34

34 is my favorite number you know. It was my number in basketball when I was growing up. 34 has a whole new meaning now...34 is 1 week away from the earliest the twins can be discharged from the hospital!

Now it's a long shot they'll get discharged at 35 weeks to the day, but they'll probably be home by the time they turn 36 weeks, or so is the rumor around the NICU. We can't say for sure, I probably won't know until a day or 2 before when the exact discharge will be, but just the fact that as soon as they're healthy, they can leave makes me happy. No more waiting for that August 2nd date I've had in my head since they were born. It used to seem so far away and now it's just 1 week! I can't wait.

For right now, the twins are both breast and bottle fed. They won't be able to master breast feeding until closer to term so I breastfeed them and then we bottle feed them their real feeding. They can't go home with NG tubes so it's important that they can eat somehow, and gain weight doing it. So far, so good. Jack is a champion eater. Mia is watching her figure...or trying to win an award for most stubborn baby in the world. Either way, she takes a little convincing that eating is a good thing before she'll eat. But she's getting there ;)

Later this week (or probably more like this weekend, to early next week) they'll cold stress them and get them out of the incubators. I think they'll be fine because I have them out a lot to feed them, hold them, kangaroo them, and they're temps stay up. But they need to keep their temps in a healthy range for a few days and still eat for them to pass their cold stressing. Apparently a lot of babies stop eating during cold stress because they're not used to being cold. We'll see how they do.

A day or 2 before discharge, they'll car seat test them and make sure they can keep their oxygen saturation up while in a car seat for over an hour. We'll see how that goes. I'm not really sure how they'll handle that one.

They also spend a night with me, an no monitors, in the back in a little hotelish like room. This is more for me, to make sure I can take care of them on my own and if anything comes up, the nurses are there to help. We'll see how I do ;) I'm not too worried about it though since I spend all day, every day taking care of them myself.

The nurses are really just helping with a few things. Mostly, I take care of the babies during the day when I'm there and we've all been doing great. I feed them, burp them, change them, bath them, rock them, cuddle with them, put them to bed, and everything I would be doing with them if they weren't in the hospital. I'm excited to get them home and see how things go when they're not at the hospital...and I can't call a nurse if I get stuck with something. :)

I'll keep ya posted on things. By this time next week I should have a pretty good idea of how soon they'll be coming home. I'm hoping sooner rather than later :)