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.