Aspen & Elizabeth
This blog was started as an easy way to keep all of our friends and family updated on our twins, Aspen and Elizabeth. If you are new to this site, you’ll want to start with the oldest post (Birth Week) and work toward newer posts.
Use the “Subscribe” or “Facebook Group” buttons in the menu to join the email list or the Facebook groups, respectively, for updates.
We also ask that comments be done at the bottom of each post, not on the Facebook posts, just so that everyone can see them. We have some people that aren’t on Facebook and even then if you comment on Sam’s share, my (Karl’s) friends may not be able to interact with you.
Enjoy!!! 😃
At a friend’s pool party enjoying lunch and dessert.
Well, it happened! It’s August 5th, which means the girls have officially been home from the hospital for a year. That seemed worthy of another post. It’s been almost two months since the last one, so.
So, I guess it’s been a year already. It’s been one heck of a ride, too! Let’s dig in a bit, since it’s been so long.
It’s been quite a while since there’s been a post here. There’s just been so much going on. Six months seemed like a good reason to do this, though.
Also, you may notice that I missed by a day. Better late than never, I guess.
Home
As you may have guessed (or seen), the girls did come home on Wednesday, August 5th. We have been so excited to have them home!
“Click”-ish
They kept saying that it would “click,” and I guess this weekend was that time. Both girls had good days on Friday and were climbing. Their 24-hour numbers Saturday morning weren’t quite 80%, but they were heading the right direction. It wasn’t really overnight, but it did happen over a few short days
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.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
We’re Back
There’s been some time since our last post. We’ve missed 36 weeks, 5 weeks old, and now 37 weeks. Changes have been fairly slow, so it just hasn’t seemed worth writing entire posts to keep up. As always, we’ll see how future posts go.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Month 1
We’ve officially made it to the one month mark as of today. It really doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.
Feeding
The big news here is that Elizabeth has taken a few bigger bottles. It was our wedding anniversary last night, so we saw the girls early and then went out for dinner. We called in later that night to check on something (see below) and the nurse informed us that she had taken 20 ml. I think her highest before that was maybe 11, but more like 9. I had to ask to make sure she was talking about Elizabeth, not Aspen.
Image by k-images from Pixabay
Bottles
I know I’ve been talking about bottles a lot, but it’s a big part of what we’re doing every day. Elizabeth is still going pretty slow, but we have to build up her muscles and get her familiar with how to go about it. The OT helped Sam with some steps to help her get the feel for it. A big part of that is tipping the bottle down at appropriate intervals to get milk out of the nipple. This is a “reminder” that she needs to breathe which helps her stay focused on the task instead of getting tired out.
Photo by Lucas Davies on Unsplash
More Bottles
First things first: Aspen is rocking the bottle! She’s taken her entire feed (52 ml) from the bottle from Sam our last two feeds. That’s amazing!
For Elizabeth, she continues to have bloody stools. They just won’t go away. We still haven’t stopped feeding her neocate, but it really needs to stop. However, we have started giving her a bottle with just a little formula in it with a very stiff nipple. We’re mostly working on the motions with her and she didn’t seem to like taking the binkie trainer.
Sep 1, 2020 11:35AM PDT
This is where you can look for current information about the girls without having to read through all of the blog posts. Feel free to bookmark this post.
See 35 Weeks for information on the steps before we can take them home.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Holidays!
Another nice surprise when we got in this morning. The nurses made us pictures for each of the girls!
Updates On Aspen
I put an update on Aspen in Split Nurses, just wanted to flesh it out a bit.
As I mentioned, she had a bloody stool. This was made more frustrating by how close she was to bottle feeding. She should get back to taking food instead of an IV this afternoon assuming all goes well.
When we showed up Tuesday they were just getting her IV put in. She complained very loudly about that but they seemed to get it in pretty easily. However, after she had settled down a bit, she had an apnic event. She basically stopped breathing at that point. Her O2 levels dropped lower than I’ve seen so far. It was hard to watch and you could see the urgency that the nurses had stimulating her. She did come back, but it was probably the scariest event we’ve been witness to so far.
Update June 30 6:20 PM: Add Bloody Stool section
Bottles We’re getting closer to having at least Aspen taking a bottle. Per Sam’s visit this morning she only needs to do another few good binkie trainer sessions before we get to work on bottle feeding. This is another huge step forward for her. Elizabeth seems to be a little behind Aspen, but is also doing pretty well. We’ll have to wait and see if she’ll ever take breastmilk, though.
Gap We’ve been working on projects the last few days and there hasn’t been a lot to report on the girls. These are things that may keep us from having a truly daily update schedule on this blog. See Extra Bits below for information on staying up to date.
Elizabeth’s Gut Issues We’ve had some more issues with Elizabeth. A couple of times over the last few days she’s had more blood in her stool.
