Kat wrote a beautiful update which I will now chop up and intersperse with my own comments:

I came home on Saturday and have been getting better every day. Still hurts sometimes, but I have my Percocet. The one key piece of advice people have told me is to not overdo it. So I am still trying to rest when I can. Leaving them at the hospital was so hard. My emotions were already all over the place (buy stock in tissues because I am causing a big demand for them). I have been through guilt over not keeping them in my belly longer. I have been mourning the early end to my pregnancy and missing my belly and their kicks. I have also been so confused over who I am right now. It is hard to feel like a mom when someone else takes care of them. I don’t feel confident yet when holding them; it is so different than holding a full term baby. Most of all, I wish they could be home with us.

Kat is and has been a terrific mom, even if she’s not convinced herself yet. Pregnancy is a joyous thing, especially when you really, really want to get pregnant, but that doesn’t mean that every discomfort or complication is therefore fun to experience. We both enjoyed her pregnancy, but Kat had to endure both common and not-so-common discomforts of a twin pregnancy, including her inability to find a comfortable position (common) and a 5-day hospitalization for severe gall stones (uncommon). Through it all, her primary concern was the babies, and she tolerated a restricted diet, bedrest, and her less-than-tidy husband with considerable patience and grace. Like her, I feel like we missed out on getting to enjoy belly kicks for a while longer, and getting to the point where you could just look and see the belly move without feeling it. But, if I ever felt like she couldn’t look more beautiful to me than she did pregnant, seeing her hold our daughters proved me wrong.

The girls are still doing their part and trying to get better every day. They have had trouble with feedings- lots of spitting up- so the doctor put them on some meds. They also have been having apnea episodes. It got to be that they had so many, they needed to be treated for that too. The treatment is giving them caffeine. How weird, huh? It has been a day on caffeine and they are doing better. I plan to buy them a Starbuck’s card for their week old birthday. LOL

The first couple days were so trouble-free that it was hard not to feel like these were setbacks, but we knew (thanks to doctors, nurses, and a little research) that these were typical preemie issues that can usually be resolved without any long-term damage or complications. The surprising thing wasn’t that they spit-up or had some apneas, but that it took a couple days for either to occur.

The hospital is planning to transfer them to the closer hospital tomorrow if they remain stable for tonight. The closer hospital is a 5 min ride for us, while where they are now is 20-30 min (depending on traffic). Right now, our routine is to wake up in the a.m., get ready and head out for a late morning/early afternoon holding session with the girls (we are only allowed to hold them twice a day- once on day shift, and once on night shift). Then we come home and rest, take care of anything that needs doing around the house, eat dinner and head back for our night time holding session. Oh and add in pumping every 2-3 hours along the way. I actually have begun pumping at the NICU lately while sitting there with the girls to make the experience more meaningful.

Pumping is another mom-only task that I wish I could help more with, but there’s not much I can do except support and encourage Kat. Obviously, I can’t help in the producing of milk, but I can help in the collection process, like assembling the parts, taking the milk to the fridge/freezer when it’s ready, and washing the parts after pumping sessions. We had a problem with one side of the pump not working properly and I helped troubleshoot it and think I finally figured out it was because the cap on one bottle wasn’t screwed on tight enough.

Last night was the best night so far. It was the first time we met Nurse C., our nurse for the night, and she was fantastic. She made sure to involve us in everything she was doing (weighing, measuring, changing diapers). I even got to help shampoo Claire’s hair. I was so nervous, but Nurse C. helped guide me along. It was so cool to actually do something that Moms do all the time. I got to take care of my baby! Yay!

The first night I don’t bring the camera, and Mommy gets to shampoo Claire’s hair and change her diaper for the first time. D’oh! It was really neat to watch, though. I got to change Brooke’s diaper for the first time the night before. All the nurses we’ve had seem very competent and skilled, but we really like the ones that involve us without having to be asked, because the fear of getting in the way of the care our daughters need to receive tends to make us sort of shy about asking to do things. (It took me probably three days before I felt like it was okay to open the portholes on my daughters’ isolettes to touch them without asking permission first.)

Then I held Brooke while Daddy held Claire. I was holding her “skin to skin” (they put her inside my shirt) and Nurse C. told me to try to move her to my breast and see what she would do. Both girls are not able to do mouth feedings yet; they have feeding tubes that go right to their stomachs. But the nurses have told us that we will do “non-nutritive” breast feedings where the girls just practice latching on and sucking a little (I have to pump first to empty out). Well, Brooke took to it right away. She knew exactly what to do! It was amazing! I can’t even begin to describe how special it was. After all the visits where I sometimes feel like I not their mother, but just some lady who likes to hold and takes pictures of them, I finally felt like a mom. I got to do something for Brooke that no one else could.

I’ve been very fortunate to see many awesome sights of the world with my own eyes: Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, the lost city of Petra, Ayer’s Rock, WWII wreck dives in Truk Lagoon, and more. None of those things were more beautiful or more awesome than watching my daughter Brooke latch on for the first time and Kat’s expression when she did it.

So hopefully they will have a good night and be able to be transferred tomorrow. But if not, it will be okay. They need to be where they can get the best care. If that means they need to stay where they are longer, I am fine with it.

We both look forward to having them closer, but the added convenience is much less important than feeling that they’re ready. We don’t want to rush things if they’re better off staying put, but if/when the doctors tell us they really think they’re ready, we’ll be glad to have them about a 5-minute drive from home. Not as glad as having them actually home, but closer is better.