby (in the carseat) and two nurses pushed us down to the car.  After I brought the car around, the nurses did an inspection of the car seat installation.  While I followed the instructions in the manual, I still did it wrong.  I did not correctly attach the car seat to the in-seat anchors (that hide in the space between the seat and the seat back).  They pretty quickly unconnected what I had done and reconnected it and it was definitely more secure when they were done.  Whew!  I’m glad they knew what they were doing.  It just goes to show, that no matter how sure you are about the car seat installation, it helps to have a car seat installer inspect your installation just to be sure.  I mean, why risk your kids life because you think you did it right?

Unfortunately, by the time all of this was done, it was 5:00 PM.  We headed out and made fairly good time, until we hit the Baltimore beltway and rush hour traffic, *SIGH*.  This was about 6:15 PM and it was not good.  The kids were starting to get antsy.  Finally at 6:30, when they were really get restless, we were still stuck in traffic, so I exited the road and we found the local Wal-Mart.  We had been given a portable changing kit (Thanks, James & Sheila!!), but we only had one, so we had to change the boys one at a time.  So, Barbara stayed in the car with one of the boys, while I took the boys one-by-one into the Walmart to change them.  Unfortunately, both of them *REALLY* hate to have their diaper changed and scream bloody murder when you even start unsnapping their clothes.  So, I got to feel like I was a baby torturer and had every guy coming in to use the rest room wondering what I was doing to this (these) child(ren).  But, the best part was this older guy who was standing at the exit door.  He was supposed to check bags and receipts as people leave and said something to the effect of “Have a nice day and come back soon.” as patrons left.  Now, we have two matching car seats, so I took the first child out and he wished me well.  I switched children, came back and probably 5 minutes afterwards, I again walked out, holding what looked like the same child in the same car seat (the only difference was the blanket on the boys was slightly different) and he just stared at me leaving the second time and even forgot to say something congenial to me as I left.  J

But after this quick side trip, the boys quieted down.  We were afraid that we were going to have to stop and feed them and we didn’t want to have to do this, so we just tried to make a bee-line for home.  About 40 minutes later, we made it home and they only started to cry when we were minutes from home.  So we hurried them into the house, fed them and once we got them settled (into their new cribs!), we were able to get to unpacking the car and all.  One problem was that our upstairs A/C seemed to have decided to go on vacation and it was boiling upstairs (79 deg).  I didn’t feel safe leaving the boys there and was considering moving them to the first floor for the night.  But it was a relatively cool evening (in the 60’s) and by opening the window and running a fan pointed at the floor (so as not to create a draft on the boys), I was able to get the temperature down to about 75 deg, which was enough to allow the boys to sleep in the nursery.  We called our trusty HVAC guy that night to have him call us back first thing in the morning.

Even though I had to take off an extra week due to the NICU stay, we got home on Wednesday and that still left me with 5 days off before I had to go back to work and I am going back to work part-time (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) until the week of Thanksgiving.  Barbara will start the following week part-time (Tuesdays and Thursdays) until after Thanksgiving.  That means that one of us will be home with the boys until they are about 3 months old.

Despite the various annoyances, on September 21, 16 days after they were born, the boys were finally HOME.  

W3-D2 In the Middle of the Night

So, on Tuesday, Barbara got up even earlier, for the 6:30/7:30 AM feedings.  She figured that since we now knew we were going home soon, that we needed to be able to handle the feedings around the clock.  Since I was already doing the 12:30/1:30 AM shift, she would get up earlier to try to handle the early shift.  We weren’t sure what we’d do about the 3:30/4:30AM shift when we got home, but we were getting closer.

On Tuesday, we found that Spencer had taken his first full 59 ml meal that morning.  And he was becoming more and more regular, eating at least 50ml for each meal.  The chief neonatologist came to us and told us that despite what the other doctor had mentioned about staggering the discharges of the boys, he had reviewed the cases and was recommending that the boys be discharged together either on Wednesday or Thursday and that they had started discharge procedures.  We then spent the day getting ready.  For instance, both boys had to be tested in the car seat.  Ordinarily they tested the babies for an hour and a half to make sure that their vitals did not drop out of the safe range.  In our case, because of the distance to home, they ran the test for 3 hours, just to be safe.  Both boys passed (actually, they did Dexter’s on Monday and Spencer’s on Tuesday).  They did hearing tests on the boys.  With our concurrence, they gave the boys Hepatitis-B vaccines.  There were several videos that we had to watch before the boys were released including one on SIDS, one on Shaken Baby Syndrome, and one on caring for your baby.  We were able to watch these while feeding the babies, so it wasn’t too bad, although the video on Shaken Baby Syndrome was pretty jarring—to me, it seemed the idea was the scare the daylights out of first-time parents to make sure they were too scared to ever do that to a baby.  L  But, all in all, we got through a lot of what needed to be done.

So, on Tuesday afternoon, we decided to take a break.  We had been told about the local street fair that was this town’s annual big event.  It was a five day street fair where they closed a significant portion of the main street through town and set up a HUGE fair.  It is the largest street fair in the state.  We were told that we should visit it since we were in town and see what it was all about.  We went and had the local “specialty” sandwich and, since, we were in Pennsylvania Dutch country, we treated ourselves to a funnel cake.  Yum!  We wandered the fair for about an hour and then headed back to the hospital.

