🎶 Here Comes the Sun 🎶
It's all right
Out of the Cave
As our time in the NICU gets longer, we’ve started thinking a little longer term. Specifically, we were thinking about how the girls had never experienced sunlight. They’d both gone directly from the OR to their rooms in the NICU and never left. And those rooms are not near windows.
At this point, the girls are 48 days old. It was kind of sad to think about them not having experienced any sunlight. We finally brought it up with one of the nurses last week.
The nurses and NP s seemed to be on board and thought that, with their age, having well defined “light” and “dark” periods would be good for them. We just had to wait for a pair of rooms to open up.
Well, yesterday was the day. A pair of rooms at the end of one of the short “pod” hallways became available.
This actually brings in a few advantages.
Pros
- Much less traffic
- Our rooms were the first ones in the unit
- We don’t have to watch other families leave
- Hard to watch as our babies continue to stay so long
- It does kind of feel like one large room
However, it is not without it’s downsides.
Cons
- Rooms are no longer adjacent
- They are across the hall from each other
- Requires getting a portable monitor to be able to have them together
At this point, I feel like this is worth it. At the end of the hall we have no traffic. It’s like living on a cul-de-sac. Both girls have neighbors, but it does feel a little bit more like a neighborhood. Sam likened our old situation (outside of a “pod” or hallway) to Brexit. We were kind of an island unto ourselves.
When I went to visit last night and walked in for the first time, the energy is just so very different. Sunlight certainly makes me feel better, so I’m hoping it helps the girls.
Formula
We decided it was time to start asking about whether we could start trying breastmilk again. We brought it up to our nurse who brought it up with the NP. She wasn’t entirely sure, so we thought we’d bring it up in rounds. This was over the weekend and we thought it might make sense to wait until rounds with a dietitian. They don’t work weekends, so we would wait until Monday.
The doctor immediately shot down any hope of doing that soon. If we were to try we would probably want to wait six months to a year.
We’ve always wanted to breastfeed our babies. We had good luck for Wavy’s first year (though not without its difficulties). However, we’ve always been pragmatic about it. At this point, to make the low end of that work would still require Sam to pump multiple times a day, every day, for the next six months while hoping that they would even tolerate it at that point. If she stops pumping her supply would give out.
Again, being pragmatists, we’re going to go for formula fed babies. This will help keep our stress levels down as well. We’ll eventually have to determine whether they’ve got more significant sensitivities (like lactose), but that was going to happen either way.
Due date
Well, our babies have passed 38 weeks gestation. It seems like we’re on a plateau right now. The only thing we’re working on at this point is getting them to eat well. The best we’ve done so far is Aspen had one 12-hour shift that she took >80%. She dropped significantly over the next 12 hours, though.
They both just seem to hold plus-or-minus 50%. They also continue to gain weight which has the effect of having their feed volumes increased. They base their daily intake on their weight. This works against us.
They keep telling us that one day it will just “click” and they’ll get it. Sunday was starting to feel that way for Aspen. She took three bottles in a row that were at least nearly complete bottles. However, the fourth bottle (the last one of day shift) was only about half. That got us her highest results yet, but it just isn’t consistent enough.
August 10th is considered their “due date.” We’re getting very close to that. It is frustrating to watch them grow and get closer to that date while not feeling like we’re making any meaningful progress. It also tends to feel strange that we’re in the NICU, getting a very advanced type of care, just to get our girls to eat what they’re supposed to.
We do really feel like they might do better with an ad-lib feeding schedule, as well. Right now, we wake them up every three hours regardless of whether they seem hungry or not. The get forced to try to eat (though we don’t force them to, could end up with nipple aversion which would open a whole new box of issues) whether they’re hungry or not. And then, we don’t feed them early by more than about 15 minutes. I wouldn’t want to eat on that schedule, either!
We continue to visit every day. Sam gets there before 8 AM and stays until after their 2 PM feed. She does take a few breaks to eat some and maybe walk around the hospital. That gets her to have three “cares”/feeds with them. We then go back for the 8 PM care and typically stick around until about 9:45 PM. Then we start all over the next day.
More than anything we just want them to come home. None of our families or friends have been able to see them and leaving multiple times a day is hard on us and on Wavy. She’s definitely missing her parents!
Scheduled C-section
Today was scheduled to be our delivery day. While we never had any illusions that our twins would make it past 38 weeks, it was the only date we had to put on the calendar. They had very different plans, apparently.
Pictures
