Special Visitor

Last night we had a special visitor stop by the house. Here are pictures of his visit!

That was the highlight so far of my holidays. It was another thing that I just figured we couldn't do because of the risk of colds and RSV. To have Santa stop by the house and pose for pictures was awesome! I heard Will mention a football and Lindy said something about a baby doll!

I haven't had a chance to post since the day Lindy got home. Twins are hard work!! Double the work and double the amount of time it takes to do anything! It isn't so bad when you have some help but there have been times I have to do everything alone! That takes some planning!

Overall everything has gone well. Lindy has been adjusting fairly well. She is sleeping well which is really good. She doesn't seem to be eating quite as smoothly as she was when she first came home. She's been having large throw up attacks about once a day. All stuff we are trying to figure out. She has had a couple fussy spells and we cannot figure out what is wrong. When Will cries it is usually to tell us he is hungry. We haven't figured out Lindy's crying yet. I'm pretty sure there is more than just the I'm hungry cry! It has been really fun putting the babies together. Lindy seems to be calmed by Will and Will seems to care less about Lindy! Not sure he's noticed her yet! We've had them nap together a few times and it is the sweetest thing ever! Sleeping babies are SO CUTE!!!

Here are a few more pictures from the past few days. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

This is one of my favorite pictures ever! How funny is this?


Will's arm taste good!

Would you believe that today, Christmas Eve, is the first time that Drew and I have held both babies at the same time???? How crazy is that. We never could do it in the hospital because they were too sick and then Lindy got MRSA. We haven't needed to or had time yet since Lindy came home. Today we took the time and both held our precious babies. They are an armful!

143 Days and FINALLY HOME!!

So I should be cleaning bottles and making up new bottles, BUT I wanted to post some pictures of our great day! We left Duke around 2pm today with Lindy in tow. She slept pretty much the entire way. She got a bottle pretty much as soon as we got here and then we let her and Will lay together. Will pretty much ignored her!

It is definitely weird having two babies here! That will take a little getting used to.

Getting used to Lindy's equipment is going to take some time too. The oxygen has a 50 foot tube but the monitor has about a 4 foot cord. So you are tied to the monitor. It was not reading right most of the afternoon so it was constantly beeping. We'll get used to it, it'll just take time.

Here are lots of pictures!

It's REALLY coming to an end!!

Lindy is coming home TOMORROW!!!! Wednesday, December 19th! The best Christmas present we could have ever asked for!

After trying to ship her out of Duke, she has ended up staying there. Things really started picking up towards the end of last week. They made the decision about oxygen on Thursday and they came to Drew on Friday with home health companies. She has continued to eat like a champ all weekend long.

They moved her eye exam to today (Tuesday) and they said if she got a good report from the ophthalmologist that she could be discharged on Wednesday! Yesterday was spent trying to find home health companies and today was spent waiting for the eye exam. The eye doctor said she was looking good and stable and there has been no change since last week. They cleared her so that she can come home!!

Drew is in Durham today and he is 'rooming in' with Lindy tonight. They have rooms where parents can stay with their babies before they go home. We figured that since she is on oxygen that it would be good for someone to have a little experience with her before she got home. I really hope the night goes well for them. We've never been with her in the middle of the night!

Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day. Drew's dad, Bob, and his wife, Suzette, are coming up tomorrow morning. Suzette is going to keep Will all day and Bob will be taking me to Durham to meet Drew and Lindy. I want to be there with her when we leave the hospital!! Plus I don't think Drew would be comfortable driving two hours with her in the backseat by herself, on oxygen.

I can't imagine what it is going to be like with two babies, one being on oxygen. I'm pretty nervous actually! I really can't imagine what it will be like on Thursday morning when no one has to get up and go the hospital. One of us has been at the hospital everyday (except for 2 days) since July 18th!

As I was writing this post the company just delivered the oxygen tank. It's not as big as I thought it would be. It comes with 50 foot of tubing so you can put the tank out of the way and still take her all around the house. It doesn't seem too complicated.

So it looks like we are all ready for Miss Lindy. Well except I started putting together her bouncy seat and it seems kind of rickety. Will and I will have to spend some time tonight trying to get it together right.

I can't wait to see the babies together tomorrow! I can't wait to hold my babies at the same time. It will be the first time I have ever held them at the same time. We never got to in the hospitals.

So much excitement for tomorrow! Lots of big changes!!!!! Next time I post we'll have our whole family together at home!!!

Interesting Week!

I have been in Durham so I have not had time to post. There was some unwanted excitement this week while I was there. On Tuesday they were ready to kick Lindy out of Duke because they needed beds. They talked to Baptist and they would take her back but Baptist would have to bring her back to Duke next week for an eye doctor's appointment. That was going to be hard for Baptist. So then they wanted to send her to Durham Regional or Alamance Regional. We weren't too keen on either of those options. In the end they found a bed in their transitional nursery and she was going to go there. Before they actually moved her though, she desatted. So she stayed right where she was all night and then they never said a word about moving her on Wednesday.

Some good news for the week is that she tested negative for a third time for MRSA so she got moved to a regular room!! yeah. She also passed the 6 pound mark today!! She weighed 6 pounds 2 ounces today.

Drew went up today and there was more excitement. She has been on room air for almost a week, but they decided today to put her back on oxygen (on the nasal cannula). They said on room air her oxygen saturation should be over ninety 90% of the time. They prefer if you sat over 95. Well they looked back through all Lindy's records over the week and she is only over ninety 67% of the time. They made the decision that she will be coming home on oxygen. Yes we are excited that it will help get her home but it's still a little disappointing. So we will have to get all set up for that. We'll have to have a large oxygen tank in the house.

