Fight for Preemies Today

November is National Prematurity Awareness Month, and today, November 17, is National Prematurity Awareness Day. The March of Dimes has asked us preemie mom bloggers to do a post on how prematurity has affected our lives. I don't feel like I need to do that, since our entire blog is pretty much about that topic. Click on any post and you will see how prematurity has affected us. Joe and I are grateful that this blog has allowed us to share Charlie and Lily's journey and we are beyond thankful for all the support we have received because of it. But today we ask you to think not only of Charlie and Lily (and our sweet Annaleigh too) but of all the tiny miracles in the world currently fighting for their lives. Please support the March of Dimes and help give these miracles the chance to thrive.

Click HERE to see the Fight for Preemies Band created in Charlie and Lily's honor and to donate to the March of Dimes in their name.

One Fussy Bug

Oh Lily, you are a mystery. What have you been up to? We wish we knew. Since Saturday Miss Lily has not really been herself. She cries for her bottle right on schedule. She gets excited when she sees it, she roots enthusiastically. She gets it in her mouth and sucks...but not really. Instead of the vigorous sucking needed to actually take the bottle, she sort of just gums it and doesn't drink much. It's incredibly frustrating and we aren't sure why she's doing it. She's still eating, just not nearly as much as usual - 1-2 ounces per feeding as opposed to the 3-5 she had been doing. She still throws in one major feeding or so a day (she took over 5 ounces for Joe last night) but then goes back to messing around. She also hasn't been sleeping as much during the day and has been unusually fussy at times.

I don't get the feeling that she's sick - she has no fever, no cold symptoms, no signs of stomach upset, etc. Last night I had coffee with two friends who each have boy/girl twins (hi, Gretchen and Trish) and after describing Lily's behavior they both told me that it sounded like the beginning stages of teething. This could be possible, since biologically the babies are almost 5 months. The girls recommended that I give her Tylenol 30 minutes before a bottle to see if that helps. If she sucks better after the Tylenol then her gums may have been bothering her. I plan to give that a try and see how it goes.

On the contrary, Charlie has been Mr. Easy Going. I guess he's trying to balance out his sister. For the last few days all he's done is eat, play, sleep, repeat. Such a good boy - for now. I'm sure he'll take his turn once Lily perks back up.

As for the great search for a pacifier holder, we've reached a big fail. The Wubbanub is cute but still doesn't stay in their mouths well. So I ordered Paci Plushies, which are also cute but also do not stay in their mouths well. And Lily decided that there is nothing worse than the pacifier that comes with the Paci Plushie. The moment I put it in her mouth she started to gag. I immediately removed it, of course, but she continued to gag until she threw up all over herself and me. Ooops. Okay Lily, message received. No new binkys! I'm assuming these things will work better when the babies are a little older and can grasp better. We'll see. For now Joe and I are resigned to replacing binkies in mouths as often as needed.

On Sunday we took Charlie and Lily to the cemetery to visit their sister. We've been wanting to do this for some time but hadn't gotten around to it. But on Sunday the weather was so gorgeous that we decided we better do it then since it could be the last nice weekend we have for awhile. It was a sad thing to see, Charlie and Lily's little car seats in front of Annaleigh's headstone, but we thought it was important for them to "see" her again.

Afterwards, Uncle John and Aunt Rebecca came over with dinner for us - manicotti, salad, bread and pumpkin whoopie pies - which helped cheer us up. When it came time to eat both babies were asleep in the living room - Lily in her bouncy seat and Charlie in his swing - so we decided to go all out and eat in the dining room (with me leaping up every 5 minutes to peek in on them). When I heard Charlie wake up over the baby monitor I unplugged him from his apnea montior for a few minutes and brought him into the dining room with me. He was fascinated by these new surroundings - the babies rarely leave the living room since they are tethered to the monitors. He was staring around at everything all wide eyed. I guess we need to start taking field trips to other rooms in the house!

Every once in awhile Lily will stare at something over our shoulders and make this face. I can't say it's not a little unnerving. What is she looking at?!?! Although maybe she's just practicing her scared face for a career as a horror movie actress. Scream 10 anyone?
Sorry, Bug. Not the most flattering picture of you, but I love the look on Charlie's face!

Lily always looks confused when she's put with Charlie. It's like she's thinking, "Who is this kid and why do they keep shoving us together?!?"

Hip hip hooray for Mommy!

