Room with a view!

It's been another top week for our girls. The first piece of good news was Olive reaching another milestone. She's now over the 2 kilo mark! That is 4 pounds in the old money. Way to go little Olive - as of today she is now 2.076 kg.

Little Olive...

...gets bigger every day.

Then on Tuesday Eliza was adjudged to have kicked her "Nek" (refer Two Steps Forward) in the neck. This was welcome news because it means that she has gone back onto Megan's milk, and the feeling of having a full tummy.

As usual Eliza is chilling

It is a slow process, starting at 1ml per 12 hours and increasing at a trickle. But she has made great headway and is not only tolerating the milk, but guzzling it down. She is now being fed 9ml per 2 hours and will be up to 11mls per 2 hours tomorrow.

Perfectly content

Hopefully by the end of this week, she'll be getting all of her nutrition from the milk, so she can say goodbye to the pesky long line IV which feeds in through her left foot. All in all through her travails Eliza continues to surprise us with her progress.

Despite all the fuss.

Remember she started life so tiny at 760 grams - today despite the Nek issues, she is 1366 grams an increase of 606 grams. And even better is her temperament. She is one of the least grizzly babies in the whole unit, which is frankly amazing when you consider how much she's been poked and prodded in her first 5 weeks.

But despite all of the girls great strides, our best news this week was a change of scenery. Most people who have visited thus far have come to Nursery D, which was a dark room. Because our girls are doing so well they have graduated to Nursery F, which is designed to afford families a bit more space and privacy to allow Mums to learn to breast-feed in comfort.

Home for the first 4 and a half weeks, but no daylight.

And talk about comfort! The room is bright and sunny, with a lovely view to the South across Newtown School. When you are spending 3-6 hours in a room each day, having daylight is so much more pleasant, and of course our precious girls are getting to experience it too - what a tonic for us all.

Nursery F, our new home away from home.

And a room with a view

And Megan and Olive are the breastfeeding champions! When Olive is in the mood, she can sustain up to 15 minutes of concerted feeding. And she knows what she's doing; the nurses draw back the contents of her tummy through her feed tube, and so we know the milk is going down.

Privacy and space aplenty.

Olive and Megan are right into it.

Clever Olive.

Great Mama Megan.

Serious chowing down.

Another great day on Saturday as Megan bathed Olive, which is much easier because she has been stripped of all of her monitoring cables and cuffs. I assisted Megan in the bathing duties, and we did the whole thing without any help from the staff. It certainly is a great way to learn the fine art of parenting, but possibly not for everyone. The only downer about this was no photos, but pictured here are some delightful snaps of Megan and Olive pre-bath.

Two of the prettiest girls around

What a sweet girl.

Bless you Olive.

Next up for us is to step up Olive's feeding on a more sustained basis. This will take a few weeks, but despite that it is looking increasingly like she will be ready to head home a few weeks sooner than her sister. We all need to be ready for this likelihood, but there is still plenty of time to get used to the idea.

Two steps forward, one step back.....

From the outset of our time in NICU, we'd been told to expect the journey to be like taking two steps forward then one step back. Of course we didn't think this would apply to our two precious girls, and we supposed our dream run would last until their return home. Well it hasn't been quite like that this week.

The nurse looking after Eliza last Saturday noticed she had a distended tummy, which was also firm and was sufficiently concerned to call in head nurse in charge. After X-rays they decided to treat Eliza with a batch of antibiotics for the worse case scenario... wait for it Necrotizing Enterocolitis commonly known around the unit as "Nec".

Eliza's incubator is full of gadgets again, damn.

Nec is pretty common about the 2-3 week mark for little premies. The condition, when full-blown, results in a hole in baby's abdomen causing a nasty bacterial infection.  So the NICU philosophy is to treat any tummy problem as if it's Nec and jump on it fast; better safe than sorry. After her great weight gains on Megan's milk, poor Eliza will be nil by mouth for 10 days. So her longline IV has been reinserted so she can be given nutrients while she's on this treatment. At first we were pretty stressed, as the worst case scenario (surgery) was very scary.

But she's cruising.

Luckily it turns out she's on the lower end of the scale, and we're just very lucky to have a medical team who've left nothing to chance. Through all this, she's been such a good girl - very settled and not many grizzles. Every day since she has looked more herself - we know she probably misses the feeling of her tummy full of milk, but she has been so incredibly brave. The medical staff are pleased with her progress.

And is going to tough it out for 10 days.