Barbara went to bed early so that she could get up again for the 6:30/7:30 AM feedings.  When I went in for the 9:30/10:30 PM feedings, I had just gotten through changing and feeding Dexter but had not yet burped him.  It was about 10:15.  The nurse on duty got a phone call.  It was pediatrics calling.  It turns out that there were three juvenile patients in the ER who would require admission to the hospital and there were only two empty rooms.  That meant that we would have to vacate the room.  And of all nights, the one night that the local hotel was booked up.  We weren’t sure what we were going to do, but the nurse on duty stopped me and told me that there were two open rooms in maternity and they were not expecting anyone that evening, so one room should be enough for emergencies and we could move into one of the two empty rooms.  So I had to go and wake Barbara up and once again, we packed up quickly and moved back from pediatrics to maternity.  Again, it astounded us that the hospital staff would bend over backwards so much to accommodate us when they were busy dealing with patients. It took about an hour to pack up, move, and settle back in in the new room.  But, I was done with about an hour and a half to spare before the 12:30 AM feeding cycle began.  On the plus side, both boys ate well and continued to gain weight.  I seem to have gotten off a day on the weights.  The weights for their last night were Dexter 6 lbs, 4.9 oz (up 7.4 oz since birth) and Spencer 6 lbs, 7.7 oz (up 7.2 oz since birth).

W3-D1 Together Forever

[Sorry for the long delay in posting—as you’ll see in the next few blog posts, a lot happened to us very quickly and I have not been able to find the time to update the blog, but I’ll try to get the info up here as soon as possible.  –Ted.]

The boys are two weeks old today and doing better and better every day.  Today, we decided to try to skew our schedules a little more so that when we go home, we’ll be able to spread out the feedings and care of the boys between us (when we no longer have the wonderful staff of NICU nurses to take the night-time feedings and changings).  So, Barbara got up earlier and went for the 9:30/10:30 AM shift.  When she went in, she got a pleasant surprise, which I also got when I came in around 11:00 AM.  Spencer had been able to regulate his body temperature enough to move to a regular crib.  It was such a joy to see both boys out of the incubators and into normal cribs.  It is just one more sign that they are getting closer to being able to come home with us.  In fact, one of the nurses figured that once they were both in cribs and out of the incubators, she had another surprise for us.  She went to the Pediatrics department and brought over a large crib so that she could move the boys together and co-habitate them.  It was so comforting to us to see our boys together in the same bed.  Every day another step towards bringing them home.  So, the boys have gotten to spend their last few days in the hospital NICU together.  The best thing is that even when one is screaming bloody murder, it doesn’t seem to disturb the other one who sleeps through it.

Dexter had a few surprises in store for us.  At the 6:30PM feeding, Dexter drank the full bottle (60 ml) and was still hungry and trying to drink.  So we gave him another bottle and he drank another 9 ml, for a total of 69 ml.  Wow!  And then at 9:30 PM, he drank 67 ml.  Especially considering how long it took for him to start, he’s been making up for lost time, this week.  He followed that up with 76 at the 12:30 feeding.  And he weighed 6 lbs, 5.6 oz, up 2.8 oz.  He’s growing at a good rate and doing very well.

Spencer continues to make progress.  He’s actually eating 46-52 ml most of the time.  He’s also gained weight and now weighs 6 lbs, 7.2 oz (up 1.3 oz). 

We got an interesting surprise.  When we came to the NICU this morning, the head nurse informed us that she had scheduled our first well-baby checkup with our pediatrician for us for Friday.  That was a surprise.  It meant that we’d be home by Friday, something we were not sure of before this.  After lunch, when the neonatologist came by, he had another surprise for us.  He said that Dexter was doing well and was about ready to be discharged perhaps as early as the next day, Tuesday.  Spencer had made great progress but might need an extra day or two since he wasn’t eating reliably enough to be discharged.  The staff was very pleased with how stable his breathing and temperature regulation were, but just wanted to make sure that he was eating enough on his own.  He still had a feeding tube in his nose, and he was taking at least part of his meals almost every time.  But, he was making progress.

We were kind of hoping that Dexter was not being released on Tuesday because otherwise we’d have no place to stay locally and would have to take him further away from the hospital for the night, but at least we had provisioned ourselves on our quick trip home with supplies to take care of Dexter.

Week 2 – Never on a Tuesday

At 13 days old, the boys are coming along well.  The progress is steady and pretty good.   As I’m a little behind on the blog entries, some of the details of Sunday are a bit of a blur.

We had a few key milestones on Sunday.  For the first time, we were told that we were getting close to discharging the boys.  The doctor on duty was quite pleased with Dexter’s progress and said that he was likely to be discharged either Tuesday or Wednesday depending on how consistently he ate his meals and that he continued to gain weight.  Spencer was still a little behind and so it was looking like we were going to be taking Dexter to the local Hampton Inn for a day or two until Spencer was ready to be discharged.  We’re currently staying in the Pediatric unit and the nurses reminded us that this was a ward with sick kids and we shouldn’t be exposing our newborns to that environment.  We had brought supplies from home with us on Saturday for just this eventuality, but it still wasn’t going to be convenient.  The logistics were going  to be challenging and Barbara would probably have to stay in the hotel with Dexter while I shuttled back and forth to the hospital to care for Spencer and get us food, etc.  But, we’ve learned to take one day at a time and cope with whatever happens.  Now, this week is the local town’s biggest annual event, their street fair which is a large 5 day festival (Tuesday-Saturday).  So, I called the local Hampton Inn to check on hotel availability if we needed to move there.  Of course, they were booked Tuesday and Saturday nights (the first and last nights of the fair).  It’s strange that this small town’s hotel is booked on back-to-back Tuesdays.  Well, we just hoped that things would work out.  If not, there were a few hotels slightly further out, just much less convenient.  While talking with the desk clerk at the Hampton Inn, she informed me that there was a hospital rate for anyone visiting a relation in the hospital.  It was $40 per night less.  That was nice to hear.  I mentioned that we hadn’t heard of that when we were there the previous week.  She actually looked up our reservation and credited my credit card with the difference between the rate we paid and the discount rate.  Wow!  Good customer service.  Although Barbara did point out that we had described our situation to the desk clerk the night we checked in and that clerk obviously did not know about the discount because she did not offer it to us.  But, it was still really nice to get the refund.  And $45 per night (after taxes) is a significant amount of money and can add up if you need multiple nights.

