Our twins' feeding and sleeping schedule

So lots of my friends have been asking about the babies - how often do we feed them, what times do they sleep, etc, etc.

Well, let me start by saying that they were on a strict 3-hour schedule in the NICU and we thought, "great! we'll just keep it going and all will be well"

Not so easy!

When Connor came home, we kept to the schedule very well. 2, 5, 8 and 11. Rinse and repeat.

By the way (and don't feel bad if you didn't know this - we didn't either), 3 hours does not mean you get a 3-hour break between feeds. It's wake at 2, change nappy (sometimes multiple times if baby pees/ poos while you're doing, which they seem to have a habit of doing in the wee small hours of the morning), feed, burp, feed, burp some more, rock to sleep, put down, shhhh baby if he's a bit fussy.... At this point 1 - 1 1/2 hours have elapsed, so there's 1 1/2 to 2 hours left before the next feed. I thought babies ate a lot quicker before having them.

Also, we were aware that we were "on trial" as he'd be weighed two weeks later at the appointment with the paediatrician so we were very careful to feed exactly on schedule. We even woke him (which, by the way, goes totally against my feelings - how can you wake a sleeping baby, especially one as cute as this boy, but apparently I want to be a competent mother more :) so we woke him to feed).

All went well and we were approved as good parents because Connor gained something like 45g a day over those two weeks, which is great.

At that same appt, we asked about moving him to 4-hour feeds, which she (the paed) was fine about doing, as long as he had the required amount of ml per day.

So we because slightly more lax in favour of more sleep and let Connor wake at 3 1/2 hours and sometimes, gloriously at 4 hours.

All this was easy to keep a record of (I'm a nerd, remember) because he was just one baby.

Then Kendra came home.

It's a whole new ballgame monitoring two babies and I totally abandoned The Notebook. I was actually so proud of this notebook in the days Before Kendra. I knew exactly when Connor made a poo, how much he drank and when, etc, etc.

After that, D would ask when C or K made a poo and I'd say something vague (I'm not a vague person by the way) like, "oh, sometime yesterday, or maybe it was last night. Actually could have been this morning".

No idea!

Anywayyyy, since life is about survival, we basically let the babies do their own thing. If they woke together, good and well; if not, also fine. We'd take whatever sleep we could get!

And the truth is that they let you know with their cries when they're hungry. When they cry, we do the NICU routine - grab baby, change nappy, feed, burp, put back to bed. Of course, as I said above, that takes anything from an hour to 90 minutes.

Although I must be fair to Connor - there have been some nights where he's slept longer, woken up starving after 4 hours, and the whole routine from start to finish has been 30 - 40 minutes. Yesss! More sleep for me.

The two of us love our sleep so we get the business done and then it's back to sleep.

This pic was taken while I was reading blogs on the laptop and feeding him, propping the bottle up with my chin. I'm trying to teach him to hold his bottle but so far he's not that interested in being independent :)

Back to Kendra... so she is strictly a 3-hour gal. Never sleeps a moment longer; in fact, often wakes a half hour earlier! You know what that means, right? Yip, even less sleep for us.

Interesting thing about Kendra - the MINUTE she pees, she screams in her sleep, waking herself up and then screams properly until the whole house is awake, even her brother.

D and I joke that we initially thought we'd have to buy separate cots so the babies wouldn't disturb one another; looks like we now have to buy separate HOUSES!

It's a joke but actually very true.

Seriously, she cries when wet, when hungry, and anytime she feels like it. You'd never say it looking at this pic though...

but this is a very familiar sight in our house. In the beginning I'd keep taking pictures hoping for one "nice" one and then I realised this is actually Kendra, no point denying the fact :) So we have lots of pics like this!

If they wake together, then D and I will each attend to a baby. Otherwise, it's really whoever gets to the baby first.

Confession time - I think I missed out on that "mother always hears her child crying" gene.

