December 27, 2013

Last night.... was sleepless!!!! Our little boy is definitely growing and is up in my ribs. I used to be a stomach sleeper and am now sleeping on my sides. But he is transverse across my ribs and therefore, stretches across to my sides. When I try to sleep on my side, I am completely uncomfortable and my back hurts. One of my legs usually falls asleep too. If I turn toward my stomach to try to relieve this, it's uncomfortable and sleeping on my back is like impossible!!! It doesn't help that the hospital bed has no give/support at all either. But other than being sleepless, our night was uneventful!

My OBGYN informed us yesterday that he was going to be selfish and take off today so he could spend time with his family since he worked through Christmas. Another OBGYN stopped in this morning to talk to us and see how things were going. He recited what my OBGYN told him which is everything we already knew. He asked me how many days I had been here and I informed him it has been 25 days and he replied "that sucks!" I found it to be quite comical how blunt he was! He seems like a good OBGYN and will be stopping in this weekend as well as he is the one on call.

This morning we had a knock at the door and they informed us they had a basket of goodies for us. They run a program called HOPE and deliver baskets to those who are in the hospital for lengthy periods of time. They said they recently had dealt with this, received a basket, and it was helpful. So therefore, they are doing the same for others. They left and closed the door and I heard one of the young children that was with them say "what about the babies?" and they came back in with another basket for the babies! The baskets contain things like snacks, activity books, reading books, toys, mints, etc. It was very thoughtful and generous!!!

Our HOPE basket:

The babies' HOPE basket:

Paul brought me my acrylic paints and bought me some more canvases. I started working on 2 paintings today...1 for each of the children. I am about halfway done with them.

Paul did some running around town today including getting me more yarn! :) He also brought me back Subway for lunch which was delicious.

The lactation consultant came and talked to us today. She said she has been looking at us daily to see if we have had the babies yet and is surprised we are still holding on! It is amazing how many people in the hospital are just watching and waiting along with us! We talked about breast pumps and what her suggestion would be having multiples and preemies. She suggested the same one I had been looking at which was great! She informed us that we could get it through Aspirus Medical Equipment right here in town which is wonderful!!! She did suggest that we still rent a hospital grade pump at the beginning for a few months as these are the best and will help get my supply going and to keep it up. She talked to us about what to expect with breastfeeding multiples and preemies. She basically said don't expect much! She said to keep calm and don't panic. Her advice was for us to be in the NICU as much as possible and do skin to skin (kangaroo care) with our children at least once daily. She said the parents that do this seem to have an all around better experience as the children do better with everything and get released sooner. She also talked about how my body may not produce enough breast milk for 2 children as our bodies typically only make enough milk for one. She said if that happens, it's still better than nothing and we may have to supplement with some formula. I am hoping that isn't the case but you never know! It was nice to get to talk to her and hear her expertise.

I started to make another cocoon that will match the hats I made previously but didn't get too far.

After being here for 25 days and going through MANY nurses, I can't help but have my good ones and my not so good ones. I haven't vented yet but after today, I am going to! The nurse we had isn't one of my favorites and today only helped to reaffirm my feelings. Every nurse wears a pager like thing that they can talk through but it is like always using speakerphone so everything can be heard by everyone. They aren't supposed to use them for patient information. My name was said across it this morning by her which irked me all though it was minimal. I then had to remind her to give me my morning meds. She struggles with finding the babies in order to monitor them and that's partly because she doesn't listen to me and my suggestions. I get monitored 3x per day and for the most part, they are almost always found in the same place. She always looks places other than where I tell her and struggles. This afternoon that was exactly that case. She got our little girl on no problem but struggled a lot with finding the boy. She got frustrated and just held it which has had to be the case before. Even when she was holding it, he would come in and out and not trace very well. Typically my NST have to last 20-30 minutes of good tracing on each child. Our little girl was probably on and tracing well for that long but our little boy wasn't even on for 10 minutes and MAYBE traced well for a few minutes. She got a call that her triage patients were told by the doctor they could go home. She vented to me that she wished she could have been in there to hear exactly what the doctor told them and said but that wasn't the case. She then just took off the monitors and left! I know everything was more than likely fine but there is no way our little boy had a full NST done and with only a few minutes of tracing constantly, there is no way they could tell if he passed it or not. What if something was wrong?!?! Paul had gone to get dinner during this time and when he came back I was fuming! I am truly hoping things like this don't continue!!!

On a positive note, only 16 days to go until our second goal of 32 weeks!!!!