Trial and Error

I should start off this post by saying that Joe and I are in pretty good spirits today. We each got 5 hours of consecutive sleep last night! Not at the same time, mind you, but it was still a good night. The babies have been napping better during the day (and for Charlie that means that he's actually been napping rather than staying awake for 12 hours straight) so we're hoping that's going to help them sleep better at night. Last night they slept from 8:30 pm - 12:00 am, took their bottles and went back to sleep from 1:30 am to 4:00 am. That was a good night! They took a 4:00 am bottle then dozed on and off until their 8:00 am bottle, after which they both napped soundly for about an hour and a half. Yay!

It seems to help that we've discovered that Lily loves the swing. Who knew? The first few times we put her in it she screamed, so we stopped trying. But last night, on a whim, Joe put her in it when she was super fussy and she quieted right down, then fell asleep. She slept for over three hours in it (the 8:30 pm - 12:00 am period - and don't worry, I was right there in the living room with her the whole time!) last night, so we have a winner! I put her in it late this morning when she was in a super bad mood and it calmed her right down and helped her doze off. Awesome! We also have high hopes for the Wubanubs that we ordered thanks to the recommendations of some of our readers. I put a rush on the order so I'm really hoping they come today!

We're also trying the tandem feedings again. The babies are bigger and better coordinated than they were the first time we tried it, so we're hoping we'll be successful this time. So far, so good! When we do this, we put Lily in our lap and Charlie propped in his boppy next to us and hold both bottles. The benefit of this, aside from saving loads of time, is that it will help get the babies on a more synchronized schedule which will help with napping and sleeping at night, we hope!

When they aren't sleeping or eating, Charlie and Lily have been playing! I try very hard during the day to keep them engaged when they are awake. Charlie really loves his play mat - he stayed on it happily for 45 minutes yesterday, waving his arms at the toys and watching the lights. Lily really likes the rain forest crib soother that I recently put in their pack n' play. It makes jungle sounds, flashes lights and the little animals move around. We also sing songs, read books and do tummy time. I'm excited that the holidays are coming so we can start reading Christmas stories and singing Christmas songs! My mom has a huge box of Christmas books at her house from when my sister and I were little, so I'm anxious to have her break it out and start reading all my old favorites to the babies.




Really, it is not as easy as it looks.

It's a Bug in a swing!

The play mat is endlessly fascinating to Charlie. The lights! The lights!

Roy doesn't understand why this baby keeps hogging his mat.

Rest time! Two babies and two cats take a snooze.

Burn Baby Burn

What do you get when you cross a sleep-deprived mommy with a scalding hot bottle sterilizer? Second degree burns on 20% of your leg :( Saturday night had been shaping up to be relaxing. It was just 8:30 and Lily had already fallen asleep and Charlie was not far behind. Joe took Lily up to her bassinet and went to bed himself. I was going to clean up the kitchen and then bring Charlie upstairs so that he and I could join in the sleep. But as I was taking the bottle sterilizer out of the microwave I dropped it - right on to my thigh. Yeah, that water is hot. My leg did not look good and it HURT. Needless to say, Joe did not get much sleep after I busted into the bedroom in my underwear screaming, "I burned my leg! I burned my leg!"

My mom came and took me to the ER and Joe's mom came to help him with the babies (who by some miracle I did NOT wake up with my screeching). After 5 hours at the hospital, I was given some painkillers and my leg was treated with ointment and wrapped. The burns are second degree, but since they are on such a large portion of my leg the hospital wants me to go to a burn center for further treatment. I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon. Luckily, I'm still able to function completely. My leg, although really, really gross looking, does not hurt too badly and it's not keeping me from taking care of the babies. I hope that they don't do anything tomorrow at the burn center to change that! The only bright side was the pain killers given to me in the hospital were super strong and knocked me out, leaving me no choice but to go home and sleep. 6 hours of consecutive sleep was pretty awesome, but I still think I would have preferred to skip the scalding!

