Our berries are three weeks old today! Can you believe it!

Today our little girls are three weeks old and making great improvements every day.    They haven't had any alarms in a long while so now we are just getting the feeding down.  The doctor has bumped them up to 5 feedings each day that will be taken by bottle (our goal is to get to 8 in one day before the get to go home).  We were just moved up to 4 the other day so the girls must really be getting the hang of it.  We're crossing our fingers that our little berries will be home with us by the end of the week.

Minerva and Evelyn at three weeks old

 

Enchanting Evie - 4 lbs 13.7 oz

Magical Mina - 5 lbs 2.8 oz

Minerva's first bath

Evie is ready for more bottle

Akimbo Kangaroo

Tara and Mina

11 Days Old Llittle Berries Update

I just thought I would post a little update for everyone since I had a few minutes (such a rare thing these lately).  Things are gong well for all the berries.  We've just been staying busy with our visits to the hospital to see the girls and pumping (they say pumping takes dedication - man what an understatement!)

The girls are gaining weight daily.  They were back up to their birth weights in with in a week from birth.  Right now, Miss Mina's is at 4 lbs 7 oz (started off 4 lbs 2 oz) and Miss Evie's 4 lbs 3 oz (started off 3 lbs 15 oz).  We've been able to start breast feeding and bottle feeding which is one of the major steps for them to be able to come home.  In order to come home the girls have to be able to have 5 full bottles without help in one day and go 5 day without any alarms going off (they're mainly monitoring their heart and respiratory rates).  The alarms they are counting are when they both drop and the girls don't recover self recover.  The majority of multiples don't go home together so they may come home on different days, so that is something we're trying to prepare for.  Really though, both little ladies are doing wonderfully and but are both getting stronger every day.

I've got to say NICU is the hardest things I've ever experienced.  I feel like a visitor in my own daughter's lives right now It really just doesn't seem right.  It's not really something I really anticipated :-(  But then again, I don't know how one would go about preparing for it.

Seth and I know the girls are in the best hands possible.  The people at Presby Plano's NICU have been amazing.  They've helped us so much in preparing for our girls care and understanding how their needs are gong to be a little different than term babies.  I would never wish a NICU stay on any parent, but if this is the place to go if anyone needs it.

Here's some pictures from our morning visit today :-)

Double Roo Daddy

Miss Mina sleeping girl

Mommie and Evie Rooing away

Jack and Pam shared photos

The Harper Grandparents added a gallery of their photos of the T-Berry Berries:

The girls got out of their isolets today and have joined each other in a single crib! Minerva was quite fascinated with Evie, but Evie seemed more interested in my Spider-Man blanket. (I must remember to take it back before she steals it from me!) We were very excited to be able to dress them for the first time. Tara also was discharged from the hospital today. She has bounced back from the delivery super-quick, as she always amazingly seems to do from surgery. I am taking the next week off from work so Tara and I will be adjusting back to home life and bi-daily trips up to the NICU at the hospital to see the girls. Speaking of which we're heading up there in a little bit so I better wrap this update up! Enjoy the pictures!

Quick Update

I had a few moments so I thought I would post a quick update. Pardon the brevity. Leave comments if you need more details!
* Minerva Leane Thornberry was born at 5:51am on 6/8/2010 - she was 4 lbs 2 oz and 17.5"
* Evelyn Josephine Thornberry was born at 5:52am on 6/8/2010 - she was 3 lbs 15oz and 17"
* They are both incredibly beautiful, just like their Mom
* They are progressing *very* well
* Mina is completely off breathing support of any kind
* Evie is due to come off the cannula this afternoon (the last of the breathing supports)
* They both had a habit of grabbing the breathing stuff when they were on and pulling them off. I think this shows incredibly good hand-eye cooridination at what is essentially an almost negative age. ;)
* We have been rapturous having our Kangaroo Time (laying the baby on our chests, skin to skin contact) with Mina and should be able to start Kangaroo time with Evie tonight or tomorrow!

Pictures!

I've uploaded all the pics we've snapped so far - enjoy!

Big news

Our water broke at about 2:45 this morning. We just made it to Labor and Delivery and are getting checked in. Will keep you posted.

32 Week and 5 day Belly Profile Pic

So since we're on home rest we've got a new location for our belly pics :-D

Week 32 Doctors Appointment

A few days after our visit to labor and delivery we went to see the doctor to follow up.  My blood pressure was still a little higher than the he would have liked, so he wants me to monitor it twice a day now.  Thus the purchase of a handy digital blood pressure cuff.  Yeah!  The doctor listened to the girls and checked me out.  He doesn't seem worried about my cervix any longer since we've been able to make it this far.  What he is worried about is my blood pressure and any swelling that might indicate signs of pre-eclampsia.

At this time his recomendation is that I go on home rest so that I can minimize the amount of time that I am up on my feet.  He's fine with me working from home so I have made arrangements with my firm to do so part time so that we can put off going on short term disability for a bit longer. 

I'm heading back to the doctor after one week so that they can do another sonogram of the girls (a bpp - biophysical profile).  They'll do lots of measurements on the girls and make sure they aren't under any stress.  Until then all I can do is make sure I do take it easy until then.  Everyone keep their fingers crossed for us until we verify that they aren't under any stress.  I'll get up another update after our appointment.  Hopefully we'll get some more pictures of them too. :-)

Unexpected Trip to Labor and Delivery - 31 weeks and 6 days

On May 27th right after dinner Mommaberry was having some pain in her upper right abdomen.  I got horizontal to see if they'd go away and they only got worse.  When it didn't go a way for a while we ended up calling the on call Dr. to see if there might be anything we should be concerned about.  It was recommended that we go ahead and head to labor and delivery to get checked out.  As soon as we got up to go leave the majority of the pain subsided but we decided we would go ahead and go since I'd been feeling a little off all day.

Once we got to labor and delivery they decided they wanted to monitor me, set me up on an IV, and check the girl's heart beats.  My labs all came back normal, which was good (apparently a pain in the upper right side of the stomach could be a sign of liver distress).  Turns out my contractions were actually pretty regular (around 5 minutes apart).  Fortunately, they weren't really painful, just uncomfortable.  They checked me to see if the contractions were dilating my cervix (the good news is that they weren't).  They ran the test to see if I was going to deliver in two weeks or not, that came back negative.

The Dr. on call decided it would be best if they observed me overnight so we settled in as best we could.  The doctor also insisted that the girls heart beats be monitored all night.  It's normally really nice to hear their heart beats, but they were being quite stubborn little berries.  Once we would find one heart beat the other would move.  They were definitely being little stinkers.  The poor nurse was having such a hard time getting them.  We'd have to get re-situated every time I got up which always took at least 30 minutes, but we made it through the night without too much stress.

Our Dr. showed up around 8:30 and suggested a shot that would slow/stop the contractions since they had continued through the night.  It slowed them for a little bit, but they came back so the Dr. wanted me to stay through lunch to see if the shot really worked.  We talked about the possibility of a steroid shot to help the girls lungs mature if they came early.  We decided to wait it out to see how things go.  He cleared me to take a shower.  After the shower, the contractions actually stopped so by the time he came back after lunch he decided to let us leave the hospital :-)  He did want to see me again on Tuesday so that he could check my blood pressure since it had been a little high while I was in the hospital.

So that's what happened with our little trip.  The good news is everything is going well, we're just keeping a close eye on things.  The nurses at the hospital are really nice and we got a little run through of what to expect when we go in there for D-day :-)  Now we know better what to put in our hospital bag too.  I'll get an update on our Tuesday's doctor's visit soon (hopefully tonight or tomorrow).