Days 111-118 - May 14-21

Corrected for gestational age, the girls are the equivalent of 4 weeks old now.  Here's a video of Aubrey acting like a baby.

We usually get about one to two hours of her awake and content like this each day.
Here's one of Paige.  She's usually awake and content like this for 30 minutes to an hour each day.

Both girls had another eye exam on Thursday, and their retinopathy of prematurity is still stable so they'll have another exam in a week.

The only thing keeping the girls from coming home at this point is their inability to drink all their milk, so that's mostly been the focus this past week.  As you may recall from my last post, Paige had been doing pretty well, and Aubrey was having some struggles with spit ups and lack of appetite.  We've been doing a little experimenting to see if anything gets the ball rolling a little more quickly.

The first thing we tried was putting both girls on plain breast milk (unfortified).  We've noticed that Aubrey had been cringing and sticking her tongue out with the fortified breast milk, so we wondered if there was some sort of taste issue there.  Both girls seemed to enjoy the plain breast milk and did fairly well on it, and Aubrey stopped making her disgusted-looking face when she got the plain fresh stuff.  The problem with the plain breast milk for the girls is that it gives them too much water.  Due to their immature lungs (especially Paige), we have to be very careful that we don't overload them with fluid because that can make it hard for their lungs to work right.

We then changed both girls over to a Enfamil AR, which is meant to help babies with acid reflux. We didn't really notice much of a difference for Paige, but Aubrey has been doing much better on the formula.  She doesn't seem to dislike the taste, and she has only spit up a few times in the past few days.  Aubrey has been taking most of her bottle nearly every time, and will often take a full feed.  It seems that the formula is helping control her acid reflux and enabling her to actually have an appetite.  She seems to actually enjoy eating since we put her on the formula.  Here's Aubrey eating her formula.

Since Paige had been doing fine on the fortified breast milk, I'm still not really sure why all the experimenting was done with her (maybe just because they're twins and twins are supposed to do the same things?).  We put her back on fortified breast milk and she is still doing fine.  Here's Paige.

I think of all the pictures I've taken of Paige, the last one is the most accurate representation of her.  Her eyes show the fierceness and intensity that she possesses that has carried her through experiences that we wish she would not have had to go through.  While I was taking pictures of her for a little over a minute, her eyes just followed me.  It was really cute.

One of the girls' doctors had another discussion with us about them possibly getting the G-tubes (the kind that are surgically placed through the belly) if they don't figure out this eating thing soon.  We said "no, not interested."  Hopefully we don't have to re-visit that topic next week.

My mom wanted to see their eyes.  I don't have a macro lens for our camera, so here's the best I could do.  Aubrey first, Paige second.

You'll probably have to click on the pictures and really zoom in, but Aubrey's eyes have started to lighten up a little, and are medium gray with a hint of green in the right light.  Paige is harder to catch with her eyes wide open like Aubrey, so I don't have as great of a picture of her eyes.  Paige's look like they're turning brown, but are mostly the baby gray color.  I have green eyes and Andrea has brown eyes.

I think it's about time to do some "look at me now" pictures with barbie.  Here's Aubrey on day 10 and day 118.  That's the exact same nurse barbie in both pictures.

Here's Paige with nurse barbie on day 10 and day 118.

When I see those old pictures I get a little freaked out.

Weight and height time!

Aubrey:

     Day 1 -     2 lbs 2 oz     14 inches
     Day 8 -     2 lbs 7 oz
     Day 17 -   2 lbs 11 oz
     Day 27 -   3 lbs 1 oz
     Day 36 -   3 lbs 4 oz

     Day 46 -   3 lbs 7 oz     16 inches

     Day 56 -   4 lbs 0 oz

     Day 62 -   4 lbs 9 oz     16 1/2 inches

     Day 72 -   4 lbs 14 oz   17 1/2 inches

     Day 80 -   5 lbs 5 oz

     Day 88 -   5 lbs 14 oz   18 inches

     Day 102 - 6 lbs 6 oz

     Day 110 - 6 lbs 15 oz 

     Day 118 - 7 lbs 6 oz     19 1/2 inches

Paige:
     Day 1 -     1 lbs 13 oz   14 1/2 inches
     Day 8 -     1 lbs 12 oz
     Day 17 -   2 lbs 2 oz
     Day 27 -   2 lbs 10 oz

     Day 36 -   2 lbs 13 oz

     Day 46 -   3 lbs 5 oz     16 1/2 inches

     Day 56 -   3 lbs 10 oz

     Day 62 -   4 lbs 1 oz     17 1/2 inches

     Day 72 -   4 lbs 4 oz     18 inches

     Day 80 -   4 lbs 14 oz

     Day 88 -   5 lbs 0 oz     18 inches

     Day 102 - 6 lbs 2 oz

     Day 110 - 6 lbs 7 oz

     Day 118 - 6 lbs 12 oz   19 inches