The truth is when one of the babies starts crying and I'm asleep, the crying weaves itself into a dream. By the time I'm aware that it's actually a real baby crying, the baby in question (usually Connor) is crying as if his heart is breaking because he's been ignored for some time. Either that or D will nudge me out of sleep.

Kendra shrieks and the high pitch usually breaks through the dream barrier :)

These days D does Kendra's and I do Connor's feeds at night time. That's so that we know when the baby in question woke, how long they slept, etc.

Which tells you that we don't wake the other twin when the one wakes. It's just easier for us because we don't wake with the cries. In fact, D sets his alarm clock to wake him.

New rules prevail

This past Tuesday they were 7 weeks old and something suddenly clicked for me. I realised these two LITTLE people are seriously kicking our butts. No more!

So we're trying to get them back on a schedule. And I've hauled out The Notebook again to keep copious notes. I've also learned that K eats as if she's a 3.2 kg baby and C as if he's a 4.6 - 5kg baby!

My full-time nanny starts on Tuesday and works from 8am - 5pm Monday - Friday. So our first goal will be to get them back on a 3-hour feeding schedule, then 3 and a half hour, then 4 hourly schedule. Hopefully this will help to restore some order to our lives again.

I typed up a 10-page document (don't laugh) on the babies...how to do bottles, laundry, bathing, etc, etc. so we are both on the same page, so to speak! I also have a feeding schedule form to keep track of the times and amts of their feeds.

I also have a new night nanny on Mondays and Thursdays so I'm getting a bit of freedom again - on Thursday last week I actually went to a dance class at the gym. The teacher asked me if I'm pregnant (!) but that's another story.

Wish me luck. Tomorrow I'll be TOTALLY on my own with these two for the entire day - pray that they'll be good babies and sleep lots and wake up one at a time because I only have two hands!

How are you guys doing?

Still missing being pregnant

I mentioned before how I saw a friend's maternity shoot pic and started crying. She sent me another preggy pic this weekend and there I went off, crying again.

It is honestly ridiculous because I love seeing the preggy belly and I'm happy for her.

So I wrote to her and told her I'd asked God to show me WHY I keep getting emotional when I saw her gorgeous belly pics and He answered me through this post.

Mandibula articulated what I couldn't quite get my head around.

It's because this was it for us - no more money for more IVFS so no other pregnancy is possible and since my pregnancy was also cut short, I'll never have a pregnant belly again and I LOVED being pregnant so much.

It almost doesn't seem fair. There are people who hate being pregnant and yet do it so easily and here I am, loving it but not able to do it naturally, or even enjoy the one pregnancy I did have the honour of having, right to the end.

I always knew I'd never go full-term but our goal was 36 weeks and I honestly believed I'd make it to at least 35 weeks, especially because I had no problems with high blood pressure, shortening cervix, babies in distress, nothing.

And I did everything the doctor said to do - when he said to start working half days, I did it (yes, with a bit of moaning and groaning, but I did it) and I was going to go on full maternity leave exactly when he said to do so too (32 weeks) but of course, the babies came early.

I'm hoping that by putting this on the blog, I can give a voice to these feelings and start getting over this issue!

P.S my one friend, who was 41 weeks pg when her son eventually arrived, said she also misses being pregnant :)

Business as usual?

A friend sent me an email to check if I'd had my six-week check-up with my gynae yet and was it "business as usual".

Actually, no, because my doctor is on holiday for two weeks. So I'll be having an eight-week check-up.

But.......we haven't done the deed since I was 26 weeks pregnant. That was when I had the second bleed and was told no exercise, no sex, no nothing.

So that makes it 12 weeks! Can't believe it's that long - will I even remember how it all works?

Or more importantly, will we be able to stay awake long enough?

;)

Kendra - an update

I can't believe Kendra's been home for only 2 and a half weeks. It feels much, much longer.

Kendra went for her check-up last week and weighed 2,23 kg - it was only an "acceptable" weight gain (an average of 20g per day since discharge) so we upped her feeds a bit and this week, her weight gain was "good" (average of 38g per day for the last week) as she now weighs exactly 2,5 kg . The new weight enabled her to be immunized.

