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| Alena called her sister Jelly and her brother Peanut Butter during my pregnancy, so those were their names until mom and dad officially named them |
We were initially told that our babies would be in the NICU for 1-2 weeks. They were on "room air" oxygen for less than 24 hours per protocol and also started on IV antibiotics as a precaution. Once their blood cultures came back negative, the antibiotics were stopped (I have no idea how they put an IV in those little veins!). I was able to see them in the NICU a couple hours after delivery. I was so shocked at how small they looked. After being able to really see them for the first time, we decided on our names: Baby B was going to be Caleb William no matter what, but we were between two names for Baby A. After seeing her, we decided that she looked like a Lauren. I really wanted to use my maiden name as one of the middle names and we thought it worked best with Lauren. We chose William for Caleb's middle name after Justin's dad. At first Alena wasn't too happy when we told her that their names were not going to be Peanut Butter and Jelly!
After my two nights in the hospital I was discharged. It was very hard leaving my babies in the hospital. I picked up Alena from daycare (which I hadn't done in 10 weeks) and then went back to the hospital later that evening just in time for their first bath.
The next week I spent about 10 hours a day at the hospital. The babies continued to do great. Their only complication was their bilirubin levels kept increasing. Unfortunately, this caused them to be sleepy so they were not great eaters. They both had to have a feeding tube placed so they could receive nutrition. Every three hours, we would try to feed them a specific amount of breast milk from a bottle, but if they were too tired to finish it, it would be given down their feeding tube. Finally after 5 days, they were placed under the bili lights to help decrease their bilirubin. They spent two days soaking up the sun. They both enjoyed their little Caribbean vacation under the lights (and that is as close as they will ever get to sun tanning!). The next week they spent trying to finish all of their milk from the bottles. It took a number of days before they finally figured it out and had enough stamina to drink everything that was required of them. Caleb came home on day #15 and Lauren followed two days later.
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| Grandma S and Caleb |
Those two weeks were very difficult for me and every day I left the hospital was hard. It was as if I had given birth to two babies and placed them up for adoption-they didn't feel like my children. In fact, I ended up working during the second week because sitting in the NICU all day long was draining. I would have done another 10 weeks of bed rest if it would have prevented them from having to stay in the NICU. However, I had to keep reminding myself that we were blessed that they were healthy and had a relatively short stay in the NICU.
A few pics from our NICU stay:
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| Lauren |
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| Caleb |
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| Car seat test-almost ready to go home! |
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