As for the boys, Dexter continued to become more consistent with his feedings.  Although he had had many larger feedings meeting his current target amount (55 ml per feeding), he wasn’t doing it consistently.  He’s eaten 50-55 ml of formula about 6 times out of 8 meals in a day.  But the other two meals are generally about 35 ml.  While there isn’t a daily quota, he needs to eat enough to ensure that he continues to gain weight, which fortunately he has been doing.  Today he measured 6 lbs, 5.6 oz, or up 2.8 oz from yesterday.  A good gain.  Also, Dexter was stable enough for the hospital to do a car seat test.  They put the baby into the car seat for 1.5 hours and watch the body monitors to ensure that the baby can handle sitting for extended periods of time in the car seat without a change in factors (such as heart rate, blood oxygen saturation level and blood pressure).  In our case, because we live more than 1.5 hours away, they do the car seat test for 3 hours.  Dexter passed.

Spencer’s big news is that while he has not matched his big 51 ml feeding from yesterday, he has increased the average amount he takes each feeding.  Before today, he had averaged about 10-20 ml.  Now, he averages about 30-35 ml per feeding.  Big improvement.  And he also continues to gain weight.  Spencer weighed  6 lbs, 7.2 oz, up 1.3 oz from yesterday.

W2-D6 Shop ‘til You Drop

So, when we first thought about the fall consignment sale, we had some general ideas of what we’d want and need, to take care of the babies.  And has that changed.  After a week and a half of caring for them, we have a much better idea of what we’d need.  We knew how much we’d need receiving blankets and burp cloths, we just didn’t realize how many we’d need.  We had thought we’d need/want about a dozen, but we now know we want more (more like 2-3 dozen).  We weren’t sure what we’d want to dress them in, but now we figure we’ll dress them in a lot of the sleep-n-play outfits, so we’ll get more of those.

After a very short night, we got up and got out to the consignment sale.  We showed up right at 7:15 and there was already a line of about a dozen people.  But, because we were club members, we got to go right in and not wait.  Boy, it was a good thing that members got to shop for 45 minutes from 7:15-8:00 before the public gets let in.  We managed to snag a lot of things (including one of the best swings and some SuperYard fencing units) plus some supplies (receiving blankets, burp cloths, and regular blankets) before the doors opened.  We were shopping and not paying attention, but there was no doubt when 8:00 AM rolled around.  Suddenly this wave of humanity washed into the room and the room which had a slight buzz of discussion was filled with a big burst of background noise, talking and mayhem.  We left at 9:30 and managed to get quite an impressive haul of things that will really help us care for our boys.  But, after getting home, sorting the “take” and putting a load of items into the laundry, we discovered that despite this big haul, we had managed to forget to buy newborn-size sleepers, one of the big items on our list.  So, we trundled back out to the sale and got there at 11:00 AM.  We were still able to pick up a lot of sleepers and other clothing items we’ll need.

We also picked up some blankets, onesies, sleepers, caps and burp clothes for the NICU.  We now know how many they’ll go through.  Our boys have pretty much outgrown premie clothes and are ready for newborn clothes, but the NICU can use premie clothing.  Additionally, they need a mixture of boy and girl clothing, so we got a nice haul of stuff to take back to the hospital with us and it was really inexpensive and only gently used.

Now, while we were at the consignment sale, I got a call from our alarm system company.  Apparently the motion detector in our kitchen had gone off.  When we got home, we figured out why.  Our sister-in-law had kindly sent us some flowers and balloons congratulating us on the birth of the boys.  We brought them home and left them on the kitchen table…a little too close to the vent in the kitchen.  After a little while, the air currents blew the balloons around triggering the motion detector.  Well, those balloons found a new home elsewhere!

We ran a few other errands, came home, finished up most of our task list (of over 30 items on the list, we only ended up with a couple that didn’t get finished), then packed ourselves back up and headed back to Pennsylvania.  We managed to get there about 10 minutes before Dexter’s dinner-time feeding.  Whew…gotta get used to the boys putting us on a schedule!  J

So, we came in to find some wonderful news.  Dexter had been stable for long enough they had moved him into a regular crib and out of the incubator.  Yeah!  And the nurse said he had drunk a full bottle (59 ml) for 3 of the last 4 feedings.  He’s starting to eat more and all by himself.  They had even decided that he was stable enough that they removed his feeding tube from his nose.  The doctor had instructed the nurses that if he pulled the tube out, to just leave it out.  The little stinker pulled it out within about 30 minutes, so it stayed out (he must have been eavesdropping on the doctor’s conversation with the nurse).  Barbara fed him, but he would only take about 36 ml so he was still not eating consistently, but when we left, 36 was high and now 36 was low for him.  Spencer was also making good progress.  When we left, his incubator was set at 32.5 C.  When we returned, it was down to 30 F and he was maintaining his body temperature much better.  He wasn’t getting cold as quickly.  He had also started feeding himself more regularly.  He actually took 18 ml from us (the highest he has eaten on his own to date).   And apparently, he is eating about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time instead of like once per day (1/8 feedings).    But, all in all, great progress from both of them.