Today Charlie and Lily had another visit to St. Peter's to have their eyes re-checked and an apnea clinic appointment with the wonderful Dr. Hiatt. The babies were measured and weighed -Charlie was 9 lbs 6 oz and Lily was 8 lbs 9 oz. Dr. Hiatt then checked the babies all out, testing their growth and development. He declared them to be excellent, which made us very happy! We then reviewed the information that had been downloaded from the babies' apnea monitors. The babies had each had between 8 and 10 brady episodes since being home. None of them were serious, but they will be remaining on the monitors for awhile longer. Charlie will also remain on his caffeine. As Dr. Hiatt said, we seem to have a winning combination that is helping the babies to thrive, so it's better not to make any changes. After they saw Dr. Hiatt, the babies moved on to visit with Dr. Wasserman, who checked the progress of their eyes. Both Charlie and Lily had improvement from their last visit, but both still had small spots on both their eyes that need to watched. Dr. Wasserman said he has no reason to think they will need any sort of treatment - in fact they are almost in the clear. They go back in four weeks and hopefully that will be the last eye appointment we have!

So I realized today that I have no concept of how big the babies are getting. The other day I finally relented and switched Charlie to 0-3 month clothes as opposed to the newborn sizes he was busting out of. But this afternoon Joe was feeding Lily and I looked over at her in his lap and realized that she could not straighten her legs because her little newborn sleeper was too tight. My little Bug is big! It's exciting that they are growing, but strange that they are no longer tiny. Still, growth is good - and it means a whole new wardrobe for them both!

Charlie has recovered from his shots and has returned to being our sweet boy.


Lily? Well...Lily might need another day or so.

Sleeping Charlie... so cute!

Pediatrician and Goodbye Work

Thursday turned out to be quite the eventful day. It started off with Joe's triumphant return to the house and babies. He finished his antibiotic course and his cough had improved, so he came home bright and early Thursday morning to help me take the babies to the pediatrician. The appointment went well. Both babies were thoroughly examined by their doctor and pronounced excellent. Charlie weighed in at 9 lbs and Lily at 8 lbs 4 oz. Then it was time for their shots. Both babies got four total shots and took them like champs. We return next month for their second Synagis shot and in two months for more vaccines and another checkup.

When we got home, I received some unexpected news. A large round of layoffs at my company had left me without a job - I was officially laid off. I was pretty surprised, as I had just set my return-to-work date for December 8th and had intended to be going back three days a week. But my position had been eliminated with the layoffs and there would be nothing for me to return to. This news was bittersweet. It is sad because I truly loved my job. I worked for a wonderful company with some really incredible people. The work was interesting, I had fantastic bosses and I liked all my co-workers. I know I will never find another job that I enjoy as much as that one. The good news in all of this is that now I am able to stay home longer with the babies. While I know I would have enjoyed going back to work, I was very, very nervous about leaving Charlie and Lily and I know in my heart that I just wasn't ready to be apart from them yet. Between severance pay and unemployment I should be able to stay home with the babies for a while longer, which I think is best for everyone. So I've officially joined the ranks of stay-at-home moms, at least for the foreseeable future.

In other news, the babies are so fussy!! We are blaming Thursday's shots, as they have never been like this. They refuse to sleep, which is making them extremely irritable and disagreeable to just about everything and anything. It's made for two very tiring and stressful days, but we're hoping that they snap out of it soon. Joe has been incredible though. Last night, Charlie refused to settle down after his 11:30 pm bottle. I could barely keep my eyes open and finally started sobbing, "I just can't stay awake anymore!" Joe immediately ran over, took Charlie from me and sent me off to bed. He got Charlie settled and napped on the couch with him until the next round of bottles. Then in the morning, after I had conquered the 3:00 am feeding, Joe got up early with the babies and sat on the couch with them for hours, keeping them comfy as they napped, while I slept until 9:15 am. It was wonderful, and at 4 hours it was the longest stretch of consecutive sleep I've gotten in over a month. We're really hoping that there aren't too many more instances like that in our future.

Perhaps it was sleep deprivation that contributed to my first major screw up as a parent. The evening after their shots, Charlie and Lily were both extremely fussy. I decided to give them each a dose of infant's Tylenol as the pediatrician had suggested. I gave Charlie his dose (and he loved the cherry flavor) then gave Lily hers. After I shot the liquid into Lily's mouth, I turned to Joe and said "That didn't look like as much as I gave Charlie." Joe agreed and I looked closely at the dropper and realized that I had accidentally given Charlie DOUBLE the dose he should have gotten. I freaked, cried, paged the pediatrician and called poison control. Both the poison control woman and the pediatrician assured me that while I gave Charlie more Tylenol than he should have gotten, it was still within the "safe" range. Whew. I was so relieved, but still felt terrible :(

Finally, congratulations to my friend Colleen and her husband Chuck, who welcomed their beautiful baby girl, Abigail Claire, yesterday. Lily looks forward to meeting her new playmate!

