Megan & Maribeth - Day #11

Hi! Cheryl decided to go into Vancouver yesterday after all. A friend from MOPS took her down to the Skytrain at noon and Cheryl spent the afternoon cuddling the girls. I got a call from the hospital mid-afternoon to let me know to come pick her up there so the middle M's and I went down after work. It took us almost 90 minutes to get there from Langley because of the evening rush-hour.

Good news on the twins! Megan is really getting close to nursing. She seemed very interested in the milk supplier yesterday when Cheryl was cuddling her. Megan is taking 38 cc's of EBM (expressed breast milk) every 3 hours and her total for the day as of last night's visit was 228 cc's. Megan's weight was up 45g to 1860g -- not quite her birth-weight. She is getting big enough that she can regulate her own temperature and the nurse said that she would be moving very soon from the incubator to a regular bassinet.

Maribeth has broken the 1300 gram barrier! As of yesterday she was 1330g: gaining 50g over the previous day and 40g over her birth-weight. She is now taking 18 cc's per feed (though she started the day with one 17 cc feed) and her total for the day as of my visit was 161 cc's. I got to hold Maribeth for her 7 o'clock feed while Cheryl and the M's peeked into the nursery from a window on the hallway.

Cheryl is going into the hospital again today to visit. They are going to see if Megan will progress further towards nursing. At this point everyone should be aware, as Cheryl and I have recently discovered, that we are only just coming to the real work with these twins. The facts are: (1) Each twin is feeding on a 3 hour schedule. (2) Each feeding is taking about 20-30 minutes. (3) The twins feeds are currently staggered as they won't be able to nurse simultaneously for many months. Taken all together, these add up to the fact that Cheryl may only be getting an hour respite between twin feedings for many weeks. Consequently, she won't be a contributing factor to keeping the house running for a long time. Finally, this vision of Cheryl in full milk production mode 24/7 does not include any complications like daily commuting, a twin getting sick, or Cheryl herself falling ill. On that note, I leave you to enjoy the pictures!