tipping the scales

the home health nurse came for her last visit this morning. she was soo nice, and i have to admit, i am sad she wont be coming anymore. it was a nice reassurance to have the boys weighed and checked out every few days. but dr. n agreed, we really dont need the home nurse anymore. little by little we are cutting those ties to the nicu - the last step will be keegans monitor. another phone call today uncovered that we should have keegans results tomorrow - fingers crossed!!

the great news is that the boys are growing wonderfully! max was 7 lbs 6 oz today and keegan was 7 lbs 4 oz!! i can't believe they are both in the 7 lb range now. they look soo big to me now, but compared to when fin was born they are still tiny little guys.

here they are (max left, keegan right)...

good health

today we took max and keegan to the eye doctor and to the pediatrician for their 2 month checkup. first, let me just say, i cant believe these boys are 8 weeks old tomorrow!! we had good reports at both doctors offices.

the eye doctor was tough. max and keegan both got drops to dilate their eyes - that wasnt bad at all. well that is where the easy part ended. after waiting a bit for the drops to do their job, so ensued the pain. i have to inject that i am really grossed out by anything eye related, so take this with a grain of salt - but i will add that the whole thing rendered jon speechless (not an easy task). so the thing about a baby is that you cant just say open your eye - so this little metal clamp was used to hold each eye open for the exam. just the clamp alone brought on terrible screams from each of my boys. and frankly, that was it for me - it was all i could do to hold myself together. thank goodness jon was there. so once clamp is in, the doctor had to use this poker looking thing to press on the sides YES SIDES of each eyeball. so in otherwords - the clamp *really* opens the eyes. thankfully each eye only took about 2 minutes to examine - i dont think any of us could have taken any more. poor little keegan cried soo hard that he broke blood vessels on his forehead. so keegan went first with j holding him. i guess the plan was that i would hold max - but after i saw that i just passed max over to j and took keegan. i just looked at j and he knew i couldnt be the one to hold max. max and keegan were soo brave - but jon was equally brave. the doctors assistant told us after the exam that she cried through the whole first exam she ever had to do there with a baby. the good news though is that neither of the boys have ROP (retinopathy of prematurity) - which was a huge relief. we will go back in 6 months for a check up to rule out some other preemie related issues. i did ask the dr. if we had to use the clamp and poker thing again and he assured me we did not. one more thing behind us!

dr. n. visit was good and relatively quick. he did agree that max may have reflux so we are going to be doing some experimenting over the next few days to try and figure out what is going on. max gets soo cranky in the evening and early morning hours and is sometimes gagging when he eats. one of the things we are going to try is eliminating dairy from my diet for a week to see if he tolerates the breastmilk better. given that my husband affectionately calls me 'mouse' because i love cheese soo much this will be a tough week. when the dr. suggested forgoing the dairy for a week jon looked at me and said "oh - that is not going to be easy". but it is only a week and hopefully max will get some relief. in terms of the apnea monitor for keegan we still dont have the results of the first download. i am increasingly frustrated with this monitor and we were hoping to give it the boot. another call to the monitor co. today revealed that it can take as long as 2-3 weeks to get the download interpreted by the dr. because he only comes into the office one day a week. must be nice! our feeling is this whole monitor thing is crap. dr. n. even said that there is no evidence that these monitors prevent anything bad happening, but basically its a CYA thing. so we are just going to pray that the results come back quickly and as we believe there are no episodes on the download. if there are episodes, keegan will have to stay on the monitor a bit longer.ugh!

all in all though - it was a really good day. we havent been out with the boys, other than to dr. visits. we learn little lessons each time we take them out - todays lesson: i absolutely must buy a bigger diaper bag! you need a lot of stuff for two babies.

ok, time to sign off. but i must say before i go - i am soo thankful that we continue to get good reports at each dr. visit. today was certainly a day to count our blessings!

girls night out - ahhh!

i went out tonight for the first time since october with the girls. in fact it has been soo long since i have had a chance to be social like this, that i cant remember my last outing! it was great to be out - a much needed breather from the stress that has been my life recently. ironically, i walked into the restaurant and the first person i saw was one of the NICU nurses - boy is annapolis a small town sometimes. it was a fantastic night - great conversation, great food and even a great beer (or two)! jon held the fort down at home, and even said i could take the whole night off (meaning no middle of the night feeding for me). anyway, here i am unable to sleep...

tomorrow we have the day of dr. visits. (pediatrician and eye dr) hopefully it will be an uneventful day. i guess i must be a bit nervous about it or i would be sleeping soundly. ok - i am off to search for some tylenol pm.

bright eyed

the boys (max left, keegan right) are definitely starting to develop personalities. max is very much like fin, in both looks are personality. he loves being held and rocked to sleep. i am seeing some signs of colic or perhaps reflux with max - so i am anxious to hear what dr. n. has to say about this. max is less interested in what is going on around him, and more interested in sleep generally.