Olive, meanwhile left her incubator behind and was put in a big girl's cot! The first day this happened, Megan panicked and thought she had disappeared, as the cot is much shorter than the incubator. That is not the kind of scare you want to have too often.

 Olive in her big girl cot, dressed to impress.

Olive too had a minor step back soon after. On her second day in the cot, she was back on Wellington CPAP as her 02 saturation levels had been dropping quite frequently. Regardless it's been pretty exciting seeing her in real clothes, and helping to undress and dress her, around her cares. We've said this before, but with your own babies, you don't see the medical apparatus - like Olive and Eliza, it's what we have become used to as parents too.

Back on Wellington CPAP

But still as sweet as can be.

So all in all, this week has been a reminder that this is a journey. Quite a few people have asked when we are likely to be getting the girls home. We used to say that it's typically around when they would be full term (just after xmas for our girls), but now we think the best answer is when they are ready - there's no rush. It's also been a little lesson in our journey as parents of twins. These are two individual little girls who will approach things differently and will be ready for things at different stages too, which is pretty exciting really.

And intelligent too!

And even more exciting was Olive's first bath! This was conducted by Michael, with the assistance of one of our favourite nurses Maria. The beautiful photography is by Megan. If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then these photos shall form a treatise on happiness and cuteness.

Precious cargo!

She likes it!

Nurse Maria is a great teacher.

Hang on a minute do I like this after all?

Yes I do!

A few people have asked about visiting - well here is the deal. If you read this blog then we'd love for you to meet our girls, if you'd like to. There are a few simple and sensible rules.

The visiting window is 3.30-6pm ONLY every day. We can only have a total of 4 visitors at a time in the nursery including us, but there is a family room where extras can wait to stagger visits in and out. Kids under 12 can't visit, but the family room is a safe place for them to wait. You should be well and if you have been sick (ie a cold etc), then you need to have been well for the previous 48 hours before coming in. No jackets are allowed inside the nursery (just leave in your car - it's warm inside) and visitors should wash their hands before coming through the double doors.

The NICU is very easy to find on the fourth floor of the newest block of the hospital. There is very good and quite cheap carparking under this block. So if you're in Wellington and want to see if they are as good in the flesh as they are on film, pop in and see us. Megan or I try to be there during every visiting session, but probably best to text us to make sure we'll be there, and in case others have already arranged to visit. You can't see the babies without parents there. Megan cell 021 377372. Michael 021 476007

3 weeks old!

Our beautiful girls have turned 3... weeks old. As Megan so eloquently says; time goes fast and slow at once. We adore the time we have with them which rushes past, and when we aren't there they seem to grow so fast without us.

Megan is mostly recovered from her operation - she can move around pretty well, but she's still avoiding stairs. We are sleeping in our studio (which most people call a garage) on the ground floor of our Karori home until she is 100%.  A huge thanks to my buddy Nigel GX who came and helped me shift the furniture on a work day. I have to say even though I wouldn't want to sleep there all the time it is quite fun, a little like camping!

We have had a big setback this week as we (just the parents thankfully) were hit by a virus like a ton of bricks. I went down on Sunday morning and endured a terrible 48 hour bug. Just as I was recovering on Monday night, Megan rode the same nauseating 2 day rollercoaster.

The very worst thing about this is that NICU enforce a strict "you must be well for 48 hours before you enter the unit" rule. It is a very sensible rule, which ensures the safety of all of the precious lives in there... but it is oh so hard to go 4 days without seeing your angels.

In fact I was so miserable in that 48 hours that I made a movie of Eliza and Olive to take my mind off of the problem. It is a humble effort, but I'm sure you will see their star quality shining through.

Today is Thursday. I've been well for two whole days, so I have been in to cuddle both of them, and they are in great nick. Eliza has broken the magic 1 kilo mark, and is a very healthy 1010grams. Olive is now a whopping 1560grams. Remember when they were born Eliza was nearly half her sister's size? Well now it's more like 2/3rds so she is making great headway.

Megan last saw them on Monday while I was ill and she had a joint cuddle too... these are really wonderful because you get a great look of the girls in relationship to one another.

Megan here... we also want to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone who have sent our girls presents and cards. They are certainly going to be very smartly/cutely dressed little girls, with excellent reading material to choose from, not to mention some great toys to play with. Also a big thanks to those who have fed us both recently, as well as those who fed Hudsie when I was in hospital and brought me treats or visited. We are lucky to have such supportive friends and family. We will send out proper "thank you" notes, but are waiting for a magical at home photo to share. In the meantime, big thanks from us four xoxo