First week with the babies

How can I describe the first week home with the babies?  It's been full of joy, feedings, changings, and sleeplessness....but mostly joy (and sleeplessness, maybe that's a close second!).

It has been a very long week, as every day is the same.  We had a saying when I was working the four week shift schedule up at Tenaska.  We'd say that the four week rotation flies by, but each shift feels like forever.  That's kind of how it has been this week, except backwards.  The week itself seems so long, but the days fly by.

I am nursing the babies every 3 hours during the day.  We have a fantastic arrangement at night which is allowing me to get some decent sleep.  Of note, our pediatrician told us that we have a "new normal".  I would have never described the sleep I'm now getting as "decent sleep", but that's our new normal and I'm now quite pleased with it.

Our lactation consultant recommended that I feed all day and end my day's feedings with the 9:00pm feeding.  Then I go to sleep and Forrest feeds the babies pumped milk at midnight.  I wake up again for the 3:00am feeding and my mom takes the 6:00am feeding.  That allows me about 4 consecutive hours of sleep, twice a night.  Now that my mom is gone, Forrest and I took turns the last two nights taking the 6:00 feeding.  Also, I try my hardest to get a nap in after the noon feeding.

Everything revolves around the feedings.  E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G

We had a pediatrician appointment on Thursday.  We chose Dr. Harris who is in a practice with Dr. Raine and a new doctor, Dr. Dao.  I didn't realize we'd be seeing Dr. Dao, but we were really pleased with him and our next appointment (next week) is also with him.  He has 17 month old twin girls, so he seems like a kindred spirit.  The babies checked out just fine.  They were weighed, measured, tested for jaundice, had their temperatures taken, and generally prodded by the doctor.  Nothing was too uncomfortable for the babies.  Also, Dr. Dao was really impressed by how big Carter is for his gestational age.  He said that they don't really have records and averages for preemies, but he would estimate that Carter's size would put him in at least the 50th-75th percentile.

We are so proud of them!

They also had a neonatal screening on Friday, which just tests for genetic abnormalities and deformities.  They had one done within the first couple days of their lives and protocol says they have to have it repeated 10-14 days after birth, so that's what we did.  We'll get the results back in 2 weeks.

That's pretty much it for the first week.  We are so happy being parents to these two miracles.  God is so good to us and I hope we don't forget to thank him every day for his immeasurable generosity.  Nobody deserves this much happiness, but for some reason he gave it to us.

And because no post is quite as good without a pic, here's one I just took.  Carter looks angry because he is just waking up and is fussing a bit.  He needs to eat in about 30 minutes, but I bet if I pick him up he'll be happy and I can hold him off.