Holding steady, more info soon

We are doing fine. Celeste is home. Vivien should be home next week. I am stealing a little of my sleep time to post this short note and read a couple of blogs. The hospital NICU's internet is really horrible, so I haven't been able to keep up...but next week it should all be over.

The babies are great, both over 7 lbs and have no special needs for when they come home.

I am filled with joy.

MrBeep is incredible.

More next week.

Sending much love out there to you all.

-IF

35 Weeks & 5 lbs 10 oz!

The girls have done it!  We’ve reached 35 weeks.  In fact, they are six weeks old today.  Last night they weighed in at 5 lbs 10 oz.  Their weight is only 8 grams different.  It’s pretty extraordinary and I am overjoyed that they have kept up good growth.  We are now too big for preemie clothes and diapers and have moved up.  I tell the girls that I am so proud of them that they have “big girl panties” since they wear newborn sized diapers instead of preemie.  Celeste is 18.75” in length and Vivien is 18.25”. 

They are both taking feedings from a bottle and from the breast.  They are still getting fed half of their meals via a gavage tube that goes from their nose into their tummy.  I pump breast milk 6-7 times per day and get around 7-10 oz (~250-300 ml) each time.  I make wwwaaaayyyyy more milk than what they currently need.  I have filled the freezer in their NICU suite 3 times!  They always get fresh milk and I am saving the freezer stuff for when they come home and my husband or in-laws can feed them a bottle while I get some extra sleep.  I mention this because I was really worried that having a premature baby would mean that I couldn’t make adequate milk.  Luckily for me, thank goodness, this is not a problem.  I drink a ton of water to help my supply (about 2-3 liters per day), I pump every 3-4 hours for 30+ minutes and I hand express any extra milk to ensure that my breasts are as empty as possible.  I really think that early and often hand expression (this was encouraged by the lactation consultants in the NICU) has really made a difference.

Unfortunately, my sweetie girls still have apnea of prematurity episodes a few times per day, but they are steadily growing out of it.  They no longer have nasal cannulas to give them airflow to remind them to breathe and are only on extra doses of caffeine (very Seattle). We expect that we will be able to take them home in 2-3 weeks.  They will have to stop having apnea episodes, take all of their feeds from either breast or bottle (they do about half now), continue to gain weight and maintain their body temperature in their open cribs (they’ve been out of their isolettes for about 2 weeks now).

I spend most of my day in the NICU.  I wake up in the morning around 6:30 am to pump breast milk for them, then I take a nap until about 9:30 to drive to the hospital where I try to feed at the breast by 10:30.  I stay with them all day in our private room at the hospital.  I change their diapers, feed them and also help the nurse with little tasks.  I give them a bath once or twice per week.  My favorite part of the day when I get to hold them kangaroo style (skin-to-skin) quietly sing songs and love them up.  My mother and father in law show up around 6:00 pm to give me a break.  I go home and spend 3-4 hours with MrBeep, then we both head back to the hospital and hang out with the girls until about 1:00 to 2:00 am.  When either girl has a bad day, then I spend the night and sleep on a foam bed in their room.  Luckily, they have been doing well for several weeks and I haven’t had to sleep over for a while. 

Thank you all so much for checking on me.  I try to steal time away during the day to read your blogs. I comment when I can.  To tell the truth, there has been much fear and many tears shed on my part, but we are steadily getting through this.  I find it hard to write about it, I can’t seem to get back the same quiet time to reflect on my feelings and I don’t think that dwelling on the negative is useful for me right now.  I would rather spend my energy holding them next to my skin (they love skin-to-skin contact).  I would rather spend my energy quietly singing songs and telling them how much they are loved and how proud we are of them. They are both very hearty and healthy and (in my humble opinion) are beyond adorable.  I am so in love.  My heart is full. 

 

32 weeks, names & our first 2 weeks in the NICU

We’ve reached 32 weeks!  The grrls are doing well and growing every day.  They are still preemies and have some issues and minor scares but we are getting through each day as best we can.  I get to take care of their diapers and help the nurses with little things and every day I take out one or both babies and we have some skin-to-skin kangaroo care.