Training Elizabeth has now gotten back up to the same quantity of food as she was before her scare. They’ll now start adding extra concentrate to the formula to get her calories up a little more. She had a good day so we got to try the binkie trainer with her last night (see above). She did a good job keeping it in her mouth and even doing some sucking, but not really enough to pull any milk from the syringe.
Photo by Adam Solomon on Unsplash
Learning How To Feed We’ve started down a path towards getting the girls to feed on their own. This includes Sam getting to work with the OT on some mouth exercises that we can work on. These are used to help develop the muscles and reflexes required for feeding, especially breastfeeding.
Aspen continues to show very strong signs that she wants to breastfeed. While she certainly hasn’t got it down, she will do a little sucking and is probably getting a little milk that way.
Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash
Back To Work Well, I’m back to work for now. We figured that me using up my paid leave while they’re still in NICU didn’t make a lot of sense.
So, now Sam is going in at our regular time (8 AM) and is staying until 1 PM. I then take my lunch from 12-1PM and go over there for some quick snuggles. To facilitate that and make the best use of my time, I’m also working out of my office (I had been working from home since about mid-March).
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
Elizabeth’s Feeding We’re now at 48 hours after Elizabeth’s bloody stool issue1. So far all of her x-rays have been clear so we’re even more confident that she’s got some sensitivity. Today they have started her on the soy-based formula. They’ll move slowly here to make sure that she is tolerating it well.
Magic Age I’ve talked about this before. Thirty-three weeks seems to be a magic age for starting to attempt bottle and breast feeding.
Image by S K from Pixabay
X-Rays Elizabeth was on her IV when we got there last night. Like I mentioned in Cribs, she won’t be able to have any food by mouth for a few days. What’s funny is that she clearly is upset that she isn’t getting any food, even though it wasn’t by mouth.
Fortunately, they’ve done several x-rays and haven’t seen anything concerning. That seems to indicate some type of sensitivity to something she was eating.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
Cribs! As suggested in Naming These Is Hard yesterday, the girls were in open cribs when we got there.
Elizabeth In Her Crib Aspen In Her Crib That was very cool to see. Also makes interacting with them much easier. Aspen also got a bath overnight so she got some PJs.
Aspen In Some PJs A Phone Call We did have a bit of a startle this afternoon.
Photo by Laura Lefurgey-Smith on Unsplash
Here I Go Again We’re still on the good news train. Aspen has stayed off of the high-flow and both girls seem to be doing well breathing on their own. That is a big step.
Our nurse this morning indicated that whe will likely move them out of their isolettes and into an open crib today, so fingers crossed that’s what we’ll find when we get there tonight.
Seven Days Old It’s Thursday again, which means the girls have made it seven days! A little progress each day and there’s a lot different.
No More Central Line Elizabeth has a visible belly button! That’s thanks to having the central line out.
We’re able to help with the cares while we’re there. We take their temperatures, change their diapers, and weigh them. Starting to get the touch back for diapers, though it is more difficult in a cage.
Update June 18 7:10 PM: Correct which therapies the girls are getting
IVs Out! We’ve finally gotten both girls' IVs out, including the central line for Elizabeth. They now get all of their nutrients (except for Aspen’s caffeine) via feedings. They are adding additional calories to the breast milk for a few of their daily feedings.
As you can see in the picture at the top of the post, Elizabeth has her high-flow air taken off.The Big Question For those of you that don’t know, our twins were what they call “Dichorionic Diamniotic." This means that each baby had their own amniotic sac as well as their own placenta/umbilical cord. First, this is the least risky type of twins to carry since they can’t really “steal” anything from each other.
This also means that odds are the twins were going to be fraternal (not identical). We were told that the odds were about 80/20.Pumping We had some issues with Waverly on the feeding front. Sam’s milk didn’t come in right away and then Wavy was not terribly interested in switching from bottles and formula. Wavy’s lip tie did not improve the situation, either.
This time around has been very different so far. Of course, the girls aren’t at a point where they are taking food by mouth, but Sam’s milk was coming in immediately.Saturday Today was also somewhat relaxed. There wasn’t a whole lot going on. We’re still doing twice-a-days with the girls. We had Wavy go with “Auntie Pita” and “Cousin Lauren” and pick out some stuffed animals that the girls can have in their isolettes. I apparently didn’t grab any pictures of them. I’ll have to remember to do that.
Aspen’s IV in her hand finally “went bad” tonight. This is apparently common and hers actually lasted longer than sister’s did.Update June 14 11:45 AM: Added each baby’s birth weight and length
An Eventful Start The Very Beginning This week actually started out a little different than most. Sam’s aunt and cousin let her know on Sunday that they had been visiting other family in nearby Sunnyside. They wondered if they could come visit for a few days. They came in Monday afternoon just to hang out for a bit and spent the night into Tuesday.