Brooke and Claire got transferred this morning from the excellent hospital where they’ve been since being born a week ago, to another excellent hospital closer to home. It happened a day later than originally planned, but we were happy to wait as long as it took for the doctors to feel confident that the girls’ reflux and apnea issues were under control. Both have responded well to reglen for the digestion issues, and caffeine for the apnea. During our morning visit, both girls seemed more feisty than usual, which probably has a little something to do with the caffeine. They even had a bit of synchronized crying, and it’s starting to sound a little less like their first squeaky cries, and more like regular newborn cries. It’s still so new and uncommon that it still sounds cute to us, though I’m sure it will eventually feel like nails in the brain like most baby cries after a while.
The new NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) is both the unfamiliar kind of “new”, and the recently-opened kind of “new”. It is different in some minor ways - only one sink to scrub in at, for instance - but the most important thing is the level of care and our first impressions of that are good. It’s a Level II NICU instead of the Level III the girls transferred from, but that difference is mostly about what types of preemie problems or crises they’re equipped to deal with, and our girls are doing well enough that Level II is fine. Chances are, you’ve never been in a NICU unless you had a preemie yourself, so I’ll try to describe it in more detail in a future entry.
Brooke and Claire spend most of the day sleeping (which is great for preemies since that’s when they grow and develop the best), so there’s no distinct “bedtime”. Nonetheless, they got their first official bedtime story tonight. I read to Claire and then Kat read to Brooke. The story was Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are, by Dr. Seuss. I grabbed it at the last minute as we left for the hospital, because I couldn’t find my first choice, The Lorax. I’m familiar with most of the Seuss collection because I own most of it thanks to my mom rounding out my collection over many birthdays and holidays, but I realized as I read it that this was the first time for me, too. It had the usual fanciful rhymes and made-up words that you’d expect from Dr. Seuss, but it also felt like a very apropos story to read to our daughters. The central theme was to appreciate your good luck, because there are always others who are much worse off than you. I don’t think anyone would argue that being born premature and spending the first weeks of your life in a NICU is lucky, but we have friends with more difficult preemie and NICU experiences than ours have been, and without the NICU, our daughters’ chances at a healthy outcome would be very poor. Overall, I’d say we’re pretty lucky.
