Sunday update, a day late

So so tired.

Both babies are doing well. We did find out today that every time they have a brady, which is what they call a heart deceleration of below 80 beats per minute (brady is short for bradycardia), they earn another 5 days in the special care nursery. They both had episodes today, so they'll be in until at least Saturday.

Gabi is off the IV and the nasal cannula today. Lily is still on both, but she's being weaned off the cannula gradually and if she can eat 25ml of breastmilk or formula on a consistent basis we can wean her off the IV too. That would be welcome indeed! They're both still being closely monitored for their breathing and heartbeats though, so still dealing with a lot of wires. They are both out of the warmers though, and we can dress them in outfits from home. They're wearing newborn sizes now and they're roomy, but the preemie stuff is already too small for them. They're nice and big!

Nicky really liked going to see them in the nursery and went several times. The NICU nurses were quite taken with him and made him a big brother bracelet (like mommy and daddy had).

Nicky actually went on his first big adventure yesterday though. Sunday he went home with Nana to stay with her for a few days. I cried my eyeballs out of course, but he was so excited to go. He's been asking to do that for months now, so we finally relented. He packed his new rolling suitcase and backpack with his daddy and was all ready to go! They made it to Nana's just fine, and have been having a good time. But he was getting pretty bored today, so Nana arranged to have him spend tomorrow with Gayle and Colin! He's going to have an absolute ball there! He loves playing with Colin so much, and he gets to spend the night with him too. He'll be coming home Thursday I believe, and I'm looking forward to hearing all about his big adventure when he gets home.

As for me, well I'm still in quite a bit of pain. This hurts so much worse than it did with Nicky. I guess it's because it's a second pregnancy and it was twins, so there's a lot more shrinking, moving around, and rearranging going on in there. But knowing why it hurts more just really doesn't help much.

What does help is going to see the babies. So I do that as much as possible. We're tryign to breastfeed at each feeding and then give them expressed milk or formula to top them off. They're not reliably breastfeeding yet, and usually will latch on suckle about three times and fall straight to sleep. Poor babies are so happy to be held I think that they relax and just sleep. I'm totally happy to just cuddle them though, so no complaints from me! I wasn't able to hold them till Sunday, so they're lucky I ever put them down at this point.

But I do have to put them down sometimes because I'm just beat. Occasionally I'll miss a feeding or two to get some sleep, not as often as Tom and my mom would like though. I just enjoy being with them too much. But I know I do need rest, so I'm trying to get that too. Right now I'm trying going to sleep through their 12am feeding and then I'll do the 3am feeding and let the nurses do the 6am feeding since that's right before the shift change and the feedings are a lot faster without me. I missed the 9pm feeding though too, so I'd better get back to pumping. Maybe I'll load up some images here for you while I do that.

Photos from Sunday:
Nicky, the big brother!


Lily and Nana:


Lily and Daddy


Lily and Momma:


Nicky looks worried about Lily's fussing:


Gabi and Daddy:


Gabi and Aunt Liz:


Gabi and Momma:


Nicky and Gabi:


Photos from Monday coming soon!