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 1st 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!
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