I always look forward to visiting my daughters in the NICU, which we’ve been doing twice a day since they were born three-and-a-half weeks ago, but I’d be lying if I said every visit was full of non-stop fun and bonding. There’s a lot of boring downtime mixed in, and even when I’m basking in the love of some quality kangaroo care, there’s only so much entertainment you can get from staring at the top of your baby’s head or their vital stats on a monitor. Kate and I talk, of course, and we’ve filled in some of the boring parts by reading to each other and our babies, but still, it can get pretty dull. (In a NICU, “dull” is generally preferred over “exciting”, since excitement in an intensive care unit isn’t always a good thing.) Sometimes, though, some combination of how the girls are acting or what we get to do with them will make a particular visit especially good. Last night was one of those times.

We were already eager for the visit because it would be the first time Claire and Brooke were scheduled to get a bottle feeding at the same time, so we’d both be able to feed one. This would be Claire’s first bottle from one of us. It was also bath night, so it would be our second chance to give a bath, and another first for Claire (from one of us).

When we arrived, the girls were in their cutest pose that we’d seen since they started co-bedding. They were both swaddled (as usual) and snuggled up sleeping right next to each other, with their heads touching. After snapping some pics of that, we unswaddled them to snap a few more of them in their first matching outfits. Well before they were born, we decided to definitely not dress them all matchy-matchy, since we want to treat them as individuals and not just a “set”, but these preemie onesies were adorable and generously gifted to us from a friend who recently had identical twin girls. They’re red with white lettering that says, “Hug me, Hold Me, Kiss Me.” (Claire’s had some creases, so hers said, “Ug me. Old me. Ass me.”)

With twins, Mommy and I rarely have to negotiate over who gets to hold, bathe, feed, or whatever because we each do one. We alternate who gets who so our time is shared pretty evenly between them, but we joke that day shift and night shift nurses must think we both have clear favorites, but wouldn’t agree on who they were. This is because with two visits a day and alternating babies, I usually interact more with Brooke during the day, and Claire at night, while that’s reversed for Mommy. This was a night visit, so I bathed Claire, who always goes first. (She’s first all the time because her feeding is a half hour before Brooke’s, so all the sorts of things that happen leading up to feeding, happen first for her.) Claire fussed through her whole bath this time, including getting her hair done. At the end, though, she settled down after I dressed her in the “Daddy’s girl” onesie that Mommy picked out. Brooke followed the same game plan as Claire and cried through most of her bath from Mommy, but also settle down after being dressed at the end (“Little princess onesie”) and swaddled up. Our swaddling technique is improving - when we finally do it without having to work around wires, it’ll seem like a piece of cake.

After baths, we fed them. The excitement and stimulation of baths tired them out, so keeping them awake enough to take their feeding by bottle was a challenge. Mommy fed Brooke, who finished most of her bottle but was too sleepy for the last few cc’s, so took those by her feeding tube. I fed Claire and she was pretty steady until I burped her at the halfway point, and then seemed like she might be done. After five minutes or so of teasing her lips with the nipple, she finally opened up again and finished off her bottle before time expired.

We usually hold the babies kangaroo style (skin-to-skin), but that’s not a very easy position to feed from (except for Mommy when there’s a breast involved), so we were holding them all swaddled up. As neat as the kangaroo care feels, a nice perk of holding them swaddled is that it’s a lot easier to position them so we can see their faces. Held kangaroo style, their heads are usually resting against our chests just under our chin, so it’s not easy to gaze at them that way. Some of my most “connected” moments have come when holding my girls swaddled, because that’s when we can look at each other. They sleep most of the time, and when they are awake, their eyes aren’t very coordinated so they cross and look unfocused a lot. Every once in a while, though, it looks as though they’re really looking at and seeing us, and those are nice moments.

While I held Claire last night after her bath and feeding, I finally got to act on a fatherly instinct that was consciously supressed since they were born: I stroked and petted her head. As natural a thing to do as that is for a parent, we were cautioned in the beginning that as premature as they were (31 weeks, 4 days), they could very easily get overstimulated, triggering various kinds of discomfort or problems, so the best touch was firm and steady, or sometimes no touch at all. No one has really updated us about how much touch is or isn’t okay as they’ve grown and developed, but from our own experience handling them and watching what the nurses do, they’re not as delicate or hyper-sensitive as they used to be. I snuck in a brief caress here and there, but last night was the first time I didn’t hold back. When I started out gently twirling Claire’s blond hair and massaging her scalp, it was probably more about making me feel good than her, but she wrapped me around her little finger when she looked at me and smiled. For the first time. Because of Daddy.