It’s
been really hard trying to come to terms with everything happening in
my world outside of my babies so I'm sorry for the silence! As much as
I’ve needed and wanted to grieve properly I've just had to stay strong
for the sake of my family. I also know deep down this is what my brother
would have wanted!
Since
my last update at a lot has happened... I suppose the first bit of
excitement happened two weeks ago when all the boys were moved from
High Dependency up to Special Care (the final low dependency room in
NICU). I still can’t believe in 5 short weeks they have progressed
so much, the time has literally flown by! After the first week in Special Care
Sam and Ru were taken off all monitors other than an apnea monitor which
monitors their heartbeat, and they were all moved from incubators into
cots. I then had great pleasure in giving them their first oral feed by
bottle, a major milestone for a prem baby as this is when their suck,
swallow and breath reflex kicks in! They have all taken to it amazingly
well. I’ve unfortunately had a bit of a personal set back with my
expressing and due to problems with my breasts I’ve had to stop all
expressing and breastfeeding. It was a very sad thing to decide to do but I
just felt that I needed to be fit and well for my boys and the best
thing to do was to formula feed them instead. I luckily managed to
express and freeze a large amount of breast milk when I was expressing
so currently they are on half formula and half breast milk so their
digestive system can learn to tolerate it. They have gained a great
amount of weight too and are now between 4lb 11oz and 5lb.
Josh
and Zac have had a little bit of a difficult time since being moved.
They picked up another infection which has had a knock on to their
breathing and caused other blips in their progress. They had to go back
onto oxygen, have a blood transfusion and start diuretic medication to
relieve severe water retention. I have found this very unnerving at
times but they seem to be doing a lot better now and have actually just
had their oxygen turned off today.
The
biggest news in the last couple of days though has to be Sam and Ru’s
discharge out of NICU onto the Transitional Care ward at the hospital! I
have been waiting for this day for a very long time. So I'm now
readmitted on the ward with them starting the final stretch before we go
home. The point of Transitional Care is to establish their feeding and
get me used to handling them etc. Because they are still so small taking
a bottle really wears them out so they have to gradually build up to
having a bottle at every feed. Currently they are have alternate bottle
feeds and tube feeds. As soon as they are taking all feeds by bottle we
can go home. I don’t know how long that will be but hopefully not more
than two weeks. I am also crossing all fingers and toes that their
bothers will be well enough to come and join them up here so we can all
be discharged together, if they’re not we’ll either have to come back
when they’re ready or they’ll be discharged straight from NICU which is
not ideal.
The
last 48 hours have been crazy looking after the boys properly
for the first time. Ward 76 is a very hands off ward, the policy is the
staff are here to help when you need it but they let you do the care on
your own. I have literally had about 6 hours sleep in the last two
nights. My new routine is nappy changing, feeding, winding, sleeping and
then starting all over again. I literally start one off and as soon as
I'm done I start the next and by the time I’m finished I have 40mins to
an hour before I have to start again. If and when Josh and Zac come up
here I am going to have to get some help as there is physically no way I
am going to be able to feed them all and get sleep!
I have tons more to tell you but I have to go and prepare Sam’s next feed before I start running behind! Until the next time...
