I cannot believe our little girls have been here for 1 whole month!
Thank you all so much for your never ending sweet messages about the babies and how they are doing.  It means more than you will ever know!

This blog world has led to “meeting” so many wonderful people and making friendships with people I’ve never met. It’s been so amazing to have so many peoples support throughout my pregnancy, bed rest, and now their arrival!

Today the twins are 1 month old! It has been the fastest month of my life hands down.  I was looking at pictures from their first few days here and I cannot believe how much bigger they already are (4 1/2 pounds and 5 1/2 pounds!) and how far we have come in the past 4 weeks with them.

I get asked for updates on when they are coming home constantly on instagram (where I update daily, but haven’t had my laptop with me too much these days so hopefully will get better with blog posts soon!) and the short answer is:  We just don’t know.

It is extremely rare for twins to go home on the same day from the NICU, but last week, our girls were looking like they were going to do just that!  All of the big milestones were complete – there were no more IV’s, no more oxygen tubes, no more isolette’s regulating their temperatures, they’d passed blood sugar tests, hearing tests, etc.  It was amazing! The remaining item was their feeding tubes in their nose and getting them to eat. (remaining item when they were not pulling them out of their noses).
most people think the baby needs to be a certain weight before it can come home but that’s not the case.  They can come home when they’re still super small as long as other things have all been completed! 
Collins, the little Baby B that could, had been blowing away the nurses from pretty much Day 1.  She was able to take bottles way sooner than she should have been able to and would latch on me and had an amazing “suck.”  Before we knew it she was downing her bottles in record time.  Hadley wasn’t taking very much from her bottle at all last week and would become exhausted and pass out and have to have the remainder of her feeding through her NG tube.
The second we started talking about Collins being discharged – BAM – suddenly Hadley started taking all of her feedings, too!

We were ecstatic! Both girls had pulled out their feeding tubes and the nurses hadn’t had to put them back in because they were suddenly both completing their feedings every time.
I tried not to get my hopes up (but completely did) that it was a miracle and that we would be taking both girls home at the same time!

and then of course…… nope.

A new issue presented itself and has been keeping them in the NICU for the past week.  They keep having episodes with their heart rate and oxygen levels plummeting during feedings.  They say it is part of preemies learning to suck/swallow/breathe and is a “normal” for thing for them to be doing, which is a relief, but they turn blue/grey and it can be scary.  Initially it was all happening during the feedings, which was a good thing because that meant it was a predictable occurrence and as long as I kept my eyes on the baby while feeding, I could notice a color change and help them correct it.  Collins for example gets so excited to eat that she forgets to breathe, so hers have always happened at the start or during her feedings.  But Hadley’s episodes have suddenly changed and she will have them at random, even when she is sleeping an hour and a half after a feeding.  That, of course, is what *cannot* be happening because there will be no way for us to help her get her oxygen back.  She also has bad reflux which they believe contributes to her episodes as well.

They have go to 48-72 hours without an episode in order to be discharged from the hospital, but because Hadley’s are a bigger issue, when she finally IS discharged, we will be taking her home on a home monitoring system.  We are learning how to use the system today at the hospital, but the nurses have warned that it is INSANELY loud when the alarm goes off and that it can be a big stressor to have.  They also have said at least we won’t have two babies on monitors because Collins episodes are predictable, so that is a silver lining.

We will happily take the monitor to get Hadley home (when she is ready) and to know that she is safe.  We’ve been told they usually have to stay on it for at least a month minimum to track the data and ensure that her episodes have stopped before they take her off of it.    I’m just hoping it doesn’t keep them both from being able to sleep and doesn’t scare the daylights out of them both whenever it goes off.  They are used to constant beeping in the NICU, but the NICU beeping is fairly quiet and a nurse is able to silence it once she comes over to address the issue.  The beeping of the monitor cannot be turned off or volume altered at any time, and it will keep going off until the episode is over.

ANYWAYS.
We are of course SO ready to have the babies home, especially after thinking that it was going to happen last weekend.  But in the end we are just so grateful to be blessed with two healthy babies and know that this too shall pass.  The NICU time and now this at home monitor will be a distant memory eventually.  And soon enough both girls will be home.

Collins is already doing much better with her episodes so she should be home very soon.  Last time Collins got close, Hadley caught right up to meet her and not be left out, so we are hopeful that will happen again and that if Collins gets to come home Hadley will be following right behind her.   It’s going to be so hard to only take one baby home and to leave another by herself in the NICU.  It breaks my heart.  And now I’m crying SO WE WILL DIGRESS……….

Alrighty!
Thank you so much for all of your amazingly sweet words and prayers and love for the babies! It truly means so much.  We are so, so lucky to have had two healthy girls that made it all the way to to 34 weeks and I cannot imagine how hard it is for other parents who cannot say the same about their little ones.  We have made friends in the NICU and it just breaks my heart into a million pieces to see what other families and their poor babies have to go through.  The NICU is a place you are ready to leave behind but the staff is all so wonderful and it is amazing what they are able to do to save babies and get them healthy on a daily basis.  We are so, so grateful to all of them!

OKAY.  Happy Weekend 🙂  
I started making a fashion collage about 5 days ago and gave up….. hopefully I’ll get back to some Coffee Talking and wearing clothes sometime soon.  It has to happen eventually…. right? Please?