6 weeks old

The babies are now 6 weeks old (or 34 gestational weeks). Have we really been doing this for 6 weeks?? Time has gone really quickly in some regards. The girls had another fantastic week. Here's how it went:

Adalyn went back on cpap 24 hours after being on the oxygen prongs. She didn't need a blood transfusion after all. She has been pretty stable on her oxygen and has been on 21% on her cpap most of the time now (we all breathe 21% oxygen so this is the goal). They are going to try her on prongs again today so hopefully she can be off the cpap for good. She has been getting "cpap belly" this week which is caused by air from the cpap blowing into her stomach. It is big and probably not very comfortable, but is nothing serious. It will go away when her cpap is taken off. She wasn't tolerating the fortifier they were adding to her milk so they switched to another one. They do their best to fatten these babies up! Both girls are just over 5 pounds now! Both babies also got moved to an isolette with the top off. Apparently the beds they were in before can cause pneumonia in babies on cpap because the tubing has to go up and over the side, causing the water to pool in the tubing. Here are some pics of our sweet little Adalyn.

The girls got some cute outfits this week in the mail. Above is an outfit from my mom and below is an outfit from my sister, Nikki. Thank you!

Alivia had a great week too. She is still on cpap and they didn't even try to switch her to prongs this week. They do something called a histogram that tracks their oxygen levels. If the levels aren't high enough on the cpap then they won't switch them to oxygen prongs. They are going to do a histogram on Wednesday and then attempt the prongs on Thursday (6th attempt). That will be a full 2 weeks from the last attempt. Hopefully she'll be ready this time! Here are some pics of our sweet Alivia.

The babies get an assessment every 6 hours by the nurse. They listen to their heart and feel their pulses. They also switch the little mask on the cpap tubing so as not to cause damage to their little noses. They switch between a nose mask and cpap prongs. They are also supposed to take their hats off and give them a little head massage (pic above). It's nice to catch a little glimpse of them without everything on their head.

Here's Alivia's outfit from grandma (my mom).

And this is the outfit from Aunt Nikki.

Grandpa, I am ready to go to Disneyland and ride on the roller coasters!

Christmas in the NICU.

This is our girls' first Christmas.... too bad they were in the hospital for it. But we decided to wait until they come home to have Christmas. We are leaving the tree up and all their presents (and our presents) are still wrapped under the tree. The tree in the pic below is the one at the NICU.

On Christmas morning the nurses told us that Santa had come. The girls got beautiful hand knitted blankets and hats. There was a notebook with each blanket. A member of a knitting group started a portion of the blanket, wrote a passage in the notebook and then sent it to another person who did a portion of it... and so on. There are a few people all over Canada who worked on these blankets and we get to read a special note from each of them in the notebook.

The NICU also gave the girls some gifts on Friday. They got the pink outfits in the pic above, as well as the red outfits and red blankets in the pics below. Grandma also sent 2 red Christmas outfits. We couldn't put them on because they pull over their heads and the cpap doesn't allow for that.

The 3 pics above are Alivia and the next 3 are Adalyn.

This is the ornament we bought for their first Christmas. It already had "Two peas in a pod" written on it which we liked because the area in the NICU where the girls are is called a "pod." There are 4 areas in the NICU- A pod, B pod, C pod and D pod. Ironically our girls are in A pod. So two peas in 'a pod' has a double meaning.

I just want to say thanks again to everyone for their prayers and support. The girls are doing so well and we are so grateful for that.

Merry Christmas everyone!