little Leah

little Leah has made some remarkable progress in the last few days! We are so excited!

Sunday they decided to take her off her CPAP mask (which forces oxygen into her, with no effort on her part to breath it in). She was only off it for an hour before they had to put that darn thing back on her, because she just couldn't handle it yet.

Ben and I went back Monday morning to visit her, just in time to watch them take off the CPAP again! We weren't there on Sunday when they took it off, so we missed seeing her beautiful face uncovered, but yesterday we got to see it.

What a difference it makes to have it off! Now we can see her gorgeous face and hair (what little she has!) and we love it. They also took out the IV in her hand, so we are slowly taking wires and contraptions off her body all the time and it is wonderful.

She still has her feeding tube, which you can see in her mouth, but sometime on Monday, they moved it into her nose and now her mouth is free from anything it it as well. Taking the feeding tube out of her mouth has made it possible for me to start nursing her again. They called us in Monday night to come feed her and she only nursed for 2 or 3 minutes, but it was a start.

In her NICU bed, her "home" right now. She has been in there now 6 days (6 days too long, for us).

Alexis is always with us when we go to visit her "older" sister. She always sleeps and is an angel while we are there. There still is a big difference in size between these two (a whole pound) and now having them apart almost since birth (they are one week old today!!), we can definitely tell them apart with no problems. Alexis is in a newborn outfit from Aunt Meredith and the pants are HUGE! The shirt fit really well, but if you can tell by the picture, the pants fall off if you hold her up. She looked adorable in it, though and it's been so fun to dress her, but makes me so sad that Leah can't wear the matching outfit with her yet.

We laid Alexis in the bed with Leah and after a minute, they started touching each other. It was so cute. One of the hardest things for me during this whole thing has been that these babies have not been together. I am worried they will forget they were even twins and have a hard time getting used to each other again. I HATE having them apart every day. We visit Leah every day and sometimes spend hours with her, but we spend every minute with Alexis and it breaks our hearts that Leah is alone so much and without her sister.

When they called us back to feed Leah Monday night, we found this- she was in clothes!! I about cried. I never thought seeing a baby in an outfit would effect me so much, but after having her just in a diaper, covered in wires and hooked up to so many machines for 6 days, she looked "normal."

They can even swaddle her now, which they couldn't before. She looks so comfy and cozy. And soooo relaxed. For the first 3 or 4 days, they used a relaxer to sedate her somewhat so that she would be calm and give her lungs a chance to heal, but they have not had to give her any sedative in the past 3 days or so- they say she rarely, if every gets fussy and if she does, it's just for a minute and then she sleeps or lays peacefully for the rest of the time. Without the CPAP and sedative, she will now open her eyes for us.

Grandma comes and visits leah whenever she can. Bless my mom! She has been WONDERFUL and there is no way we could be doing any of this without her. She drives me everywhere I need to go (if Ben can't), she stays home and watches our kids while we visit Leah (our kids don't last long at the hospital), she cooks, cleans and does everything. I honestly don't know what we would do without her. These babies are 2 lucky girls to have such a wonderful Grandma.

Chloe only lasts a few minutes in the NICU before she is ready to go, but she is very sweet with both her sisters, and she got to hold Leah in the NICU for the first time today.

As far as further progress, Leah's lungs are healing and maturing great. She is down to only 21% oxygen, which is what we all breathe everyday, and it is not forced- she breathes it in on her own. She is being fed by a tube most of the time, which she tolerates beautifully, and they are now starting to have me come in to nurse her. She has not been doing well with the nursing because she is so tired and pooped out from all her respiratory problems. All the struggling to breath for the last week has just worn her out almost completely and it takes all her strength to suck, so she will only nurse for a minute or two, or not at all. She will take a bottle for a minute or two as well, and then fall asleep from exhaustion. So now our big thing to work on, since her lungs are almost healed, is feeding. They don't want to have to send her home on a feeding tube, so we are just working on her nursing or taking a bottle (with my pumped milk) and when she can do that on her own, consistently, with a clean bill of health on her lungs, she can come home. We can't wait for that day. We were hopeful that it would be sometime at the end of this week, but we really can't tell for sure right now. She is trying SO hard to eat, but it is so hard after all she's been through. We are just so proud and excited about all the progress she has made recently.

The nurses at the hospital and others have been asking us how we have been handling all of this. I must say, it is hard. It's hard to see your tiny, helpless newborn in a tiny hospital bed, with more wires and machines that you can count, struggling to breath. It's hard being torn between so many places. At the hospital, Ben felt torn between staying in the room and taking care of me and Alexis, going to the NICU to see Leah and get updates, and being home spending time with our 2 oldest. Now that we are home, there are only 2 places to be torn between, but it's almost harder. At the hospital, Leah was just across the hall. Now when we want to see her, we have to load up in the car and drive 15 minutes. It's hard because I have to feed Alexis, then pump as often as I can and hand deliver my milk to the hospital for her. It's all totally worth it, but hard and exhausting. I don't feel like I'm getting the rest I need to recover as quickly as I should because I need to be at the hospital so much (delivering milk, nursing Leah or just visiting). So much goes into getting to the hospital- I have to have someone drive me, have someone carry Alexis in her car seat for me (I can't carry that much weight yet), someone to watch my kids at home, etc.

It's also emotionally exhausting. It's emotionally exhausting worrying about Leah, missing her like crazy, trying to find time to rest, and spending time with my other kids. Mitch is having a hard time adjusting and just doesn't understand why his mommy can't hold him or pick him up. That's hard on me too. While this has been hard, we do it and we don't resent the fact that we have to do it- it is totally worth it and we'd do it all over again if we had to. We just want our whole family together and pray that it happens soon.

But we have been blessed with 4 beautiful children, two of which are the sweetest, most beautiful and precious newborns and we are so grateful they are here. We couldn't ask for more.