Playing catch up!

What a great week for the Huddleston family!

Eliza has spent the week playing catch up with her big sister.

First she graduated to a therma-cot, and is now sleeping in the open air like a big girl.

Eliza's first outfit!

And her new home, an open topped therma-cot.

This is the life!

Next she enjoyed her first bath, although perhaps "enjoyed" is an overstatement, as she was a trifle grumpy about the state of play, but grudgingly went through with it.

This is cool.

On the other hand is it?

Eliza is unconvinced of the merits of bathing.

Then she put on the vital grams required to officially double her birthweight… she is currently about 1550 grams a long way from the tiny 760grams of October 21st.

But most impressively, Eliza is no longer prepared to play second fiddle to Olive in the feeding department. She is a superb natural feeder, and latched on immediately in her first encounter with the breast. Now she vigorously sucks away for as long as her bigger sister on many feeds.

Eliza can feed herself now!

Make that two feeding babies.

And yes they eat concurrently, as Mighty Mama Megan is a natural at the twin feed. Apparently most twin Mum's suss out the "rugby ball under each arm" feeds eventually, but Megan has been impressively adept at this tricky skill… surely those Tongan "Lomu-esque" genes have something to do with this.

Clever quarter Tongan Meggy.

In fact everything had been going so well with feeding that Megan stayed overnight in the unit for a three night feeding trial. The intention with this is to get Olive home sooner rather than later. 

The idea is that when Olive is feeding regularly, she will move into Megan's room overnight. Then Megan (and I) will do all of the cares and feeds through the night. 

Our rooming-in quarters. 

Well that was the theory, only Olive loves her sleep too much for now, to satisfactorily complete regular feeds. She tends to have 2 or 3 good efforts each day (followed up by bottle feeds of expressed milk), but she still requires a top up through her nose feeding tube after good feeds. And this needs to be supervised by the nursing staff.

Dad can do something to help, on the odd occasion.

As long as Olive isn't too sleepy, mind.

Olive's struggles in this respect are not surprising… she is still 2 weeks away from her due date, and even though her 2.5 kilo frame dwarves her sister, she is still 2/3rds the size of a "normal" term baby. So the trial has halted for the meantime, with the plan now for Megan to go back in overnight later this week, hopefully Olive and I can room in with her on Saturday or Sunday, and have our first night as a family. Exciting!

It's all up to you now Olive.

No pressure!

As soon as Olive and we can fend satisfactorily for ourselves then she'll be coming home. Which is another great chapter to look forward to, even though it will present logistical difficulties up until the time when Eliza can join us. Eliza really needs to bulk up before this is a realistic prospect, and her on again off again relationship with CPAP will most likely continue until she is over 1.8 kilos. But that can't be too far away at the rate she's going.

In other good news my Mum Janice has been given the all-clear to return to her Karori home sometime this week, so all in all we've had a great few days for female Huddlestons.