♥♥  I call it “snuggly time” and I love it.  ♥♥

I want to do another positive post to mark our 32 week milestone.  It’s not where I had hoped I would be, it’s not what I expected.  I’ll write more about a day in the life for a mom with babies in the NICU next week, but today I celebrate.  I celebrate life and love and happiness.  There are many frets and worries, handwringing and quiet tears shed in the night but they are getting bigger and stronger every day.  With each day the heavy burden on my heart lifts just a little.  Each little one opens her eyes and gazes at Mommy, sometimes I get a delightful gummy grin.  I am overcome.

Their growth is good and steady.  Wiggles now weighs 3 lbs 12 oz and Pip weighs 3 lbs 14 oz (they are well past their birthweights of 3 lbs 3 oz and 3 lbs 5 oz).  I think they may hit 4 pounds tonight or tomorrow.  YAY!  They are fed mommy’s milk with a little fortifier added for extra calories, vitamins and protein (this is typical for preemies).  They aren’t on any type of formula.  I have surpassed them with my pumping 7-8 times per day and the freezer in our NICU fridge is getting pretty full.  Each one takes about 10 oz of milk per day, so I need to produce at least 20 oz/day.  I am typically doing between 4-6 ounces each time I pump and I pump 7-8 times per day.  As their weight increases, the milk needs will increase.  I am doing my best to stay on target.

Our biggest problem and concern is with Apnea of Prematurity.  Basically they have occasions when they forget to breathe or are breathing so shallow that it causes their oxygen levels to fall.  They have little probes on their chests and a special NICU pulse oximeter on a foot to keep track of their heart rate, breathing and blood oxygen levels.  If anything gets out of the desired range, little alarms will sound in the room, their NICU nurse is paged and an emergency light illuminates outside their room.  Our girls have their own room in the NICU and their own nurse.  Sometimes we share a nurse with 1 other baby, but the ratio is typically 2:1 or 3:1.  I stay here most of the day and on some nights when they are having a day with lots of episodes of apnea.  They will eventually grow out of the apnea as their brains and nervous systems finish developing.  In the meantime, it is really hard to leave them alone, even though they have excellent care.  Most of their episodes of apnea they recover within seconds on their own, other times a nurse comes to stimulate them a bit by changing their position, rubbing their back or tummy or feet.  We have had to put them on a nasal cannula with 3-4 liters of high-flow room air to help reduce the number of episodes per day.  It has dramatically reduced the number and severity of the apnea episodes.  Luckily room air is good enough and they do not require supplemental oxygen.  I will be a very happy person in about 3-4 more weeks when brain development at 34-36 weeks typically eliminates this problem.

Having fun with “The Name Game”

We had a lot of fun coming up with names for our kiddos.  We made a big list and since many of the names were unusual, we sent out the list to many friends and family to get feedback.  It helped to eliminate a few names we were on the fence about and we had a great time discussing with a few folks.  In the end we pared the list down and picked our favorites.  Then we called our parents and discussed which one of the twins should get each name.  Celeste looks like MrBeep, she has his nose and eyes, so we decided if he was a girl Celeste would fit him well.  Vivien looks like me in my baby pictures and has my nose and eyes.  I think that I could look like a Vivien.  For pet names, we will call them CeCe (pronounced see-see) and Vivie. 

The girl's name Celeste \ce-les-te, is pronounced seh-LEST. It is of Latin origin, and its meaning is "heavenly".

The girl's name Astrid \a-st-rid, is pronounced AS-trid. It is of Old Norse origin, and its meaning is "fair, beautiful goddess" from the elements 'as', which relates to the Aesir [a group of gods formed around Odin] and 'trud', 'fair' or 'beautiful'. It was the name of one of the Valkyries.

The girl's name Vivien \v(i)-vien\, is pronounced VIV-ee-en. It is of Latin origin, and its meaning is "lively". An ancient personal name. The name has been common only since the 19th century. In Malory's "Morte d'Arthur", Vivien was the Lady of the Lake and also the enchantress of Merlin.

