The Schedule

The Schedule

So one of the greatest gifts we received from the babies’ three week stay at the hospital was having a schedule and routine established for us.

I read so much about the importance of schedules for babies and parents and how schedules can help you keep your sanity with twins.

The babies are on a three hour care schedule from the hospital… for now Mike and I have been able to keep it going and it really is making this twins thing easy. Yes I said it easy! Let’s not forget they have only been home for two weeks. But so far the schedule has been going great and our lives seem normal and we are really enjoying having twins!

It really isn’t that hard you just do everything twice… and as my husband said all you need for twins is a little team work. Thankfully my husband and I make a pretty good team J.

So the three how care schedule… every three hours we change the twins and feed them. They are both eating two ounces.  They care schedule is 9am,12pm,3pm,6pm,9pm,12am,3am,6am.

I take care of the twins from 9am -3pm. Mike helps at 6pm and 9pm. I do 12am by myself. Mike goes to bed at 10:30 then does 3am and 6am by himself.

The first few days we both tried to get up and do the 3am and 6am but noticed quickly that while we can do it fast either us got the sleep we needed to get through the day.

So this is what is working for us.

I pump after every bottle feed during the day and before the 9pm feed Mike makes the bottles for the next 24 hours. It is really nice to have all the bottles premade. I wash all the bottles before the 6pm feed to allow time to dry so Mike can prepare them for the next day.

Question saw a lot about on baby center. How many bottles do you need?

So we have a total of 20 bottles total. 10 for each baby. 16 needed for the 24 hours and some extras to allow for washing and preparing the next days’ worth.

With this schedule this  is also pretty much the only time we change diapers… if there is a smelly poopy of course we change it before the care time. But just knowing that we change the diaper during care times helps to reduce over changing and diaper waste…. Babies pee so much you do not need to change them every single time. This has cut diapers down to 8 per day per baby for a total of 16 a day.

With the schedule we have also been able to do things like go out to dinner!!! Which is so nice!

We feed them at 6pm and then go! We know we have a good 2 hours before the babies are going to need anything from us.

When we got out all they do is sleep!

A schedule is key to enjoying your family!

Well it’s almost 12pm… time to change and feed… no time for an edit!

Xoxo,

Heather

Home with our babies!

It’s been a long time… but I am going to try to start blogging again!

Life is good my twins are home! They have been home for two weeks now… they came home on father’s day. What a nice 1^st father’s day for my husband!

The NICU/PCN experience was very stressful at the time… just worry about everything, being separated from my babies and not having a clue how long their stay would last at the hospital. If you asked how long the babies would be there… you can’t get an answer the common answer was at their due date or when they do a,b,c, d.

My babies were born at 33 weeks 1 day. They spent 3 weeks and 2 days in the hospital.

Thankfully the babies stay in the hospital was pretty smooth and uneventful. Basically the babies just had to learn how to eat and gain weight before they could leave. Since the babies were born early their suck-breath-swallow reflex was not well coordinated. This is an issue in all preemies.

The babies were born at 4lbs 5 oz and 4lbs 8 oz. Presley got down to 3lbs 10 oz and Noah got down to 4lbs 3 oz. This after birth weight loss was normal.

 Both babies had to be 5lbs and eating bottles at every feed (8 times a day) before they could go home.

At first the babies were feed by a feeding tube with my fortified breast milk. I pumped breast milk for the babies and formula was added to each pump to add calories to the milk. During a pump feeding pacifiers were held in the babies mouths to help them understand food = suck.

After 5 days the babies were giveb a bottle for the first time… they only had to drink 10ml but it was very hard for them. Over time they got better… and once they were on all bottle feeds for 48 hours with no weight loss they could come home!

A lot of times preemie babies will lose weight when they start to bottle feed because they are burning so many calories just to eat the bottle. Thankfully the twins didn’t really have a problem with this.

Since the babies have been home life has been good.

Mike and I have happily settled into our family of four plus two pups!

I leave you with pictures of our home coming!