So now we are just working on feeds. I questioned yesterday whether she was working too hard to get the milk (which is now being thickened) through the standard nipple they are using. After about 35-40mL she gets worn out. Drew took one of our bottles back today with a Y cut nipple and she drank the whole bottle (55mL) in 5 minutes!!! Makes you wonder! She was back on the oxygen at that point and she was really hungry so we aren't sure which one it was. But maybe we're onto something. Drew is going to keep trying it tomorrow.

Will is doing great. He is really thriving at home. He continues to be such a little sweetie. He had an appointment today with the NICU follow-up clinic and they said he is doing well. They said he weighed 8 lbs 8 oz. Nine days ago he weighed right at 8 lbs so I am having trouble believing he gained 8 oz in nine days. It might be a difference in scales. Anyhow, he's growing like crazy!

Enjoy some recent pictures.

Our hippy tie dye baby.

Chill Will in the bouncy seat!
Mommy and Lindy!
Lindy while she was on room air.
Lindy on room air again, getting her clothes changed.

Paparazzi Shots

My babies are constantly fighting away the paparazzi (me). Here are their paparrazi shots. Don't they look like they got caught doing something a bit inappropriate and they are saying, "NO!!!! Don't take my picture!"

Overdue Post

This post is long overdue. Where has the week gone?

Drew was in Durham on Sunday and Monday of this week. He got to see and work with the new and improved Lindy that eats from bottles. He came home Monday night and I went to see my little girl on Tuesday. I just got back home Thursday and Drew headed back today.

So the biggest news of the week came from Lindy's eye exam on Tuesday evening. The doctor said her eyes are looking good this week. There is no more blood, which is good. There was a chance the eye could have bled more, even after taking blood out last week. The left eye is looking better as well. She said that Lindy is growing and getting bigger and that helps the situation out. The area of concern is farther away from the macula which is good news. She said she felt the possibility of surgery on her left eye is about 0%!!!! I like that percentage!

She has continued to learn to bottle feed this week. We've been working with occupational and speech therapy. She did so well on Tuesday that they took out the feeding tube on Wednesday and had her eat all her feeds with the bottle. She did well until about 9am on Thursday. The girl was worn out. She would absolutely not wake up to eat, so back in the feeding tube went. She was still sound asleep at noon but she woke up for her 3pm feed and did great. The doctors went back to having her bottle feed every other feed. It might have been a little too much too quickly.

The doctors have worked hard on getting Lindy off the nasal cannula this week. She is on the absolute lowest settings that she could be on. But for some reason, she likes them! They have done chest x-rays and echocardiograms in hopes of finding out why she likes the tiny bit of air flow. But they never found anything! They have changed her to a stronger diuretic and they took her off the cannula this afternoon! I SOOOOO hope this is it! It would be so great to bring her home on room air!!

They have also done other tests on her this week. They did an upper GI test today to see if she has reflux and she doesn't. Which is a little surprising, we all thought she did. They did a pulmonary function test today to see if she might need any breathing treatments or such. We haven't heard the results for that. Lindy is planning on having every test she can at Duke. So far she is passing them all!

The word 'home' is being talked about with Little Miss. Which is hard to believe. She has to get a good check up with the eye doctor next week and she has to learn to eat better and consistently from a bottle. But the end is in sight!!!! What an awesome Christmas present it would be to have her home by the 25th. I'm afraid to get my hopes up too high though.

It's a bit scary to think there could be two babies in the house in the near future. For the most part Will is awesome, but there are some moments I think to myself, "There is another one. agaggag!!!"

Speaking of Mr. Will, he is doing great. He had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday and he weighed 7 pounds, 15.6 ounces! I think we could almost round it up to 8 pounds! He feels so huge compared to Lindy. (She is weighing in around 5 lbs 13 ounces this week.) Wild Will got his four month immunizations on Tuesday and he hasn't been his usual happy self the last couple days. He slept all day Tuesday and Wednesday and he has been fussy the last couple days. We hope it goes away soon! Will doesn't have much news these days. He just eats and sleeps (and poops quite a bit) these days. Pretty boring, regular baby stuff!

It's been awhile since I've put pictures up, so here are some recent ones! They are SOOOOOO cute!!!!!

Hitting the Bottle

Since Will has absolutely NO problems bottle feeding (he likes to suck down a 4 ounce bottle in under 10 minutes!), this news is about Miss Lindy! Let me start with last week at Baptist. She was trying to drink a 5 mL bottle each day but it was not going very well. She would drop her heart rate and her oxygen concentrations. She didn't appear to have the suck, swallow, AND breathing mechanism down. So they actually stopped giving her a bottle after multiple days of this happening.

So fast forward a few days to this morning when I call on Lindy Duke to check on her. The nurse says, "I just finished giving Lindy a bottle and she drank 40 mL." WHAT???? I said, "Excuse me? Did you just say FORTY? As in four, zero?" She said, "Yes. Actually the nurse gave her a bottle last night and she drank all 48 mL of her feeding." I then replied, "Are you talking about Lindy?" I was starting to think she was talking about the wrong baby! She explained that last night Lindy was going to town on her pacifier and seemed hungry. The nurse asked the doctor if she could try to bottle feed her. So she did and Lindy took the whole bottle. The day nurse did it again at 9am this morning and she took 40 mL.

She has shocked us once again! This time in a good way! Out of no where, the child has learned to drink from a bottle! After last week we thought this eating thing was going to be a very long and drawn out process. Seems to be that she has sped it up a little bit! They have written orders for her to bottle feed every other feeding. Whatever she doesn't take from the bottle they put down her feeding tube. Drew fed her this afternoon and she took 26 mL of the 48 mL. The nurse fed her 30 mL at 9pm tonight.

Go Lindy! Go Lindy! Eat away!!!