We found out that the boys were scheduled for a bath that day.  The nurses were going to wait and let us bathe the boys, but the afternoon nurse said that Dexter was so stinky (our words, not hers) that she didn’t want to wait.  Since this is the second time that he’s needed a bath earlier than scheduled, I think we may be bathing him more frequently than Spencer.   I did come back and gave Spencer a bath at 9:30 and then another big surprise…Spencer ate  51 ml of formula…by George, I think he’s got it.

I came back at 12:30 and Dexter did better.  He drank about 46 ml of formula. Which is pretty good.  However, he needs to consistently drink about 400 ml of formula a day and he’s really not up to that level yet.  However, he is doing well in gaining weight.  Thursday, he weighed 5 lbs, 15.1 oz.  And tonight he weighed  6 lbs, 2.8 oz.  So, in 2 days, he gained 3.7 oz. which is pretty incredible.  Spencer has also been doing well.  Thursday night Spencer weighed 6 lbs, 2.9 oz.  On Saturday he weighed 6 lbs, 5.9 oz.  So Spencer gained 3 oz in 2 days.  Additionally, both boys measured 19.5” in length.  Dexter was 19” at birth, so has gained  0.5” in length.  Spencer was 18.75” in length and has gained 0.75”.  So they’re growing well.  Once we get them eating well, we’ll find out when we can take them home.

So after feeding Dexter, the two long days with only 3.5 hours of sleep caught up to me and I apologized to the nurse on duty and did not stay to feed Spencer.  Oh well…gotta take advantage of them being there when I can.  Pretty soon, it will just be us.

W2.D5 On The Road Again

Sorry for the lack of blog entries, but it’s been a hectic few days and we’ve been short on sleep.  So, the last couple of times that I might have worked on blog entries, I napped.

Friday was such a hectic day.  We were planning on going home after the mid-afternoon feedings, so we shifted our schedule earlier to get in three visits with the boys.  So, we went for the 9:30 AM feedings and were shocked when Dexter drank 41 ml of formula and only had to take 14 ml of formula by NG.  This is the most that he’s drunk in any one meal.  We were not too hopeful for Spencer as he had not drunk anything either of the feedings in the morning.  But, he surprised us by drinking 11 ml.  It’s not much, but since he’s a couple of days behind Dexter and doing what his brother was doing then, drinking anything is an accomplishment.

After an early lunch, Dexter continued to improve his consistency by drinking 30 ml of formula.  This was the first time that he had had two back-to-back feedings over 30 ml.  We also heard from the doctors that they expected Dexter to be out of the incubator and into a normal crib very soon since he was doing better and better with his temperature.  That would be one step closer to being discharged from the hospital.  Spencer wasn’t very awake and it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t really make any progress.  He drank about 6 ml, but ver y slowly.  However, he was getting slightly better at regulating his body temperature.  They had lowered his incubator temp to 32.5 C.  Small steps, but at least steps in the right direction.

After the 3:30/4:30 feeding, we quickly bundled up out things and headed on the road again to get home.  We finally got on the road about 6:00 and with one stop for dinner, we managed to get home at 9:00 PM.  We spent about half of the trip discussing the various things that we were going to need to get done at home.    We wrote up a check-list that ended up being over 30 tasks that we needed to do.  We spent the first 20-30 minutes at home doing a tour and check of the house.  We hadn’t been home in nearly two weeks and had heard of major storms and flooding in the area.  But, no signs of any flooding, leaks or issues.  We started working on the chores and managed to get about 2/3 of them done by around 2:00 AM.

It was really, really nice to be home and sleep in our own beds, but I missed the boys already and we had only been away from them for about 8 hours.  I resisted the urge to call the hospital and  check up on how the boys were doing (although when we got back on Saturday, the nurse on duty said that I should have just called).  J  

W2.D4 - Day by Day

I know that it may sound a little odd, but one of the side problems of being in the NICU is dry skin…and I mean, REALLY dry skin.  Every time you go into the NICU, before you can touch anything, you have to scrub your arms with antiseptic surgical soap  FOR THREE MINUTES.  Now, 3 minutes may not seem that long, until you have to scrub your hands and arms up to the elbows for 3 minutes with soap, and a little scrub brush (they have disposable sponge/scrub brushes that you have to use).  Every time you go in.  We go in 5-6 times a day.  And with that much soap and water, your skin gets really dry.  As the nurses say, by the time we go home, we’ll have no skin on our arms.

So, on Thursday, we had our weekly meeting with the neonatologist.  He reviewed the case with us, which was pretty much as we knew.  The boys had progressed very well and were healthy babies about normal for their gestational age (36 weeks, 1 day).  At this point, neither had any outstanding health issues and were just trying to achieve the milestones needed to be discharged.  Dexter was getting quite close to being able to move out of the incubator bed.  His bed temperature had been lowered to 29 C (about 85 F) and he was still able to maintain his body temperature of 37 C.  Pretty soon, once he reaches 28 C and can still maintain his body temperature, he’ll be able to be moved to a crib instead of the incubator.  Dexter was still only eating about 14-15 ml of formula per feeding orally.  He is currently at 52 ml (FYI, 30 ml = 1 oz) and needs to be able to eat all of that from the bottle before he can be discharged.  He’s getting there.  About once per day he eats over 20 ml, but normally it’s about 15.  Spencer is still not ready to be moved out of the incubator.  His bed temperature was just lowered to 32.5 C and he can maintain his body temperature for brief periods, but not for an extended period of time.  Another few days and he’ll probably be able to do it.  Spencer is only really eating himself about once every four feedings or so (1-2 times per day).  And he averages about 10 ml when he eats.  The rest of the time, he doesn’t really try and just gets fed via NG tube.  When we asked the doctor to give us a ballpark estimate of how long we might need to wait for them to learn, he said it could be as little as 2-3 days (very unlikely) or probably about a week.  We expect that it will be around the end of next week when we get to bring them home.

