Big Babies and Bottles

We mentioned last night in our brief update that Charlie was acting up a bit. Right before we left for the evening on Saturday night he had a few pretty dramatic bradies (dropping his heart rate) that required his nurse Sue to intervene. Since Charlie has not behaved like this in a long time, Sue called the doctor in to check him out. They did tests to check his oxygen levels and to look for infection, but luckily everything came back fine. The doctors eventually determined that Charlie’s caffeine dose needed to be adjusted, and since then he’s been doing just fine. I told Charlie that that was the last of the drama I wanted to see from him. His next traumatic episode could be when he falls of his bike and skins his knees, but nothing before then!

So Charlie had a less eventful day today, which was good! He’s still working on his bottle feeding. He took a bottle for Joe this afternoon – rather slowly and begrudgingly, but he did it. And this evening Sue could tell that Charlie was in the mood for the bottle, so she gave him one and he sucked it down happily. His feedings were upped to 34 ml and today he weighed in at 4 lbs 13 oz. So close to 5 lbs!

Miss Lily is also packing on the grams. Tonight she’s up 65 grams to reach 4 lbs 4 oz after her feedings were increased to 32 ml. She chugged her afternoon bottle like a champ, but wanted nothing to do with her evening one, though she was probably just tired from her bath! Charlie’s nurse Mary was with Lily tonight (Charlie is only a little jealous) and she had Lily all ready for a sponge bath when we arrived. We moved her to an open bed so we could work with her more freely and had a great time washing the Bug and taking pictures with her. After her bath, when she was snuggled up in Joe’s arms, we realized how much she’s looking like Charlie these days! You can definitely tell that they are brother and sister right now.

So both babies are making progress. The goals for the next few weeks are to get them to take all their feedings with bottles and to get off the cannulas and on to room air. I’m sure a busy month is ahead of us.

On another note, I got a tattoo yesterday! Joe wanted to get the babies’ names tattooed on him and I decided that I would do it too. We went to the tattoo parlor, but unfortunately they were unable to tattoo Joe in the location he wanted, so he’s rethinking his plan. I went ahead with mine however – I got three small hearts on the inside of my left ankle. Each heart has one of the babies’ first initials in it and there is a halo over the “A” heart. I really, really like it! And for anyone curious, getting a tattoo does not affect breastmilk. Anyhow, hopefully Joe will decide on something he’d like and we’ll go back soon to get his done.

It's a shame that Charlie can't get comfortable when we hold him.

Uncle John caught a foul ball at a Phillies game last week. He's been carrying him around with him calling him "Fouly" and yesterday he brought Fouly to meet Charlie. Charlie was not impressed.

Lily is most displeased to be getting her feeding from the feeding tube instead of the bottle. She's sucking away on the pacifier and seems quite unhappy that she's not tasting her milk.

Lily loves her little froggy outfit!

Lily just loves to be adored. We must all worship her.