The girl's name Fay \fay\, is pronounced fay. Fay is derived from Middle English faie meaning "fairy", such as in the popular Arthurian figure of Morgan Le Fay. Faye is also the English form of the old French Foy, meaning "faith" (from the Latin 'fides').

Thanks to those who have been checking up on me and thank you so much for the congrats and well wishes.  I have been trying my best to establish some type of schedule and get back to reading and writing blog posts.  I purchased this hands-free pumping bra.  I think this will give me back a few extra hours a day and I really like that.  I’ve been sneaking a peak at various blogs from time to time on my phone or laptop when I get a few minutes.  I hope to be back to commenting very soon too.  I miss you all and wish you well.

♥ Welcome babies! Mommy loves you. ♥

Hello my friends.  I am sorry that I haven’t been able to write, but it was a crazy week.  I went into the hospital on Sunday with contractions and our babies were born Monday, April 12, 2010 at 10:31 am and 10: 34 am. :-)  I will not go into all of the details of what happened in this post.  I just want to celebrate that they are here, very healthy and are growing and improving every day.  I have been able to hold and snuggle each one of them, they are perfect and precious, but are just wee little babes who will need some support and time to grow.

MrBeep has been incredible.  Through everything, no matter how scary, he was my rock.  He went with the babies, on my request, and stayed with them while they were being tended to by the NICU staff.  He came back to the OR, kissed me and told me everything I needed to know.  He comforted me during the worst of the storm.  I will be forever grateful for his love, strength and kindness.

I'm doing very good. Physically I did excellent with the emergency c-section and while I am a little tired, my pain levels are low and I can walk around, get up, etc. without much discomfort. I have only taken a few ibuprofen a day, no need for anything stronger. I'm not trying to be superwoman, I just am not in much pain. 

The wee babes are doing very well (all things considered).  They are 100% breathing on their own without any support. Their IVs will be out tomorrow. They will also be on 100% breast milk by tomorrow. The NICU staff started them with just colostrum and IV fluids, eventually transitioning to all mothers milk.  They increase the milk every day and decreasing the other fluids. They are tolerating the milk in their tummies just fine.  They are adding weight and we hope will continue to grow and do better every day.

They were both born at 17" long. One was 3 lbs 3 oz at birth and the other was 3 lbs 5 oz at birth. They were officially at 29 weeks and 3 days. We've got a lot of growing and developing to do, but will take each day at a time until it is time to go home.  We don’t have names picked out just yet, but have narrowed the list quit a lot and should have their names picked out this week.  For now, we still just call them Wiggles and Pip.

The neonatologist doctors at the hospital tell us they are doing great, the nurses too.  Docs said to estimate that they will go home around their due date, this should be mid-June.  Keep us in your good thoughts and prayers. Thank you for checking on me.  I would get a few updates on my phone, but had no easy way to communicate in the hospital.  Here are a couple of photos and video.  My little girls have sweet faces, adorable expressions, and big blue eyes. 

 
Baby A – aka “Wiggles” she looks just like her Daddy’s baby photos.  She has his nose.

 
Baby B – aka “Pip” looks like her Mommy’s baby photos.  She has my nose (poor kid)

Some times I just pour tears of relief and joy when I watch them.  Like sunshine through the clouds on a stormy day, they swell my heart until I feel I may burst with overwhelming love.  The universe has so much in store, we never know how our lives unfold, but today I thank the universe for my sweetie love girls and my wonderful MrBeep.

28w3d - Good golly growing babies Batman!

Thank you all for checking on me.  I am out of my routine (with my babysitters hovering) and am trying to set aside time for writing and reading and commenting.  Also, I’ve been lying low for the last week or so.  Skulking around and just relaxing, trying to make it to 28 weeks and I did it.  I’m so happy about that.  Getting through the goals you set in your mind gives such a great sense of forward momentum, that you are doing something right (even if that thing is just laying on a bed, being a lame lazyass). 