We’re already working on planning for when we bring the boys home.  When we go in, we each take one baby and do the work.  We try to alternate which baby we take care of so that we both get a lot of bonding time with each boy.  When we get back from our quick trip home, we’ll probably try to alternate visits and each of us take a full 2 hour shift and then take the next one off to try to give ourselves a break and simulate when we are back at home, especially on the days when only one of us is home.  When we go back to work initially, we’ll be going back part-time with me working Mon, Wed and Fri and Barbara working on Tue and Thur until Thanksgiving so that one of us can stay at home until the boys are about 3 months old.  Then we’ll start child care for them.

So, we’ve let the maternity unit know our schedule and we plan to shift a little earlier tomorrow and do the 9:30/10:30 AM through 3:30/4:30 PM shift as I detailed yesterday.  Although it means another 2+ hour drive to get home, it will be nice to get away even for a day and to return home and sleep in our own bed.  But, it will mean a short night to get everything we need to get done and get up early enough to be in Columbia by 7:15 AM.

So, I went to the 10:30 PM feeding/caring for Spencer and found out that at 9:30, Dexter had drunk 36 ml of formula on his own.  Wahoo!  I expect him to poop out on me (perhaps a bad choice of words!) and not drink much at 12:30, but who knows, maybe he’ll surprise me.  As for Spencer, the last two feedings, he had not really drunk much of anything, so I decided with the nurse to not even try (although he seemed wide awake) and give him a break and  try him at 1:30 PM.

At 12:30 AM, Dexter actually took 26 ml more!  I can’t believe that he actually managed two of his biggest feedings back to back.  Dexter weighed in at 5 lbs, 15.1 oz so he gained 0.7 oz.  He’s still growing.  Spencer started off much as before, just kind of playing with the bottle for about 10 minutes.  But then, with a little nudging he started to drink and drink a lot.  He ended up drinking 17 ml of formula which is a big achievement.  This is like Dexter from two nights ago.  Hopefully Spencer will catch on in a couple of days.  What a great little bonus at the end of the night.  Spencer did lose a little weight and weighed 6 lbs, 2.9 oz, down about 0.9 or 1.5 oz depending on if you use the first or second measurement that night.  But as we were told with Dexter, when they just start feeding on their own, they do sometimes have a little drop in  weight before it goes back up.   

Well, just day by day, but today we made better progress than many days.

W2.D3 Getting the Hang of It

Well, we had hoped to be home with the boys by today.  Our original estimate had this as the day that my parents were going to come to visit.  But by last Thursday, we knew that this was no longer reasonable.  I had purchased tickets for my parents to come up to stay with us, and this past weekend, I had to call Southwest Airlines to try and adjust their flights.  When I explained the situation to the airlines, the customer service agent was very sympathetic and canceled my parents’ flights and gave us full credit for their tickets with no cancellation penalty.  I was stunned.  What airline these days doesn’t charge you a penalty for changing/canceling a flight?  But she put a credit into the system under each of their names for which we can just apply those funds to the tickets when we can actually schedule their visit.  MAJOR kudos to Southwest Airlines for their great customer service.  We are already devoted Southwest Airlines fans and pretty much will only fly SWA.  This just makes us bigger fans.

So, we went back to the Pennsylvanian breakfast joint and they were hopping.  Amazing what good homemade home cooking can do.  They had homemade sausage that they make themselves that was out of this world.  We also tried something we had never heard of before that turned out to be incredibly good—baked oatmeal.   It doesn’t sound that appetizing,  but it’s pretty good.  Imagine oatmeal seasoned just right and cooked into basically a quick bread (like a banana bread) and served with a little brown sugar and milk.  Wow…it was good.  I suspect my mother-in-law will love it and have to look for a recipe to try this out for when she comes to visit her new grandchildren.

Once again (this is becoming habit), we showed up at 12:30 to find good news about the boys.  Now one reason that we tend to keep the schedule that we keep is that the doctors come in every morning around 9:00 AM and evaluate all the NICU babies and decide on changes.  Then the staff bustle around putting those new orders into place.  The NICU is very busy in the mornings and sometimes hectic and chaotic and it’s much easier on the hospital staff not to have parents visiting then.  This is why we often have good news when we finally show up at lunch time .  So, today, we found that they were so pleased with Spencer’s condition that they had removed his IV’s.  He was no longer on any supplemental IV nutrition and was getting all of his nutrition from the formula feeding.  Yeah!  Now, he was down to only the monitoring cables and the feeding tube, essentially just like Dexter.  Another step forward.  Additionally, Dexter was getting better at regulating his body temperature and the environmental settings on his isolette bed was down to 29.5 C.  Getting closer every day.   The doctors have also decided that Spencer was stable enough that we should try bottle feeding him anytime that he was wide awake and alert at feeding time rather than only once per nurse’s shift.  And the doctors are just a please with his progress as we are.