Connor was immunized two weeks ago when he was 2,57 kg (in case you're interested, his weight gain since discharge was an average of 45g per day). I weighed him today (both of us on the scale, then only me.... so not very scientific) and he weighed 3,4 kg. Take off the heavy nappy and clothes and a more accurate number is probably 3,2 kg.

Since I'm nerdy, I like to know the background about the feeds so I asked the paed. Babies need 150 ml per kg per day. You then divide whatever that total comes to by the number of feeds - 6 or 8. So K needs 375 ml minimum every day. Divide that by her 8 feeds and we get 46.9 ml. We give her 50 ml for 6 feeds and I do two 75 ml feeds to try and keep her sleeping for a tiny bit longer.

I honestly can't say if Kendra's less fussy or if she's crying any less. Sometimes I think she's getting better; other times I think it's just the same. Frankly I'm too exhausted to think rationally and keep proper notes.

(Roz, my notebook hasn't been filled in for over a week!)

The paed said maybe it was colic but the definition is very loose - the baby must cry for 3 hours on at least 3 days every week.

I still don't think it's colic because it's only with us that she cries. She is happy as a clam with my mother. Probably because she is held all the time and picked up the minute she so much as opens her little mouth.

Of course if I had only one baby and nothing else to do, I could hold Kendra all the time too. But I can't - and this is the problem with twins - there's always another baby to attend to, and besides that, bottles, laundry, food and showers for me, etc.

I would also let her cry for longer if it weren't for Connor. The crying wakes him and then I have TWO babies to deal with, which is so unnecessary.

The * night nanny also has no problems with Kendra. When she came on Monday night, I asked her what she's doing to keep her quiet and she laughed. It's no joke - I really wanted to know. So she said she doesn't wait for them to wake (as we do); she wakes them to feed. Interesting...

Anyway, time to get some rest - a baby should be waking soon :)

(I have so much to blog about, so little time.)

* We're interviewing for a semi-permanent (about 6 nights a month for the next 3 months) night nanny tomorrow. Remember I said we'd been using my normal nanny who starts in Sept. Well, she can't work days and nights so I'm looking for someone else. Update to follow

6 weeks - part 2 - laundry and sleep deprivation

that is my actual washing line - I've been taking advantage of the warmer weather to get 80% of the drying done outside although my natural lazy instinct is to throw all of the clothes into the tumble dryer.

laundry

Since the babies came home, I've done more laundry than ever before.

I used to do laundry once a week for D and me. Now I'm doing at least one load every second day. The babies pee a lot, and they pee through their blankets and clothes, so it piles up quickly.

I mentioned in one post that Connor was peeing through everything and Rachel told me to make sure he was pointing down :) Did that and it worked a little bit. I mentioned it to my friend, C, with the twin girls, who said it would improve the minute they were big enough to "graduate" from the Huggies preemie nappies (diapers) to Pampers.

And it has.

Oh my word, what a difference. Connor's probably around 3 kg now - he weighed 2,57 kg two weeks ago - so on Saturday I put him in a Pampers Newborn nappy (2,5 - 5kg it says) and NO MORE SOAKED CLOTHES. That nappy keeps all the pee and doesn't leak. Amazing - I am loving it. Seriously. (D says I'm a marketer's dream - he can laugh all he wants but when I love something, I seriously LOVE IT :))

So now we need to get Kendra bigger so we can move her to the Pampers too and hopefully my laundry situation can get back to normal.

I actually counted the other day - they have a total of 14 babygrows and 13 vests - all preemie - and I refuse to buy any more of the tiny baby stuff. Hence all the laundry.

Connor has just about outgrown the preemie babygrows from Edgars. I have babygrows from 3 places and the Edgars ones are the smallest so have fitted them the best from day 1.


sleep deprivation

In the last 6 weeks I think I've cried more than I cried the entire 6 years before this. Before you call in the men with the white coats, let me add that I'm not a crying sort of person. Usually very even-tempered and yet...the hormones in those first two weeks coupled with the sleep deprivation since the babies came home from the NICU have left me a bit frazzled.