My first goal was 12 weeks (I’m sure many have been there or are getting there).  It went by slowly then quickly.  Strange bursts of time that surprise you when viewing a calendar, then sometimes days that seem to go on forever.  The next goal was 16 weeks, just because it was another month down and I could get amnio and results to help set my mind at ease.  I was so fortunate to finally get good results and know that I’ve got two little grrl monsters baking away.  I made my next mental goal to be 20 weeks.  I had a tough and frightening time of that with the emergency cerclage, but in the end realized just how fortunate I was to have it caught just in the nick of time.  The next mental goal of 24 weeks was really tough and scary.  There were hospital visits and bleeding and so much time spent alone with my nightmarish thoughts.  That was the worse of it all, but I got through it.  It’s interesting because we all have that “24 weeks = viability” idea stuck in our heads. 

DrGav once told me at 23w while I was leaving the hospital, “Traci, we have a way to go, you need to rest, be a princess on the couch.  It’s against my DNA to deliver babies before 28 weeks.”  My ObDoc pretty much echoed the same thing.  28 weeks was their mental goal for a minimum time for babies, not 24.  I understood why they would know this so much better than me.  They’ve seen the difference.  I made 28 weeks my next firm goal.  We got my rotating shift of babysitters and I have kept very strict to my bedrest.  Last week I saw DrGav at 27w6d for an office visit, he came to my exam room dressed in scrubs, he seemed very concerned and a little grim.  He let me know that I was doing fine, the cerclage was holding and the babies were looking good, although their amniotic fluid was still a little high.  He told me what medicine to take to help and then he said, “OK Traci.  Congratulations on making it to 28 weeks.  You’re doing a great job, please keep up the good work.  I’ve got to go now, wish me luck.  I have to run off to deliver a baby that is only at 25 weeks.”  My heart dropped into an abyss for that woman.  I looked at DrGav and could tell he was genuinely sad and worried.  I gave him a hug and wished him luck.  He accepted the hug and squeezed my hands and he was off.

Hitting the 28 week mark has taken a great burden of despair and worry from my mind.  Also much of my physical pain and crampiness has been gone for a couple of weeks.  Finally another bit of encouraging news came today at my growth ultrasound.  The babies measured 3 lbs 5oz and 3 lbs 6 oz.  They are in the 90th percentile for growth and while some of this may be due to my gestational diabetes, a lot is also from sticking to the high protein twins diet the clinic has me on.  I am still a little underweight (at 28 weeks, I have only gained about 20 lbs) but DrGav said not to worry abou6t this because the high protein and the babies size is more important than just weight gain.  We also were able to see and measure the grrls practicing breathing.  Each one gets the hiccups from time to time.  These are all good indicators of their progress and pushes me to believe that soon this will be over and I’ll have a crazy time keeping up with crying and feeding and nappies and cuddles.

I have made my next goal 31 weeks (3 weeks away instead of 4), then 34w (DrGav’s next goal) and finally 37w (aka “full term”).  I’ll take any, but I hope for all.  Sending out much love to all of you watching clocks and calendars.  I love to cheer when we reach milestones.   WOOOOOOOOOT!

I ♥ My Superior Geek Skillz

I’m back!!!  I actually sat on my couch with my tea service tray on my lap, my computer repair toolbox next to me and took apart my laptop.  I suspected that the water spill totally killed my trackpad and caused the problem where I couldn’t boot up any more.  The BIOS had no option to disable the trackpad via that method, so I wanted to try to manually disconnect the flex circuit from the motherboard and try that.  I figured, “Hey, I’ve got nothing to lose at this point.” 

I would have just bought another laptop at any other time (my current one is about 6 years old), but I wanted to “get my geek on” and I have a really specific laptop in mind to replace this old one.  It will have the next leap in CPU technology with a quad-core processor (instead of the current dual-core).  This will allow me to do both digital photography and advanced video and editing with my laptop.  I can only do this on my big horking desktop right now.  I spilled the water on this laptop in early March and the next gen laptop is rumored to come out in April or May 2010. 