So today, both boys needed baths.  They give each baby a bath every 3 days, but Dexter had only gone 2 days but you could definitely smell that he needed a bath.  So, we again scheduled the baths for between the boys bottle feedings, e.g. 3:30/4:30 PM.   We both gave Dexter his bath and then I sat down to hold Dexter and give him his NG feeding while Barbara bathed Spencer all by herself.  She did a great job of it.  

However, he was definitely not ready to bottle feed so we left it at that.  We got a little rest including Barbara getting a very short nap and then went back for the 6:30/7:30 feeding.  Unfortunately, the bath had worn out the boys.  They don’t like getting a bath, so they squall using up energy.  Additionally, while they are getting their bath (essentially a sponge bath), between sponging and drying, they expend a lot of energy keeping their body temperature at a reasonable level.  It still chills them down and even once they are back in the incubators, it takes a while before they come back up to 37 C.  They both fall right to sleep after a bath (hopefully we’ll be able to use this to help set a night time routine for them when they’re slightly older).  But even a couple of hours later, they still were pretty tired and so didn’t feed themselves too well at 6:30/7:30.  Dexter took about 14 ml of formula and Spencer only about 5 ml.  Oh well, we’ll see what it’s like later.  It was very nice when one of the nurses who had helped us several times over the last couple of weeks commented that we were really getting the hang of the baby care and that she thought that we were going to be able to manage quite well on our own. 

We were exhausted so we went out for dinner, then came back and we skipped the 9;30/10:30 feedings.  Barbara got to bed early and Ted caught up on the backlog of blog entries (including this very one). 

So, looking forward, this Saturday is our local Mother’s of Multiples club fall consignment sale.  After this last week and a half, we know a lot more of the supplies and such that we’ll need to take care of the boys.  So, on Friday, we’re going to shift our schedule and go to the 9:30/10:30 AM feedings through the 3:30/4:30 PM feedings.  Then we’re going to get in the car and head home.  We’ll check on the house, unpack and repack different clothes, etc and get ourselves ready to return.  On Saturday morning, we’ll go to the sale from 7:15-8:00 which is the members-only shopping period.  Then there is open shopping from 8:00-11:30.  They close from 11:30-12:00 when they relabel items and reopen from 12:00-1:00 when select remaining items are half price.  We’ll shop, bring out finds home then come back up here for the 6:30-7:30 feedings.  It will be a nice break, a chance to check on the house and to sleep in our own bed.

I went to the 12:30/1:30 AM feeding for the boys and was regaled with an amusing (after the fact) story.  Apparently, Spencer was getting changed at 10:30 when he let lose with the mother of all explosive bursts.  There is a small porthole on the end of the isolette which is normally used to thread various cables through.  When not in use, they put the latex cover over it, but since Spencer had until just yesterday had a lot of IV and such tubes going through, they had not yet covered it up.  Well, Spencer managed to not only give the explosive burst which covered the inside of his isolette, but he got right out through that porthole and covered the wall outside the bed.  The wall with all of the NICU equipment such as oxygen, the humidifier, etc.  The nurse who was about to get off shift at 11:00 got to spend almost an hour cleaning everything.  While I feel bad for the nurse (she’s a really nice one, too), I was so glad that we were not there for this big event in our son’s developing childhood.  I’m sure he’ll give us many memories of our own, but I’m glad that he spared us this one.   So, despite Barbara having given him a great bath, he was really in need of a second bath and ended up with two baths in one day. 

So, Dexter did good.  He weighed in at 5 lbs, 14.4 oz which means that he has passed his birth weight (which was actually 5 lbs, 13.8 oz).  Hooray!  And he also drank 17 ml for me before giving up and having the remainder fed.  He’s still keeping to the 11-25 ml range for feeding on his own…hopefully in the next few days, he’ll increase that.  Spencer weighed in at 6 lbs, 3.8 oz (6 lbs 4.4 oz right after his explosive burst) so he’s still over birth weight and is about 2.2 oz above two nights ago, which seems about right.  My guess is that different nurses are doing something different to get these numbers.  Spencer was pretty tired after two baths and the excitement that he had created, so he once again acted like “What is this thing in my mouth?” and didn’t drink on his own, but then we weren’t too surprised.  Ah well, two steps forward, one step back.  He’s still made huge progress over the last week.

W2.D2 - Coming Back To You

Tuesday, we checked out of the hotel and returned to the hospital.  They still were not quite sure about how many discharges there were going to be.  If there was only going to be one or two, they wanted to be careful not to have what happened to us last night, happen again (having to ask us to leave very abruptly).  We spoke with the Maternity unit manager and told her about the hotel situation.  We explained that we were comfortable if we had to go down to Lancaster and were grateful if they had room, but prepared if they didn’t.

When we went in to see the boys, we found that Dexter had surprised us and had drunk 28ml of 52 ml in the morning feeding.  Go, Dex!  Spencer had not been bottle fed again.  But Spencer was having a little problem with spitting up a part of each meal.  The burp cloths under his head were both stained.  The doctor reviewed this and said to just leave his level stable at 50 ml (he had gone up to 44 ml in the evening and 50 in the morning) for the time being.  So, Barbara took to cleaning and feeding Dexter.  And he decided to have a three-diaper diaper-change.  Every time Barbara would clean him, he would make a mess of the new diaper.  At least he was doing it in the diaper!  I did Spencer and while he was good on the diapers, he decided to share part of his lunch with Daddy, all over Daddy’s shirt.  He definitely wanted me to experience all there was to experience of fatherhood.  But, Dexter ate 17 ml for Barbara and Spencer ate 12 ml for me.

