Tag Archives: twins
Ana and Dorothy Turn Two!
Dominoes
Twins learning to pull up to standing can form a line of human dominoes.
Specialist Parade
Hopefully this will be a silly post in the end. The twins are now 10 months old—incredible how time has flown by. All in all, things have been pretty good.
They’re up to 16 or so pounds now. Still tiny and barely on the growth chart, but the lines are still headed up and to the right so they’re on par for their little fifth-percentile niche. Except for their head size. True to the Kraft family tradition, they have big heads.
Which apparently is a bad thing sometimes too.
Ana’s head size, relative to the rest of her and her growth, concerned the doctor so she had a cranial ultrasound the next day. Vanessa, because of our lovely twins, have had a lot of ultrasound imagery performed by techs that passed along images to the doctor for review. She knows the drill. The techs always say things like “We’re not supposed to say things like this, but everything looks great.”
For Ana’s appointment, the strict “The doctor reviews the images and will let your doctor know.” Then followed by the dreaded “I need to check with the radiologist to make sure I took all the images he needs.” which translates to “something isn’t normal”.
Long story made short, Ana’s doctor called us into the office today to tell us that she has excess fluid around her brain. The radiologist and him believe it to be benign and that it’ll self-resolve within a year or so, but he wants us to see a neurosurgeon for a second opinion.
Both girls are still missing some development milestones, so our next PT/OT evaluation is later this week.
We started this week with zero specialists. I’d really like to end this week the same.
Ride ‘Em!
I put the twins into a playpen together in the office while working and waiting for Vanessa to get back from a walk around the block with the other kids. I step out to grab some water and Vanessa walks into the office.
“No! Don’t do that!”
Asking Vanessa what was happening… “Ana was sitting on Dorothy’s back, pulling her hair.”
Dancing Babies
Google automatically creates an animated GIF from a photo burst.
The Internal Clock
Life moves forward toward Christmas. The twins have matured to being released from their required every-three-hour feeding schedule, allowing them to sleep in and eat-on-demand. Generally, this has been nice. Direct breastfeeding (DBF in my acquired NICU language) has replaced EBM (expressed breast milk, e.g. pumped and “nippled” to them in a bottle) as their primary source of food with V pumping to keep her supply up.
Our fridge is full of milk and we may actually use all of the space in our deep freezer for once.
The twins have also shifted their schedule a bit. Before, we’d wake them every three hours to eat and they would generally sleep between feedings. Now, they have their own schedule of being awake for a decent amount of time, which happens so far to be in the middle of the night.
Ana (top) and Dorothy
V has been handling this like a champ, taking a nap from, roughly, 8 am to 11 am, to make it through the rest of the day. While I hate sleep and will fight it until the end of time, once I’m asleep, I want to stay asleep. I’ve been trying to get 4-5 hours a night, but it has been broken up by moments of everyone (seemingly, older girls included) being up multiple times in the night. The waking up for a bit every hour or so has been hard on me, personally.
Lastly, they’re on the borderline between premie clothes and diapers and newborn sizes. We’re finding some of the premie outfits are too small for them! At first, they swam inside all of them.
With the older girls, we gave them their primary present from us this weekend—tickets to Disney Live at the Frank Erwin Center. Grandpa and I took Olivia, Catalina, and Teresa to see Sophia, Jake and the Never Land Pirates, and the rest of the Disney gang this weekend.
Olivia
Teresa
Catalina
For the first time since the twins were born, I joined Grandma and Grandpa with the girls at Kerbey Lane, our usual after Mass breakfast stop. Prior, I’d take the girls to Mass to help keep the peace and let the in-laws take the girls since they’d do anything to get those pancakes.
Olivia
Teresa
Catalina
We haven’t taken the twins out of the house, save a doctor’s appointment and lab tests yet. As much as Vanessa would like to have them make Christmas Mass, we’re hesitant to have them around the expected larger crowd. Perhaps the Sunday following for the Feast of the Holy Family.
Until next time, thanks as always for your continued prayers and support. It really does take a village and we live in a great one.
Day 11: Eviction
Home.
Packed up and ready to go.
Plenty I could say, none of it matters at this exact moment. We’re home and beginning the second half of the marathon, as Marion put it, tackling premies at home without a NICU nurse bedside all night and able to take care of the 2 am feedings.
The last “daily update” picture of Ana.
The last “daily update” picture of Dorothy, in the midst of the “car seat study”
With Dr. Ji, the neonatologist we interacted with most.
Look! No cords! No wires!
Sisters!
Ana with the oldies.
Catalina: “Mom, she looks funny”
Teresa is trying to tickle Ana
More tickling!
Day 10: Normalcy
Medically, Ana’s bilirubin is back within the expected levels so no one is under the lights again. Dorothy’s crept up a little, but thinking she’ll be able to self-regulate. At this point, we’re looking at a couple of days to ensure stability and then, perhaps, home.
I relieved my in-laws at the house to put some normalcy. It’s truly amazing and humbling that they swung into action, took care of everything at the house with the three older girls with little direction from us, allowing us to fully focus on the twins and Vanessa.
I confess, it is odd to be in a quiet house without any heart rate monitors, pages over the intercom, and the rest of the random noises of being at the hospital virtually 24 hours a day for over a week.
I have the feeling the house won’t be quiet for long.
Ana after the lights went off
Dorothy
Mom and Dorothy
Sr. Dorothy wrapped up after her bath 😉
I asked them to open their eyes big for the camera.