April 25

Its been a good week. The girls will be 31 weeks tomorrow which is hard to believe! Its amazing how much bigger they get every day.

Mary is doing better with her oxygen requirements. She is still on the cycled CPAP but is down to 30-33% from 40-45% oxygen. They did a chest xray yesterday and did find a little bit of fluid in her lungs so they are giving her lasix for 3 days to help get rid of some of that fluid and hopefully help her breathing. She did go down in her oxygen needs before the lasix though, so who knows. She is just being ornery I think!

Vivian is doing awesome with her breathing, and is currently on 27% oxygen on just regular CPAP.

They are doing well with their feeds and gaining a little bit of weight every day. They never have any leftovers in their tummies after their feeds and are pooping a lot so it means they are tolerating their food very well. A little too well sometimes..Vivian had her first blowout on me yesterday. It was shocking how much poop could be in one tiny human less than 3 pounds! The nurse ended up having to take over for me and we had to change all of Vivian's bedding. It was crazy! What goes in must come out I guess?? Haha.

We got to give them sponge baths on Tuesday night which was so fun! They were not huge fans of the whole process, but when we were done washing and rinsing we put a bunch of lotion on them and then put a warm blanket underneath and on top of them and they just completely relaxed. Their whole bodies stopped moving and they just laid there and looked around. It was so adorable!

Pic#1 is of Mary this morning looking around. She looks great today and is very alert. Pic #2 is Mary after her bath and #3 is Vivian after her bath.

Also their hair! I think its gonna be blonde! Actually sometimes it looks strawberry blonde, so who knows?? Its pretty crazy, I never expected to have two blonde girls after Norah because her hair is exactly my color. But it is pretty cute.

They continue to have periodic episodes of bradycardia (lowered heart rate), apnea (pauses in breathing) and oxygen desaturations (lowering of oxygen), but nothing out of the ordinary for babies their ages. I think over the course of this week they have had less too.

I get to hold each of them once a day, and between that and pumping time flies up here during the day. I guess thats just how it is when you have twins ;)

So overall they are good! Slowly we are starting to adjust our lives to this new normal, and I'm starting to think that maybe we can do this, and maybe someday they actually will come home. One thing (out of many, I'm sure!) that I have learned during this experience is to not take the little things for granted, like having all of your family living together in one place. I used to get so tired, and I will say a little bored some days being home with Norah, and I'm sure it won't be easy when I'm home with 3 kids under 3, but I hope I remember what these days were like and enjoy the present.

It brings tears to my eyes to think of how wonderful people have been to us and all of the things friends and family and even people we don't know very well have done for us. It means so much to know that we have all of you thinking and praying for the girls. Thank you.