It feels like I'm ungrateful at times but someone told me that I'm still a normal parent (!) even though I went through infertility and am still entitled to all the normal feelings that go along with it. All true.

I've been keeping track of the crying (very nerdy of me but I need to know if I'm losing it...) and it is actually not that frequent - Thurs 6th, Tues 11th, Sat 15th, Tues 18th.......

On Tues 11th I hid in the bathroom to have some space and cry. That's when I decided to get the night nanny because I realised I'm sleep-deprived and it's affecting my reasoning.

Really, it's not fun and I am soooo not someone who can survive on just a few hours sleep. I've always needed at least 7, but preferably 8 or 9 hours sleep a night - nothing's changed now that the babies are here.

If you're pregnant and reading, sleep as much as you can now. Not that you can store it up, but just enjoy it. I soooooooooo miss my uninterrupted sleep.

I'm holding it together - sometimes I feel like I'm doing a great job (D certainly thinks so) and sometimes I think I'm barely holding it together.

The night nanny helps and of course, more nights would be better, but we can only afford about 6 nights maximum every month, so we'll savour each hour of those 6 nights.

babies

I love, love, love looking at their sweet little faces, hearing their cute little sounds and still have moments where I can't believe they're mine - finally.


P.S. trying to be honest about what life is like with two little ones but very, very grateful I have them in my life

My squirmy worm - (almost) wordless wednesday

I decided to dress Connor in leggings and a little jacket-type thing for a change instead of the standard babygrow.

Here he is, having a sleep.

I lifted the blanket to find........................ no leggings. I thought "am I losing my mind? I'm sure I put the leggings on him" although am sleep-deprived so you never know.......

but then I looked closer. Look at the bottom of the pic - he wriggled out of the leggings :)

this pic is for Natalie - I know you love the toes like I do :)

P.S. I actually took these pics to show D when he got home from work but they were too cute not to post :)

6 weeks - part 1 - about pregnancy and the babies

I almost can't believe it's been 6 weeks since the babies were born.

Guess who this is?

Kendra, of course - the only pic I could get of her and such a familiar sight :)

And this is Connor

things I'm still missing about being pregnant

• my glowing skin :) seriously, I've had to moisturise like crazy to even get my skin to look half-normal


• my thick hair - I went to the hairdresser to have the grey coloured and it didn't take!!! So I'll try again in a week or two. Apparently my hormones are still going haywire.............


• The Bump. I still have 2kg to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Started wearing non-preggy jeans a few days ago. Stretch jeans, but still, it didn't look too hideous.


• eating on demand - I am back to my bad habits of eating breakfast at lunch time and eating rubbish like chocolates and chips (crisps). I think I had an orange two days ago for the first time since I had the babies, and before they were born, I was having two a day plus an assortment of other fruits.


• email chats with my pregnant friends!!! Yes, you, you and you :)

things I don't miss

• getting up in the night to pee


• pubic bone pain when I'd roll around from side to side in bed


• pressure under the bump when walking


• people looking at me in horror when I'd say "still 6 weeks to go" or whatever

and now the babies...

• The first nappy (diaper) I ever changed in my life was Kendra's and then Connor's. Since then, I feel like I've changed millions. On the bright side, I am now a pro. I think nothing of grabbing the baby and lifting its bum to sniff if there's a poo.
• Connor has tried his best to aim his pee at me but I'm too fast for him :) He nearly got me today but my super fast reflexes beat him to it. That's a joke - I have the worst reflexes ever but it got better in pregnancy as I'd catch things to prevent myself having to actually bend over and pick them up. Maybe that stayed?
• Another thing I am a pro at is the bottle thing. I (kind of) joked with D and said my life consists of bottles, babygrows and babies (maybe I should start a new blog?). I wash, sterilise and make 16 bottles a day, sometimes more, because when Kendra cries, I give her a bottle whether it's her time to feed or not. We checked with the paediatrician to see if you can overfeed a baby and she said no, the baby will vomit what she doesn't want/ need. I've discovered I'm a bit of a control freak (no!) about the bottles - I think it's because I studied microbiology so I'm super-fussy about germs. Well...that's my excuse.