Getting to the trackpad connection was a total bitch. I had to remove all screws (except for those that hold the screen together), disconnect the screen from the motherboard and chassis, remove all peripherals (optical drive, RAM, hard drive, and wifi card), remove all plastic covers, doors, disconnect and reroute all internal wires and cables.  Luckily I had another laptop with a schematic of the internals nearby.  I took a good forty minutes to get the danged thing apart when finally I disconnected the flex cable leading from the trackpad to the motherboard.  *WHEW*

Next it took another forty minutes to get the blasted thing put together again.  I left a few panels off, didn’t finish tightening all the screws (a computer nerd’s Hail Mary trick), plugged it in and hit the exposed ON button at the top of the circuit board

THE LAPTOP BOOTED RIGHT UP!  I logged in to my account, got on the network, checked a few pages on the internet, then shut down.  YAY!!!!  I finished assembling all the final pieces, had MrBeep get a trackball mouse from the other room and voila, I am back in the virtual world.  Now I can check DrGoogle all I want, watch my netflix stuff, get a little facebook amusement, play games, and most importantly, post and keep up with the ALI community.  Me = Happycamper.

I talked to the grrrl monsters all the way through the process.  There were kicking around and jostling the tea tray with the parts in response.  I will absolutely teach them how to troubleshoot and repair computers when they grow up. Girl Geeks Unite!

26 - A hard won week

I had a rough week. Thanks to everyone who kindly checked on me. Thursday morning started off with another big bleeding episode and contractons that sent me back to Labor and Delivery. I was checked on my by ObDoc and DrGav. The babies heartbeats were good, they were wiggling and jiggling about with all of the excitement and whatnot going on outside. It was decided after consulting ultrasound that the placenta previa was definiately still around and between its moving and bleeding another big clot had formed. When enough backed up, my uterus contracted hard to expel this unwanted material. I had felt achy and had a minor amount of spotting the two days before, so now I know what to look for if it happens again. This is possible as there are new clots that form and I still spot and the previa isn't gone.

Did I mention how much this sucks?

I was admitted to the hospital for observation and to receive steriod shots for the babies' lungs. We were at a critical stage, 25w6d so no one wanted to take any chances. The shots were administered and my bleeding mostly disappeared within the day. I only live 2.4 miles from my hospital, so we all decided I would be fine resting and recovering at home.

My laptop has not yet been recovered, I may not be able to fix it. This setback takes away a huge amount of my coping skills. I can't reach out to the ALI community easily (I have been able to keep up a little on my cell phone's web browser), I can't play computer games to pass the time, I can't research baby items or medical things, I can't use netflix watch instantly. I've been reading a little and doing puzzles to occupy my mind and pass the time. I watch minutes and hours and days tick by. My next big goal is 28 weeks, only 10 days to go on my countdown.

Since we know how important the next couple of months are, we decided that I needed someone with me. My MIL and FIL have stepped up for babysitting me on Mon/Wed/Fri, my friend Mike is being paid for babysitting me on Tues/Thursday. MrBeep takes care of me in the mornings, evenings and weekends. I am so lucky to have all this support. I really appreciate everyone' s care and help. Having the company of others during the day is also so very wonderful after so many months of being relatively isolated. The last few days have flown by.

I had my checkups at the ObDoc and MFM today. Everything is looking about the same, holding steady. The babies are looking bigger, but I won't get new measurements for a few more weeks. I got a couple of really great 3D images of their faces today that made my heart melt. Another thing that really helped me make it through this hell week was when I was lying on my side one day with my hand on the edge of my belly near my hip. I felt Wiggles (Baby A) raise her hand and drag it along my hand. The touch was so distinct and delicate. It just melted my heart. So many of the things they do now, what sounds they react to, make me just want so very much to get to know them.

And now for things that made me happy this week. Getting to week 26! Also I am overjoyed at mekate's great ultrasound and heartbeat at 8 weeks, MrsG has gotten a BFP and is working on a halfling of her very own, Sprogblogger has reached the 2nd trimester, Mo has had an excellent number of blasts to test, K at Invitro Veritas has made it to 28+ weeks and is describing her current situation as "boring", Sunny has made it through more than 10 weeks of bedrest and is up and about at more than 36 weeks with her twin boys, and finally Kate at Impatiently Waiting had her gorgeous little girl.