Now bringing home twins! Again- the twins were a scheduled c-section at 38 weeks of course they came at 34 weeks 6 days! Charlotte came home with us at day 5 and Olivia had to stay in the NICU for 4 more days. My Dr. kept telling me that I wouldn't know it then but I would be happy to only be taking one baby home at a time. Of course I thought he was crazy I couldn't stand the thought of leaving Olivia in the hospital. I tried to shift my thoughts to "taking Charlotte home" rather than "leave Olivia there". It was hard but I knew Olivia would be taken care of and it was now my (our) job to take care of Charlotte.
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| Charlotte headed home |
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| Charlotte |
A quick side note about nursing the twins- I wasn't able to do it. The Doctors said it would be too hard for the babies to try and latch and then nurse. So I pumped every 2-3 hours most of the time the breast milk I was able to get was mixed with formal for the girls.
When we brought Charlie home I continued to pump every 2-3 hours and bottle fed Charlie. I saved most of the breast milk for Olivia because I felt she needed the most so that she could come home. Charlie did fantastic at home- she woke every 3 hours to eat and she ate very well. NICU babies are on a very specific schedule, she pretty much kept to the same schedule. The days were pretty hectic taking care of our older girls and going to the hospital to see Olivia. I can't really say it was easy and we worked it out because well honestly we didn't we just went with what ever worked at the time and that was the best we could do. Once Olivia came home and our family left we were able to get into a much better routine. The older girls were at school so we were able to establish a pretty decent day time routine {mostly consisting of eating and sleeping}. I tried very hard to keep the twins on the same schedule for eating {of course they slept a lot so they pretty much were always sleeping at the same time}. However, it was very important to work on keeping them on the same eating schedule, because I was exclusively pumping every single time they ate. I had to make sure they were eating at the same time. They were getting bottles of formula mixed with breast milk. If I fed them at the exact same time they mostly were propped on the boppy or on a big pillow. After the first few weeks I let them go around an hour apart on eating, I found that it was somewhat easier to feed one at a time. At night we didn't wake them to eat, now I can say it didn't happen very often that they didn't wake {that NICU schedule again}, but if they didn't we left them... and they were fine. Hubby was big help during the night as well. He did have to go back to work which meant he had to be up at 430 in the morning. We worked out a schedule that made sense to both of us and allowed us to both get some consistent hours of sleep. A few times hubby was a rock star and pulled an all nighter for me so that I could sleep the whole night!! Yea he's a keeper!!
I pumped every time we fed the babies except ones during the night I would take a break.. to get "some" sleep. Once again I didn't produce much milk so we always had to mix with formula... and they did just fine. I have to say with twins it takes longer to establish a good routine add to the fact that we had two older daughters in the mix as well. That being said the Kendal and Madison were absolutely wonderful (see previous post about the amazing big sisters) they helped out so much- they fed the babies so I could make dinner or the cuddled the babies so I could get a break, it was amazingly wonderful {and still is}.
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| Olivia before leaving the hospital |
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| Together at last! {Olivia on the left Charlotte on the right} |
The most important thing we did with brining home all the girls was get into a schedule/routine as soon as possible. I think at times its the only thing that saved my sanity. I also know that with Kendal we were so scared of messing up I don't think we enjoyed her as a baby as much as we could have. We definitely learned with Madison that it was ok to do what "we" felt was best for her even if it wasn't by the book, this allowed us to enjoy both of them so much more.
Bringing home the twins was an adventure itself but I truly believe all of our babies came when they were absolutely supposed to at the exact right time for us and our family and I wouldn't have it any other way.
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| Charlotte |
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| Olivia |
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| Maddy watching the babies |
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