More on the laundry, emotions, sleep, etc. in a day or two.......... tell me in the comments if there's anything specific you want to know about and I'll include it in my next post.

The night nanny

K - cute toes after her bath

Well, the night nurse worked out beautifully.

I mentioned the money issue in my last post about sleep and I must say it got a lot worse before it got better.

Since Kendra wants to be held all the time, I decided to buy a sling so I phoned (just for you Mandy P :)) the lady who'd come to demonstrate her slings at our antenatal classes to order one. She was coming to the hospital to do the demonstration so we arranged to meet there.

Since I was there anyway, I decided to pop into the NICU to chat to the nurses who do night nursing. Long story short, they charge much more than the R250 I'd been expecting (R384) and was therefore totally out of our budget.

Very disappointed since I really liked these ladies and they know Connor and Kendra from their NICU days.

A friend then sent me another agency's details who place night nannies/ nurses and their rates were R250 per night so I emailed her too.

I also had a bright idea. So I texted my nanny starting on 1 Sept to see if she'd be willing to do some night nannying for us this month. And after some negotiations around price (R200), she agreed.

She arrived on time (actually a bit earlier), I showed her everything I needed to and left her to it. I was concerned that she wouldn't remember everything or that one of them would act up (K) and cause her to be flustered but she was very relaxed.

If you're paying for sleep, then you need to sleep. (earlier on Thursday, our paed said to me that I probably wouldn't be able to relax properly this time - I said "you don't know me - I love my sleep")

So I slept for 9 solid hours, totally uninterrupted by baby cries, worry, etc.

The next day was amazing - I felt myself again. D and my mother were also cheerful because we were all caught up on sleep. D slept 8 hours because he had to get up to go to work and my mother slept 10 hours.

The two of them were all "you're wasting your money" before but yesterday had totally changed their minds :) and came up with all these suggestions - "can't she work one or two nights when she starts in Sept?" etc, etc.

Finally they could see the value of sleep.

And I woke to two sleeping babies and a clean kitchen!

So we will see - she'll work a night for me every week until her actual start date of 1 Sept. I don't think she'll be able to continue after that but I will discuss with her because it's easier for me to cope on my own during the days than endure the sleep deprivation.

D's idea is that we negotiate instead of the 5 days we'd decided on, she does 2 days and 2 nights, so there's no difference in salary for her but we benefit at night, at least for the first month or two.

And now we look forward to our next full night of sleep - probably Monday or Tuesday night.

I'm so grateful to live in South Africa where help is very affordable - I don't know how you US gals do it all alone, I really don't know!

sleep

I'm so excited I can barely stand it.

We've got a night nanny coming tonight so we can sleep :)

Will update you tomorrow.


P.S. Kendra now weighs 2.23 kg.

35 week belly shot aka the reverse belly

I gained 10,9 kg (multiply by 2.2 for pounds) during my pregnancy.

A week later I’d already lost 6,3 of the 10,9 kg I gained during the pregnancy. Other people would be happy but it made me very sad – I cried and cried on the first Sat when I saw that over 5kg had already gone – because I loved being pregnant and it all happened so suddenly.

To date, I only have 2,1kg to go to get to my pre-preg weight.

Here are some reverse belly pics in the same format we took the preggy belly pics. These were taken nearly two weeks ago.

together at last

He looks three times her size but is actually only about 0.5 kg heavier.


plan B with sleeping arrangements - a camp cot. D assembled it, put the babies in andthen called me to see.

Well, I burst out crying.

Tears of happiness for a change.

This long, 4 1/2 year journey has led to this - finally!

Who needs sleep anyway?

It seems I really do!

When Kendra was still in the NICU and we only had Connor at home, it was a MILLION times easier.

