It's September!

Today is the first day of September, which is significant to us for two reasons:

1. School started today so my time with the babies is now officially limited.

2. When people ask “When are the babies coming home?” we can reply “hopefully this month!”
1. School. Eh. It started. It was nice to have the distraction but a bit awkward to be focusing (or trying to focus) on something other than babies right now. ‘Nuff said about that.

2. The prospect of bringing Lily and Charlie home is just about the best feeling I can imagine. Let me just stress that we don’t know when they’ll be home and there is absolutely no set date for their homecoming; it will most likely be some time within the next six weeks if they both progress as they have lately.

The first really good sign that homecoming is getting closer is their weights. Lily gained another 50 grams and is now 1805, which is just half-an-ounce short of four pounds! She was so tiny for so long but for the last three of four weeks she has been gaining weight like a champ. But Charlie just won’t give her a chance to catch up. He gained 60 grams today and is now 2070, or 4 lbs 9 oz. We’ve been really focused on getting to the five-pound mark, since we were told shortly after they were born that that was the desired weight to be discharged. We’ve since learned that five pounds doesn’t necessarily mean an automatic trip home, but it’s still a very significant size to shoot for.

Another good sign is eating habits. While Lily is still taking all her food as normal with the feeding tube, Charlie seems to have taken to bottle-feeding like he’s been doing it all his life. I posted yesterday about how he successfully took a bottle for the first time when Brooke gave it to him. Well, let the record show that he also successfully took a bottle for the second time when Brooke gave it to him. In fact, this time he ate 17 of his 30 ml from the bottle before he decided enough was enough. But the promptness to which he has taken to this method of feeding is a great sign that it won’t be long until he’s exclusively taking all his meals via a bottle.

The last really significant sign is their breathing. Charlie has been breathing with his nasal cannula for almost two weeks now and he’s taking a diuretic which should help ween him of it and on to room air relatively soon. Miss Lily is now exclusively on the cannula as well. And not only that but her oxygen requirements all day today were very, very low. So if their tiny little lungs can keep getting stronger at the same rate they have recently, both babies will be breathing with no help soon enough.

So there are a lot of good signs lately. Of course, as we’ve learned, we can’t stop worrying since things can (and often do) change in a matter of hours. But we’re going to try and focus on the good things. We can’t wait to have them home with us so we can get started living a “normal” family life!


Lily got a bath from Daddy tonight! Nurse Alicia put lots of bubbles in it so it had that extra spa feel!


Lily didn't enjoy her tub bath tonight as much as she enjoyed her first one last week. I really hope she was just in a bad mood and it's not because I gave it to her instead of Brooke....


Charlie and I got in a good cuddle this evening. It was very nice to hold him and burp him and put him back into his isolette all by myself. Yay independence!