Then the big surprise of the day—without telling us, the unit manager had made arrangements for us.  It turns out that down the hall from the maternity ward is the pediatric ward.  The pediatric ward only had a couple of rooms in use and they were willing to have us stay in one of the empty rooms.  The room only had one bed, but they put a cot into the room and we were just grateful to once again be staying in the hospital and we were just down the hall from the maternity ward.  They said the room would be ready for us after dinner.  Wow, talk about above and beyond the call of duty!  They just continue to surprise us with their generosity and caring at this hospital. 

So, our current schedule is that Dexter has feedings every three hours at 12:30, 3:30, 6:30 and 9:30.  Spencer is one hour behind that schedule.  Dexter right now is only trying to feed by bottle at 12:30 and 6:30 (both AM and PM).  On the 3:30 and 9:30 feedings, they just feed him through the feeding tube since he expends a lot of energy trying to feed himself.  That means that under normal circumstances, we only get one hour off each three hour cycle since we spend about 1 hour on each boy for each feeding.  Then we repeat.  The last couple of days, we’ll sometimes not come in for one or the other feeding tube times (3:30 or 9:30) in which case, then we might still do Spencer’s feeding.  But that at least gives us 2 hours off.  We have taken to eating breakfast in late morning (10:30-11:30), eating lunch between 2:30-3:30 and dinner from 8:30-9:30 to accommodate the boys’ schedule.

So, during our pre-dinner break (5:30-6:30), we ended up spending an hour sitting in the maternity room waiting room.  Barbara took a nap and I checked e-mail.  After the dinner-time feeding, we went and had a quick dinner and then came back to move ourselves into our room.  We skipped the 9:30/10:30 feedings because we weren’t sure how long it was going to take to get into the room and settled.  I sent Barbara off to Spencer’s 10:30 feeding by herself.   I was going to work on catching up on the blog since I was two days behind.  But, it turns out the hospital’s Wi-Fi router was down.  Since I had had a problem the previous weekend which turned out to be  a setting on my computer (a setting that I use for work), I checked to make sure that it was a problem.  But two people in the ER and one in the maternity ward were all having problems

When I went back for the 12:30 AM feeding – Dexter ate 22 ml on his own!  He also weighed in at 5 lbs, 13.1 oz.  He’s only 0.7 oz shy of birth weight and he gained 1.9 oz in the last day.  Spencer ate 14 ml on his own.  He weighed 6 lbs, 8.1 oz, up from 6 lbs, 2.2 oz (again remember, there may be some discrepancy with the cables/tubes and how they zero the scale).  However, he is up 2.2 oz over two days ago (when he weighed 6 lbs, 5.9 oz), so likely yesterday’s weight was a little off.  He’s also 7.6 oz over birth weight, so he’s doing great.

It’s so great to be back and down the hall from our boys.

W2.D1 - Anything you can do, I can do better...

[ 2 posts in one day -- I had time last night to get a little caught up on the blog.  To read them in order, go down to the next post and read it first. -Ted. ]


Monday was a day of highs and lows.  It was like a tennis match, good news/bad news/good news/bad news.

We slept in again.  We’re taking full advantage of the fact that there is a 24x7 nursing staff watching the boys and are easing into the parenting business in 12 hour shifts.  We come in for virtually all feedings and touch times from 12:30 PM until the 12:30/1:30 AM shift (I get out of there about 2:00-2:15).  Then we sleep in.  All too soon, they’ll be all ours and we’ll have to do the around the clock support and will become the same zombies that most other parents become when their children are born.

So we went to try a little local restaurant that is so very Pennsylvanian.  The food was good and included a lot of old familiar Pennsylvanian Dutch culture that reminded me of home.  We’ll definitely come back again.

When we got in for the 12:30 feeding, we found more great news.  Spencer’s breathing was so strong that they had taken him off all oxygen support and he is now breathing well on his own.  What amazing progress in just a few days!  They are also slowly decreasing his IV intake which includes nutrient supplements and he should be off of that in the next day or two.  At that point, he’ll have very few cables attached and will be much like Dexter.  Woo hoo!

We feed Dexter at 12:30 and take care of him.  So far, it’s pretty much the same.   At 1:30, it’s time for Spencer.  At 1:30, they decided to test Spencer with bottle feeding again and since we’re there, they let us do this.  Since Barbara has never gotten to hold Spencer yet, I do the feeding for Dexter and Barbara does the care of Spencer and then gets to hold him and bottle feed him.  This is the first time Barbara gets to hold Spencer—talk about a special treat!  And for an added bonus, since Dexter is pretty stable, the doctor says it is fine for us to disconnect Dexter from his monitor cables and bring him over to Spencer.  So I carried Dexter over to where Barbara is feeding Spencer.  It’s the first time since Spencer had all of the breathing problems that the boys have been together and we got our second family photo together.  Not the best photo, and I’m sure we’ll have plenty more in the future, but an important photo nonetheless.  However, despite all this, Spencer still isn’t quite ready to each on his own, but he’s catching up to his brother!

