Sleepless nights and sleepy days

That pretty much sums up our last two weeks. It's starting to wear us both down a little bit but we're hanging in there. Lisa has been a maniac. She is able to get up and go back to sleep a little faster than me so she never misses a feeding. I, on the other hand, will stay up an extra hour or so after the feeding so at night I'm only getting a couple hours of sleep. Then, by mid-morning, I'm DEAD tired and will sleep through one feeding to do a little catchup.

Honestly I don't know if it would be possible without the help from someone else. I still don't know how we're going to be able to do this and me go back to work in June. That's right, I don't have to go back until June 18th!!! I'm using ALL of my leave and may even go into debt a little bit. Still not sure if that's the final plan because I don't want to have a negative balance just in case I'm needed at home and don't have the time to take off. BUT we'll have help from the grandmothers through mid July so it shouldn't be a problem. We have some time to figure all that out still.

Back to Lisa. She's an incredible Mommy! Her instincts kicked in and she is doing wonderfully with the girls. Breast feeding has been the only "struggle"...only because it doesn't seem like they've made much progress since we've been home. Without the scale to see exactly how much they're getting, there is no telling what they are doing. We joke that Lisa might be a walking/talking pacifier. Okay maybe not but it isn't going as smooth as we'd hoped. We do have a plan to get them to take the majority of their feeds by breast in the next couple of weeks. The scary part is if we ONLY feed by breast and don't follow up with the bottle, then their feedings are going to be A LOT closer together and we won't get that rest between feedings like we are now.

Tonight, Lisa gave Alyssa 15 minutes on breast and then we followed it up with the bottle. They both must be going through a growth spurt because they were both very hungry after their normal amount. So Alyssa ended up with 15 minutes on breast, 70ml from the bottle, and then we had to warm up another 30ml and feed her because she was still looking or more. That is a ton for her. Just kinda proves she's not getting that much from breast if she'll still take that much from bottle afterward. Katy took 90ml from bottle and was still going after it so we warmed up another 30ml and she took that. They are GROWING!!!!

Tuesday was our second checkup with our pediatrician to make sure they are still gaining weight. They both did GREAT! They each averaged more than an ounce a day which is about what they were gaining before we took them home. That put them up to...

Alyssa 7 lbs, 0.9 ounces
Katy 6 lbs, 13.4 ounces

Here are some pictures from our return home after the visit. They got to wear some very nice outfits.


For the record, Alyssa is on the left. We try to keep them like that so we'll recognize them in the pictures.

Our pediatrician continues to be amazed with them and their steady progress. We talked ad nauseam about their poo. We wanted to make sure that their blowouts every 3 days was okay and nothing out of the ordinary. He assured us that 3 days is nothing to be concerned about and gave us some guidelines about things to look for if there is anything wrong. Since then, they've had more regular movements and seem much better. They are still gassy and will wake themselves up and really fuss until they can pass it. We have some gas drops that we've almost used a couple of times that will ease their discomfort if it comes to that.

As I'm writing this, Katy is in there fussing and pushing right now. I'm just waiting for the big cry. Nope I was wrong, it's Alyssa and she's getting hungry. Guess I'll have to finish this later.

Now it's 2:15am and Lisa is finishing up with Katy. Alyssa already ate and is back in bed.

I know it may seem like Madison is getting as much face time on this blog as the girls sometimes but for the past 10 years, the three of us were the Brown family. We've kinda treated her like our daughter. We spoiled her and gave her all of our attention. It is a huge adjustment for Madison to share our time with the girls but she is doing better every day. I think we figured out part of the reason she was so miserable those first few days...we keep our house pretty cold and with the girls here, we had to turn up the heat a little bit to get the temp back between 70 and 75. She did not like that at all. She still takes a long time to cool off after a walk outside but she is definitely doing better with the girls. Here is another example of that.

We had put Katy down to do some floor time and she got pretty upset. We gave her the binkie and she held it in herself...worthy of a picture, right? I think Madison came to check out who was making all the noise and this is what happened afterward. Man, it was cute.





And then she crossed the line. Actually it was cute for about 2 seconds, just long enough to take the picture. It will be cute when they're a little older, right now they are just too delicate.

I have one more video uploading on Youtube but it's taking too long so it'll have to wait. 2:45am and time to hit the hay.