In case you were wondering....


The men, hard at play.

Here is a scene that plays out again and again (and again and again) each and every day here. Binky falls out of baby's mouth. Baby screams.

Mommy or Daddy rushes to replace binky.

Life is good once again.

Get Well, Daddy

Yesterday Charlie and Lily spent their first night without Daddy. About two weeks ago, Joe came down with a cough. Nothing else - no runny nose, no sneezing, etc. He felt fine except for the cough. Just to be on the safe side he wore a mask around the babies for several days, but when the cough continued without getting worse or better we figured he probably just had allergies. Yesterday though his chest started to hurt, so to be safe he headed to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with walking pneumonia! Now, the doctor diagnosed him just by listening to his chest - no x-ray or anything - and he really has no symptoms of walking pneumonia (at least according to what we read online). Still, the doctor felt confident that he was it even though Joe and I aren't so sure. She gave him the three-day Z-pack antibiotics and an inhaler.

I immediately called the pediatrician as I was worried about Charlie and Lily's risk of getting sick. She assured me that the babies should be fine. You can't catch pneumonia - it develops as a secondary effect of something else, like Joe's cough. She said the babies could have caught the cough, but Joe would have really had to be coughing in their faces for that to happen. He, of course, had NOT done that, plus we are nuts about hand washing and sanitizing. Even though Joe has been around the babies for 2 weeks with this illness, now that he is "officially" sick we were worried about him being around them. Plus, sleep was what the doctor ordered - literally. So Joe spent last night at his parents house. My mom, Charlie and Lily's Crackers, came over and spent the night with us. The babies enjoyed the sleepover with their Crackers and we got along fine, but we sure missed Daddy!! He's going to stay one more night at his parents' house just to be on the safe side and so he can get more rest, but then he'll be coming home to us!

So Daddy was down for the count, but Charlie and Lily are going strong! I thought it was time to bring out their Baby Einstein play mat, since they seem more interested recently in looking at things and following sound, and they really seem to like it. It has a cute little lights and sound soother on it that both babies really like looking at, and they'll also look up at the toys hanging above them. But Charlie and Lily aren't the only ones who like the mat! Roy and Roger seem to think that the toy is theirs - they've taken to napping on it every chance they get. Luckily the babies don't mind sharing! In other news, Charlie and Lily have graduated from newborn to size 1 diapers (well, Charlie graduated and Lily has gone along for the ride). After a few diaper leaks I decided to try the bigger size diapers on Charlie. They looked HUGE in comparison to the newborn size and I thought they'd never fit him, but they do! They are getting so big - it's great!

Tomorrow the babies go to the pediatrician for a check-up, their four month vaccines and their Synagis shot. The Synagis shot is designed to protect the lungs of preemies and other high-risk babies from RSV. The babies will get one shot a month beginning in November and ending in March. Synagis is not a vaccine and will not prevent the babies from contracting RSV, but rather a dose of antibodies that will strenghten the lungs and help them fight RSV should they become infected.

Before our photo shoot on Sunday, Joe and I tried to snap some pictures ourselves. As you can see, sometimes it is best left up to the professionals.

Regardless of who is behind it, Lily totally knows how to work the camera. We have a whole series of pictures like this, each with a different, priceless expression.

This? Well, this just makes me happy.

Lily and Charlie enjoying their play mat.

Luckily Roy was willing to share "his" new toy with Lily.

America's Next Top Models

From about the moment I found out I was pregnant I have been saying how much I wanted to have professional pictures done of the babies. So imagine how excited I was when Jen contacted me and volunteered to do a photo shoot for us! Jen is a friend of my good friend Lauren, and the owner of The Photo Kitchen in Robbinsville, NJ. I was thrilled because Jen has been doing pictures for Lauren for years and I have seen just how incredible her work is. We are so lucky that she was willing to do this for us! So on Sunday Jen showed up at our house and got to work turning our babies into super models. Charlie and Lily surprised us by cooperating SO nicely - I really think they have a modeling career in front of them! These are a few of the teaser pictures that Jen sent us from the shoot. She took a TON of photos and these are just a few - but they are all so gorgeous I can not WAIT to see the rest! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jen! You are wonderful!