Daring to hope

Yeh, I know. Long time no post. But we were/are daring to hope that Lily is taking a turn for the better and I'm trying to be calm about it and not get all revved up in case things change yet again. Right now, Lily is being fed by bottle about 8 mL of breast milk every 4 hours. So far, it appears she is tolerating it and with the help of a medication and her suppositories, pooping a decent amount. We are still in limbo as to whether or not her troubles are over, or if this is a calm before a storm. We are daring to hope that she will continue to tolerate and they will continue to increase her feeds. Full feeds are 37 mL every 3 hours or 44 every 4 hours. SO, she has a long way to go. But pray she is on the mend and that she will progress quickly through the various stages and get to full feeds so she can have her PICC line taken out and be moved to the intermediate care nursery with her sister. It appears that is the only way that they will allow the girls to "see" each other and "be" with each other. Though not in the same bed, I could and Eric could hold them at the same time if they were both in the intermediate care nursery and they would be in the same area so we wouldn't have to jog between two to be with both the girls. It would be SO much nicer! If Lily does well with medication and suppositories, I don't mind at all if I have to continue doing them both when she comes home. If that's what it takes to get her home. It also appears she has some reflux, so they tilted her bed way up last night. But one of her nurses, Olga, said that there are medications to treat the reflux and that she should grow out of it. So right now, we continue to pray she will continue to tolerate feeds, increase feeds, poop more on her own, and be on the way to moving to the stepdown nursery with Eve.

Eve, the little bugger, still won't let go of her 1/40 of a liter of O2. And when she is on feeding tubes or taking a bottle, she desats and needs to have that upped to about 1/13. I think those equate to about 25 and 75 ccs. But I'm not positive on all the medical jargon. THe 1/40 is the smallest amount of O2 they can give her through the nasal canula, but she just seems to need it still even though it is so little. She is still doing well on the bottle. Eric fed her last n ight and got her to take a lot of the btotle and the nurse finished her up. I fed her the night before and got her to take 25 of the 37 mL and the nurse gave her the rest. We run out of time after half an hour, so the nurses finish up for us. It's looking like feeding sessions will take a while at home! I'm lucky I have a good supply of milk, as it appears Eve is just chugging away at it.

WEIGHT UPDATE: Lily now weighs...drum roll please...4 pounds 15 ounces. That's ONE ounce shy of 5 pounds. Eve, catching up to her sister, is now at about 4 pounds 9 ounces. That's ONE ounce over 4.5 pounds. So Lily has gained almost half a pound since birth three and a half, almost four weeks ago and Eve has gained a FULL POUND since birth! If Lily was taking more feeds, she would definitely have been up a pound I believe and be closer to 5 and a half pounds. But they are both going up and I'm glad for that. Lily can almost wear newborn clothing for babies weighed 5-8 pounds. And for those of you wondering length, the nurse last night said that the babies don't grow much lengthwise in the NICU unless they are there for MONTHS. So she said the pediatrician will be mapping the twins' lengths and giving us what preemie percentiles they fall into when they begin pediatrician visits.

All right, that's all I have time for now. We have more pictures, but until I find the camera cord I can't put any of them up yet!