Still day 5

My entry earlier this morning was about yesterday, but this one is about all the happenings today. Sean and I got kind of a late start on the morning because I was taking my time getting ready and trying organize just a wee bit along the way, so we didn't get to the hospital until just before noon. Then we had to leave around 5 to get back to the house in time for our grocery delivery (HIGHLY recommend Safeway.com!!) so it was a short visit with the girls, but another great day for us all.

So now both girls are on nasal cannulas and breathing room air, with no supplemental oxygen. (The cannula gives them a little bit of helpful pressure behind the air.) The nurses said that the girls are doing so well without help that they may be moved off the cannulas altogether tomorrow!

Charlotte was taken off the bilirubin lights today and Lilah will probably be off them tomorrow. There's a chance the jaundice might come back after a few days and they'll return to the lights, but maybe not. Without the lights, they don't have to wear the foam eye masks and we get to see their faces and watch their eyes open every once in a while. The color is still the undetermined vague infant color right now but we're pretty sure blue is in their future.

Both girls are also up to 3 mL of milk every 2 hours by feeding tube and handling it very well. It will probably continue to increase every day until we see how they do drinking direct from the source. In the meantime, I'm seriously stockpiling their supply in anticipation of how much two girls will need at some point.

So what are the next steps they need to take before being released? They need to be able to regulate their body temperatures independently and they need to hit a certain weight - word on the street is 1800 grams, but there wasn't a lot of certainty behind it. Charlotte is currently about 1300, so she needs to gain about 30%, which is pretty significant. Charlotte is also doing well at maintaining her temperature and they're slowly lowering her incubator temp by a half-degree at a time to see if she can keep it up. If she does, they'll soon remove the top of the incubator and let her wear clothes, and then she'll graduate to a crib before finally coming home. Lilah isn't doing as well at regulating, but that's in part because she is so much smaller and has less body fat to rely on.

But being small doesn't mean being mellow. Lilah can't be swaddled because her skin needs to be exposed to the lights, and right now she would desperately love to be contained. Her little arms flail about and she arches her back and pushes her feet against the rolled-up towels and her toes get all tangled in her wires like she's a monkey swinging from vines. She constantly wants to grab something with her long fingers and that something tends to be either her mask, her feeding tube or her cannula - all of which she's yanked on enough to cause problems. Today I called her a troublemaker and the nurse replied, "That's a good word for it." Lilah is just a sensitive little girl, the one whose heart rate skyrocketed in the womb alarms went off, and she needs to be comforted better than what she's been getting.

Finally, the best part of the day was that Sean got to hold Charlotte himself for the first time. Daddy cuddle time!! It was like she's always belonged in his arms...