D and I had our system - I did the 11pm and 2am feeds and he did the 5am and 8am feeds. No problem.

I could even cope with him alone when D went to work.

Connor is such an easy baby - we change him first (as they do in NICU) and then feed him and put him back in his bed.

Even when he's still awake, he lies there watching with his big eyes and then eventually nods off.

But no crying.

We were so paranoid about feeding him every 3 hours that we'd even wake him to feed at the scheduled times. And it goes against my very grain to wake a sleeping baby :)

Now that we know he's growing beautifully, and we know the formula (150ml per kg of baby, divide by no. of feeds per day), we're a lot more flexible. But I digress!

If he wakes before we do, he makes these little grunts for about 5 minutes and then if still no response, he starts fussing a bit more and then lets out a proper scream after that.

Kendra is another kettle of fish altogether.

She starts SCREAMING from the get go. No warning. 0 - 100 in 0.1 seconds.

Then we change and feed (we've actually started feeding first to calm her down) and have to wait until she's sleeping soundly before putting her down. If she's even the slightest bit awake she starts the SCREAMING again.

Now here's the thing.

She was absolutely inconsolable on Monday night. Here we were picturing another Connor and rosy feeding times and along came Kendra.

Would not settle - was clean and dry, fed, burped but nothing.

A HORRIBLE night.

Tuesday was a bit better - just a bit.

Wednesday more or less a repeat of Monday. Then D said something rude to me, I started crying and we were fighting. This all in the early hours of the morning which incidentally was my 35th birthday. Was emotional anyway because the twins' goal due date was Wed (36 weeks)

So I had a terrible start to my momentous birthday. It got better though at the paed appt because everything was perfect with Connor and of course, he was a nice, big boy at 2,57kg.

Afterwards we went to visit the NICU and told our sad story to the nurse there. She suggested that it may be colic? I'm not sure but I don't think so because she's 10 times better during the day.

D apologised for being rude and sarcastic (said it's lack of sleep).... we then went out for a nice bookshop jaunt (that's our nerdy thing to do) and then an early supper while we left the grandmothers babysitting.

That evening my mother (who's staying with us) offered to keep Kendra the entire evening. I couldn't say YES fast enough. I am a bad mother but I need my sleep and I don't mind the getting up (okay, that's a lie, I do :)) but I do mind the unnecessary SCREAMING. And she wakes her brother who then can't seem to settle. Already he gives me these looks like "who on EARTH is that loud girl?" Poor thing.

So my dreams these days don't include travels to exotic new destinations as they did before but a night nurse.

I have already asked God to show me HOW I can make an extra R5000 a month for a night nurse. He did it before with the IVF money so I know we can do it again. Already found R1000 in the budget for one evening a week, R4000 to go!

Any tips on getting Kendra to settle and settle quickly?

Breast vs Bottle - part 2

he loves sleeping like this and I just melt at the sight of the cheeks and his cute little mouth

Remember the post about the breastfeeding?


I realised that I need to do an update, so here goes...


I'd been carrying on, pumping away day after day, and taking the Espiride. After I did that post about not feeling myself, I halved the dose (only took the morning pill) which seemed to work much better for me. I could feel things again and yet it just took off the hormonal edge :)


The pills seemed to help a bit because I started getting 20ml, then 40 ml and then a grand total of around 60ml breast milk daily.


I know - big WOW :)


I took my offerings to the NICU daily - the one nurse was so awesome. She'd dutifully divide the milk between the two babies and then top up their feed with formula. And best of all, act like it was actually SOMETHING when I felt so stupid bringing in such a little milk.


I love empathetic people.


Then Connor came home. No difference to the pumping but I did feel like since he was well enough to be home, all the milk (ha!) should go to Kendra.


So that's what I did.


The following week we started getting an indication that Kendra was getting well enough to come home (temp regulating, etc.).


This also coincided with me reading an article on breastfeeding in a magazine.


The article said something about the first hours and the first week being crucial. And even if you don't have your baby with you immediately, to start as soon as you were together.



