The girls’ quick growth and development continues. Brooke graduated from her isolette to an open-air crib a few nights ago, and when Claire gets just a little bigger and is regulating her body temp better, they’ll try co-bedding in a pediatric crib. Both are gaining weight well and steadily increasing the amount they eat. They’ve started learning to eat from a bottle (called “nippling”), which is an important part of the progression from tube feeding, to bottle feeding, to breastfeeding. The meds for apnea and digestion were recently discontinued, without causing any turn for the worse in breathing or digestion.
Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
It has been a very exciting and eventful week and I have a lot I want to write and share about it, but as usual, life seems to happen faster than I can write about it. Our precious twin daughters were born on last Tuesday, April 7. We expected them to be born early because twins usually are, but at 31 weeks, 4 days, they came even earlier than we expected. The babies are in the NICU but doing very well, and Mommy Kate is still in the hospital recovering from her c-section but also doing well and expecting to get discharged tomorrow (Saturday). There’s much I’d like to share and make sure I get down before memory fades, but in the interest of a writing goal I hope to manage in the next hour or two, I’m not going to even try to catch up and will just tell our birth story Read the rest of this entry »
My niece, Jenna, is nearing the end of her kindergarten year, and getting smarter and more independent every day. She’s not just smarter than ever; she’s also clever enough to use her skills to come up with fun treats and surprises for her mom, all the while concealing her plans through indirect questions and subtle misdirection. For Mother’s Day this year, she put together a surprise plan to really pamper Mommy (my sister) from the moment she woke up. In retrospect, there were little hints that could have tipped my sister off, but I’ll just relate the story as I heard it, and you can decide for yourself whether you’d have caught on.
