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. Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time since a brief meeting on Mommy’s chest right after being delivered, Claire and Brooke are sharing space again. We’ve been looking forward to them co-bedding for a while now, but it couldn’t happen until both babies could self-regulate their body temperatures. That ability is closely tied to body weight, and though Brooke graduated to an open-air basinette a few days ago, Claire needed a little extra time in her temperature-controlled isolette to grow and catch up. We managed to capture the reunion on video, despite a battery that was on the verge of dying. It’ll probably be quite a while before they have any real awareness of being next to each other, but it means a lot to us even if they’re pretty clueless. They were both lying on their right sides when we left, to help with digestion, so Brooke’s view changed from the clear side of the hospital basinette to the bars of their pediatric crib, and Claire’s wondering where the big pink wall a few inches from her face came from.

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.

A couple nights ago, Nurse A. demonstrated with Claire how to bathe our preemies, and then we got to bathe Brooke ourselves. It was a team effort between Kat and me, but I got the easier part. Kate did most of the body wash (while I propped Brooke up as needed), which is the part they fuss and cry about; I then wrapped her up and put her in a “football” hold to wash her hair in the sink, which she seemed to enjoy a lot. She looked at me and looked at me, and I loved her and loved her. It always feels good to get to do those “normal” parent things that most parents don’t have to wait long for after delivery. The thrill of baths and diaper changes will probably fade, but it’s nice to feel like “real” Mommy and Daddy, and not just spectators while paid professionals take care of your baby. (I did decline a changing opportunity for probably the first time last night, when we were just about to leave for the night and Claire had a poopy diaper up for grabs. I let the nurse grab it.)

Kat is recovering well from her c-section. She still needs to take it easy for a while (I keep reminding her), but I don’t insist on a wheelchair anymore for the trip between the hospital entrance and the NICU. She has an appointment coming up soon to hopefully schedule surgery to remove her gall bladder. She was diagnosed with severe gall stones in the first trimester and was hospitalized for them early in the third, but the docs didn’t want to operate during the pregnancy unless there was no other choice. She endured a substantial amount of pain and discomfort, but made it to delivery without gall bladder surgery. Fortunately, she hasn’t suffered any gall bladder type pain since delivering, but we want it out as soon as it’s medically advisable. If we’re really lucky, it can happen before the babies come home, so she can get that recovery out of the way.

Pics are hopefully forthcoming soon. I have a bunch of pics ready and even uploaded, but I’m figuring out how to use a cool gallery/slideshow feature that’s new to me.

The girls are doing great. I look forward to Kate being fully recovered from her c-section and the gall bladder surgery to come, both for her sake and for mine. Mostly, I hate seeing her limited by pain; but also, I’m incapable of keeping the counters and floors as clean as tidy as they need to be to keep her sane, despite my normal range of movement, and my reprimands when she can’t help herself from picking up my slack are having less and less effect.

Brooke and Claire are doing what we want them to do, which is getting bigger, stronger, cuter. They’re gaining weight and have both gone past their birthweight, which is a good milestone. The caffeine (for apnea) and reglan (for digestion) continue to have the desired effect, so the two biggies of eating and breathing are going well. We’ve still been visiting twice a day and enjoying kangaroo care with them (skin to skin holding). We’re less limited now in the timing and duration of holding them, so we often hold them even while they’re feeding (not just before), and no one tells us when holding time has to end. That’s neat, but makes it a little hard to end because we never feel entirely ready to put them back. Both girls have been practicing “non-nutritive” breastfeeding, which means being introduced to the breast and practicing latching on, but not actually eating yet; that’s going well. I think Kate is a natural mommy, even if she harbors a few doubts herself.

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 »

I consider myself a fairly sensitive, in-touch-with-his-emotions kind of guy, but for whatever reason, I rarely cry. I don’t chalk it up to my upbringing, because I wasn’t raised by a macho dad or parents who taught that expressing any sad or tender emotions was a sign of weakness in a man. I got the normal dose of that kind of thinking from my cultural surroundings, but consciously at least, I don’t withhold tears out of a sense of shame. When I do cry, it’s much more likely to be the slightly leaky watery-eyed kind than the hyperventilating snotty kind. And while I feel deeply emotional about the big joys and sorrows of my life, it doesn’t usually come out in tears. My tears are more likely to be triggered by the stereotypical “safe” things for men to cry about, like watching Rudy or Brian’s Song, than by sad or joyous things that happen to me directly.

When I was in the operating room with Kate to welcome our daughters into the world (by c-section), it was one of the most profoundly emotional experiences of my life. It was mostly joyous emotions flowing through me, but there was some fear mixed in, too. I knew tears in the delivery room are common, and I made no conscious effort to suppress them, but even there, I didn’t cry.

In the NICU, we’re allowed to hold our babies twice a day - once during day shift and once during night shift. (Both shifts last 12 hours.) Because the babies are still spitting up and overstimulation can lead to more of that, it’s recommended that we arrive for holding a half hour before feeding, so we can hold them on an empty stomach and put them back in their isolettes when it’s feeding time. Claire’s feeding schedule is a half hour ahead of Brooke’s, so if we’re a little late and it cuts into holding time, it’s always Claire who gets stiffed.

Kate was discharged yesterday, and the doctor recommended not returning to the hospital for a visit on discharge day, so I returned in the evening for a solo visit, intending to hold both of our daughters. I was there right on time, maybe even a few minutes early, but the nurse assigned to our girls was busy with something and didn’t come over for at least 10-15 minutes after I got there. I assume (or at least hope) she was busy with something important, because when she finally did come over and I said I was ready to hold Claire, she told me it was too close to feeding now so I wouldn’t get to hold Claire tonight.

I cried a little.

Yesterday was not a bad day, but it was a little rougher. Brooke and Claire are still doing okay, but they’ve been having some digestion issues and spitting up more than the doc and nurses would like. They’re on meds (“reglen”, I think) for it and are being closely watched for signs of infection like any green coloration to the spit up. There haven’t been any such signs (unless anything changed overnight), but that would be cause for concern. If they don’t resolve the spitting up issue soon, it could delay the transfer to the closer hospital. That would be a minor disappointment, but we want them wherever they need to be to get the best care possible. 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 »