Day 8: Roller Coaster & Gratitude

Quick update for tonight: The roller coaster continues.

After yesterday’s emotional setback, today was good. Labs came back good. Girls’ weights are doing well. Temperature regulation is going well.

It’s almost as if yesterday didn’t happen and we’re cautiously optimistic that we’re playing the short game again.

Thank you all for your support and prayers.

We’re lucky—the girls have been easy patients for the NICU and, quite frankly, we’ve never had a reason to seriously worry regarding their outcome. A lot of NICU experiences aren’t so pleasant. I’ve had a niece born at 2 pounds, 13 ounces 17 years ago and a nephew who stopped breathing extremely young—both earned them helicopter rides. One is doing great in high school, the other graduates from college next weekend—both were in danger of never coming home. We’ve had friends lose their little ones or their day of setbacks included learning that an emergency surgery with a handful of follow-up operations was the only chance of maybe saving them.

We’re blessed by the community that we’re in. All of you all sharing your experiences, prayers, time, food has been amazing. I truly feel for the parents here whose spouses can’t take the paternity leave I’m able to take, who are relatively new to the city, don’t know many/any people and don’t have the steady flow of text messages of support, offering of food and/or babysitting, the first time parents having their little ones in the NICU and freaking out over the extraordinary aspects of the NICU and the ordinary aspects of new parenthood, those who don’t have grandparents who are able to drop everything to become mom and dad to older siblings for a week and have to juggle everything themselves.

I owe a number of y’all return text messages and, don’t worry, we’ll ask for more help soon. The idea of having seven of us at home, aiming to maintain a 90-minute feeding routine every three hours to ensure their weight, keep three meals in the other five, getting everyone to school on time in clean clothes with the hair attempted to be fixed is, well, in some ways, more intimidating than the NICU (now that we know we’re not in serious danger).

In short, today was a good day. Thank you for helping make it so.