Everybody Update

Ellie is doing great. Less than 30 hours after having her stomach muscles sliced apart, she is completely off the IV and is even gingerly standing and walking on her own. I suspect she’ll spend most of tomorrow in the NICU watching her babies. Barring complications, she should go home Thursday. I may need to pick her up at the hospital and take her directly to whatever restaurant that’s serving us Thanksgiving dinner.

Ian is doing well. The NICU is giving him minimal assistance right now; some air and a few medications that flew right over my head, but nothing major. I didn’t get to see him this morning because they were inserting a central line into him while I was visiting, apparently so they can give him minimal assistance more easily. For now he’s content to be swaddled and sleep the hours away. I suspect the main barrier to bringing him home will be packing five pounds of weight onto his 3 lbs, 7 oz body.

Tory is doing less well, but good enough. I like the way Ellie stated his condition: “He’s not doing perfectly, but reasonably well.” Leave it to a doctor to find an accurate yet optimistic way of saying a patient’s condition. He’s getting more oxygen than his brother, and his blood sugar spiked last night. The NICU thinks it’s stress related. Imagine that. It came down a little this morning, but they still need to watch it. They inserted an umbilical line into him to make it easier to test him and give him medications. Otherwise he’s doing well. He’s kicking out of his swaddling right now, which is just like his sister at birth. They’re estimating that they could come home in three to four weeks, but right now that’s a guess.

Abbie is clueless. She’s too young to understand that she’s a big sister now. She can’t even see the babies since she’s too young to enter the NICU, plus the room has no windows except for the door. Her cold also prevents her from entering the NICU. She’s also very good at giving that cold to her caregivers, so our parents have barely seen the twins. We have a doll all wrapped up to give her when she comes home to help her adjust.

The dog is frightened that I’m never coming home every time I leave for the night. She’s also ecstatic when I do return every morning, and threatens to knock Abbie over with her exuberance.

The cats are puking more than normal. That’s probably a side effect of being fed at unusual times now. Otherwise, they don’t care as long as someone fills their food bowls twice a day and scoops their litter boxes once a day.

I’m not sure how Matt is doing. I haven’t had enough time to check.

Thank you to everyone who’s left comments. Your support and well wishes are much appreciated. Ellie should be very surprised when she comes home. Special thanks to Matthew at Childs Play x2 for sending his enviable traffic numbers my way.

Finally, I received an e-mail today from one of the many baby-related mailing lists I subscribed to. Its subject line: “Your baby is due in 7 weeks!”