Trusting God's plans for our lives: Still trying to catch up...

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Still trying to catch up...

So, I am sitting here looking at my blog and totally overwhelmed at how I am going to catch up!! I am 3 months behind! So I am going to try and do one big post to get us up to date, because I really want to start documenting what is going on in our lives!

Basically Natalie was in the NICU for 5 weeks and Sydney was there for 6 weeks. We really had a great experience in there. I knew all of the Drs and a lot of the nurses and it made everything so much easier. I have worked with almost all of the Dr.s and all of the NPs and some of the nurses in the NICU I work at. As much as we wished we didn't have to spend 6 weeks in the hospital, they all took really good care of us! We were so thankful for all of them. The girls finally got to the point that they could take a bottle and were ready to come home. Sydney came home taking a bottle, but wasn't the greatest at it. They sent us home with a feeding tube for her....just in case. She had a really bad episode where she stopped breathing during a feeding and it took a lot to get her to come out of it(this was at home). I felt like we were force feeding her at times to get enough fluid/calories in her and was afraid that this was taking it's toll on her. Luckily I felt very comfortable with the feeding tube and so we put it back in a few days after she came home. We would offer her a bottle and as soon as she seemed done we would give her the rest through her tube. We did this for about a week and then she pulled it out and never looked back! She loves her food now! We also brought her home on a monitor because I was scared to death of her having an episode and not being able to bring herself out of it, at night, while we were asleep. We only had her on it for about a week and felt way more comfortable since it never went off except for false alarms. One reason I feel so at ease without it is because we have the Angel Care monitor that alarms if it doesn't since movement/breathing. I love this and would definitely recommend it! It helps me sleep at night:)!

I began pumping right after the girls were born. I had originally wanted to breastfeed, but was also open to the idea that it just might not work out. I pumped every three hours basically around the clock while they were in the NICU. They got all breast milk for about their first two months of life. After they got home, though, there just wasn't enough time to pump every 3 hours. It slowly got spaced out longer and longer until I decided to stop just a couple weeks ago. So they ended up getting at least half breastmilk for 3 months. I also have quite a bit in the freezer so I feel pretty good about that. I tried to breastfeed and they really would've done well, but after 2months of pumping around the clock, I was in so much pain when they latched on and I decided that it wasn't going to work. I get sad about it sometimes now and hope to have a different experience if we are blessed with another baby. One great thing about pumping though is how many calories I burned!! I had lost all but 6lbs of pregnancy weight 2 weeks post partum and eventually lost down to 10lbs less than I weighed before getting pregnant! I highly recommend this diet plan;)!

This post is kinda all over the place but I just want to document this as best as I can so I can come back and read about it all when I forget someday:). Natalie came home July 25th and Sydney came home exactly a week later on August 1st. By this time I only had 5 weeks left of my 12 week maternity leave:(. It went way too fast. I am so blessed, though, because I am only working one 12 hour shift a week(sometimes 2). It is great to get away and spend a day doing something that I love, but not having to work full time. I am so lucky to have a hubby that manages our money so well! Here are some more pics to catch you up!...