keegan is very bright eyed - he takes everything in around him. like his mother, he is going to be a people watcher. he is very laid back and is happy putting himself to sleep, just give him a binky and he is good to go. he also likes the new bird his big brother fin picked out for him last week.
















jon went back to work today -so i am on my own. fin spent the night at granny and pops last night so i could ramp up to being on my own. i am going out with the girls tonight, for a much needed girls night out. i cant wait! tomorrow we go for their two month check-up and their second rsv vaccine. this rsv is serious stuff - and is keeping us indoors for now. we are also taking them to the eye dr to rule out any issues that preemies sometimes encounter. i cant believe they will be 8 weeks already on wednesday - and we still have not reached their due date.

adapting to change

i have been thinking alot this week about change and how long it takes for change to settle in. as i have said, change happens in an instant - and often when you least expect it. but that says nothing about how long it takes you to get used to the changes. i couldnt be happier to have these two new people in our lives. but i cant help but wonder, how long is it going to take me to get past the whole experience of getting them here?

i feel like i am over the bedrest now, but even that took awhile. part of the delay was going to the hospital every day. then it was the physical impact - it took many weeks for me to be able to go up stairs without feeling every muscle in my legs strain. now that i take stairs with ease, and i am not at the hospital every day bedrest seems like a distant memory. but the rest of the birth experience and the nicu stay is sticking with me like an uncomfortable pain in the side. i was prepared for the c-section and that part was relatively simple - but having my boys rushed to another room before i even got to see them was tough. at one point after they were both born and i was still on the operating table i heard dr. j. ask someone how they were doing. the response was b is doing ok, and baby a had a really rough start. it is still hard to take that i didnt get to hold max for days.

it does take awhile to settle in to change - i am still working on it. it is odd the things that trigger your memory too. watching grey's anatomy this week was tough because they were treating a baby in the nicu. as a crier, i was crying my eyes out while i was watching it. but i couldnt help but wonder, am i always going to feel this way when i see a sick baby? is it always going to take me back to that raw place of the early days of max and keegans lives? how long will it take be removed from those raw emotions? will i ever be removed from them?

i got film back today online from the throw-away cameras that we used while i was on bedrest and in labor. that was a trigger too - seeing pictures that i didnt even realize had been taken of the first time i held keegan while i was on the operating table and the first time i touched max on his way to the nicu. its funny, many of the pictures didnt turn out (those cameras are fickle) but those "first" moments were captured and i am grateful for that.

what could be better?!

the best big brother w/ lil bro max (left) and keegan (right)...















fin and daddy give keegan a bath















keegan in the bath















max in the bath















our little tax deductions (keegan left, max right)

oh, the joys of home monitoring

well, keegan did have to come home on a monitor. it is a pain in the arse for several reasons. foremost, is that we truly believe he does not need to be on it. basically, it was described as a CYA thing. so here is how the day goes with a baby on a monitor. sometime just after you fall asleep from the early morning feeding (generally right when you really get into a deep sleep) the freaking machine starts dinging for some random reason - usually a loose lead (the part attached to k). and when i say dinging, think smoke detector loud - if you are standing right under the smoke detector that is. so you are startled out of bed and in this bleery eyed state need to figure out which lead is loose. mind you the baby is double swaddled and under the third blanket to keep him warm. after a few minutes of this mind numbing dinging you decide none of the leads are loose - so you turn the stupid monitor off. just turning the monitor off requires pressing a series of 3 buttons in the right order (not so easy to remember at 2 am!). then you strip the baby down, change all the leads - which involves pulling the old ones off (imagine ripping a bandaid off) and putting new cold ones on, turn the machine back on. if that didnt wake the baby up, then the monitors self test will- which involves more mind numbing dinging. then alas, things are working again. so you get back in bed, hope your three-year old is still sleeping through all this racket. and just when you fall asleep - the freaking thing decides to ding just once to let you know it thinks your child is having an apnea. so you are up again - looking at your child, who is happily breathing with no problem. so lights off, back to sleep. DING,DING - again, it thinks your child it not breathing. lights on - oh look, child still breathing! basically, it is set so that it doesnt register shallow breathing - which is sometimes how a sleeping baby breathes. anyway - you get the idea. we are tired of this machine. so we call the company, after about 10 false loose lead alarms yesterday morning alone and ask them to come download the information. jon had to practically beg the guy to come do a download - not to mention that it took 3 phone calls just to get the technician to call us back - unacceptable! they obviously want you on the machines as long as possible, since that is how they get paid. so monday they are coming to download - hopefully keegan will not have to be on this machine too much longer. fingers crossed we can turn this damn machine back in and never look back!