First I got cross (with the hospital staff for not telling me the proper story) and then I felt depressed because I take responsibility for not researching enough to be informed.


Oh dear, does this emotional roller coaster ever end? I'm so not used to being up and down.


That Thursday night I texted a couple of my friends to get the number of a lactation consultant. Well, all 3 of them gave me the same lady's name. And in the article, she was quoted as a reference too.


My one friend (who currently is breastfeeding her twin girls and doing a fantastic job - the only one I know with twins who is b.feeding, by the way) texted me two days later to check what the lady said and I was embarrassed to tell her that I still hadn't contacted her.


I continued to procrastinate until Sunday night. I'm not normally a procrastinator and wondered why I was doing it with this issue. I think it's because I hate failing at anything (um, infertility!) and also, I didn't know if she would be harsh with me because I didn't want to cry some more (up and down emotions).


But then again...I also wanted closure one way or the other. So I phoned.


I left a message for the lady and she called back within 30 minutes and was FABULOUS. Objective, very clear but also didn't beat me up for not contacting her sooner.


Asked me loads and loads of questions to get all the details.... twins born at 32 weeks, in NICU, one out, the other will be out in the next 24 hours, pumping not really working, blah blah blah.

Eventually she said that from the time of the birth, I should have been told to pump every 3 hours, day AND night, whether the babies were in ICU or not. That would have stimulated my milk supply sufficiently.

Well, the bottom line was this - I could still do it but it would be a long, uphill battle, virtually impossible. For starters, I'd have to hire a double breast pump because my Phillips Avent would really only do the trick if my milk supply was adequate to start off with, and then pump 3-hourly, around the clock.

Now that plus taking care of twins = setting myself up for failure

And what a relief knowing that was. She said to me "your babies will be fine with formula" and "there's no point in looking back now" - all very true.



I'd decided to continue until a few days after Kendra was home (up to the Friday to make it a full 4 weeks of pumping - I like round numbers!) but the homecoming day (Monday) was SO hectic, I only realised at 9pm that I still needed to pump.


And thought "stuff this" - I actually don't have the energy.


So that is that.



My babies are being formula-fed and from the looks of it, they seem fine. Look at his nice, fat cheeks.



Connor went for a check-up on Thursday and now weighs 2,57kg (multiply by 2,2 for pounds) and is perfectly healthy.


And the best thing is, his mother's feeling emotionally strong!


Things I am learning on this journey

• not to compare myself to others, especially my friend C with her twin girls
• everybody's body is different
• everybody's parenting journey is different

Kendra's homecoming pics

Last week we knew Kendra was about ready to come home because they'd moved her to a bassinet (which means she was regulating her temperature) and she was feeding from the bottle on almost all the feeds.

She still had the feeding tube though.

So when the feeding tube came out she would have needed to finish her complete feeds from the bottle for an entire day.

I got a call from the paed on Friday telling me her haemoglobin levels were a bit low and they wanted to do a blood transfusion if that was okay with us (of course it's okay). They went ahead and everything was well so she was "nice and pink" again on Saturday.

Then came the snotty nose.

She'd needed to be suctioned (gross!) before each feed because her nostrils were so blocked and we had atrocious weather in Jhb on the weekend so they wanted to keep her in until her nose was better.

That happened to be Monday and is when she was finally discharged.

we'd just arrived home

displaying some awesome lung capacity - my word, this girl can SCREAM!

Connor and I just behold the vision of the screaming baby in wonder because Connor is SOOO chilled. I'm not a screamer either but I don't keep quiet if I'm unhappy.

Maybe this is the baby version of being assertive?!

In case you've been wondering...

Kendra's home.

She was discharged from the NICU yesterday after 27 days - yesss! less than a month.

Life is HECTIC - I will be brutally honest if people want to ask questions :) - I have found myself falling asleep twice during the day and this morning fell asleep while burping Connor.

I am coping okay for now but dread to see what will happen when D goes back to work.........

more later - the boy needs changing and feeding :)