So we work on scheduling the rest of the day.  We’ll come back for Dexter’s 6:30 feeding and attempt to get him to take a bottle again.  We’ll be there for Spencer’s 7:30 feeding and will try to get him to take a bottle again.  Then we’ll come back and Mommy and Daddy will give Dexter a bath—the first baby bath that either of us has given.  They want to schedule the bath for one of the times when Dexter is not trying to bottle feed because the bath, and the water (which lowers his body temperature a bit) and changing the bedclothes, etc is pretty disruptive and will sap some of his energy and he may not be able to give the bottle feeding his best effort.  So we schedule the baby bath for 9:30.

Because of this, we’ll need to eat quickly between 8:30 (when we finish with Spencer’s feeding) and 9:30.  So, for lunch we go back to the Italian place that we liked that had the big portions so that we can just reheat leftovers for dinner.  Great…we’ve got our plans in place.  We again take the 3:30/4:30 feeding off to rest up for the big evening ahead and for Barbara to finish the things that she needs to wrap up for work. 

At 6:30, we go in to feed Dexter.  He’s still not quite ready for bottle feeding.  He takes a little (say 4 ml), but the nurse mentions that if he’s not actively drinking and sucking, then about 2 ml worth is from moving the bottle around trying to get him to drink.  That movement drips some formula into his mouth and he is just eating what’s dropped into his mouth without actively trying to suck milk from the bottle.  Oh well.

At 7:30, we feed Spencer and, lo and behold, he actually actively eats.  He drinks slowly, but he actually takes several long sucks and takes the milk from the bottle.  He manages to get about 10 ml on his own.  And he’s only been trying for a day or so.  By now, Spencer is up to about 38 ml of formula per feeding, so he gets the remaining 28 ml by feeding tube.  Dexter is again allowed off of his monitoring cables and can come to visit Spencer while he is feeding.  So nice to actually be able to hold them side by side.

So at 8:30, we leave and go to heat up our meals and have our one hour of down time.  We heat up dinner, get set up and just sit down (around 8:45) when a nurse comes in a informs us that they need our room.  The rest of the ward is full and another mother in labor has just come in.  We ask if we have a half hour, and the nurse sheepishly tells us “Less would be better.”  So we scarf down our dinner in about a minute, then we pack up.  We’re packed up in about 20 minutes (about 9:05/9:10).  But we can’t really pack up the car because we need to go into the NICU for Dexter’s bath in about 15-20 minutes and it’s a bit of a hike back to the car.  They let us put our bags into a small private waiting room on the ward.  We get this down with about 10 minutes to spare before we have to go in for Dexter’s bath.  Whew!

So, at 9:30, Mommy and Daddy go in and bathe a baby for the first time, giving Dexter a bath.  We didn’t do too badly and only need to ask a couple of questions of the nurse on duty.  Pretty good and then we dress him again and change the bedclothes on his bed.  He’s all set for a NG feeding (through the feeding tube).

So at 10:15, we’re ready to head out and get ourselves over to the local hotel.  We run over to the local Hampton Inn and decide we’ll just check in until Sunday, just to be safe.  While we’re checking in, the clerk finds out that although the hotel has a room for tonight (Monday night), they are booked for Tuesday AND Wednesday night.  Why?  No idea.  *sigh*  So we check in for one night and we’ll have to play it by ear for Tuesday night.  We had been told that there were some mothers in the maternity ward that might be discharged on Tuesday during the day, so we may be able to stay in the hospital again.  If not, we’ll have to find other options.  I check on-line and there are Marriott properties in a nearby city (about 25 min away) that we can stay.  Not ideal, but we’ll manage.   That will decrease the number of visits that we have to the boys, but we’ve spent a lot more time with our boys than any of the other NICU parents (who have been commuting to and from the hospital from their homes).  Additionally, we can get Marriott rewards points which we use when we go to Cincinnati for Barbara’s eye checkups.  Oh well, another day-by-day decision that we’ll worry about tomorrow.  We’re onto backup plan C and possibly backup plan D by now.  L  But despite all this, we’re still very appreciative of all that the maternity ward did for us.  We stay 8 nights there.  The one night that we were paying for at the local hotel was $139 plus taxes for approximately $150.  Had we spent the other 8 nights there, we would have spent over $1000 on hotel fees alone.  What a gracious gift they gave us there.  Plus the convenience of being on the maternity ward for the first week of our children’s lives is priceless.

At 12:30, I head back over to the hospital for Dexter’s next feeding and Dexter manages to make Daddy quite happy by giving a good ending to a difficult evening.  He begins to actively drink from the bottle.  He’s a little slow and inconsistent, but he actually manages to drink about 11 ml.  He’s actively drinking instead of just eating what drips into his mouth.  This is a major achievement and really makes my night.  I personally think he started drinking because Spencer started drinking earlier that evening and Dexter wanted to keep up with his brother.  Barbara suggests that Dexter was just waiting these last few days for Spencer so that they could do it together.  Either way, a really great way to turn around a hard night.

So, at this evening’s weighings, Dexter was weighed at 5 lbs, 11.2 oz.  Almost an ounce gain from yesterday (5 lbs, 10.3 oz).  Very good weight gain for one day.  Spencer weighed 6 lbs, 2.3 oz, down from 6 lbs, 5.9 oz.  But the doctor did say that he would probably lose a slight amount as he converted from NG tube feeding to PO (bottle) feeding.  The other issue is that Spencer still has two IV’s and sometimes the tubes and IV’s get onto the scale and shift the weight a little, so his weights are just a little iffy.  However, Spencer is still over birth weight (6 lbs, 0.5 oz) so that's a good thing.  Dexter is still a little under birth weight (5 lbs, 13.8 oz) but he's getting very close and he is still gaining every day.

Go, go, go boys!