Moving and Shaking

The girls have had quite a 24 hours.

Braelyn is now home with mom. The hospital pediatrician warned that we need to be diligent on her feedings because at just 4lbs. 2ozs. she can’t afford to lose any more weight. In fact, since she was born she’s lost 6 percent of her body weight. Still, she’s finally transitioned away from meconium to more normal “dirty” diapers and is doing great on nursing with a formula chaser for extra calories. We’ve already got her first regular pediatrician visit on the books for tomorrow. We needed to do it that quickly because her head circumference was in the lowest percentile to allow the hospital to discharge Braelyn. Needless to say, they were pretty blunt about the necessity to be sure she’s getting checked out regularly for the first couple of weeks. But I guess she just debunked that urban legend that babies don’t get discharged from the hospital before they weigh 5 pounds. That might be the case for preemies but since Braelyn was officially a “full term” baby and with everything officially checking out, she was free to go. So fingers crossed that The Peanut can gain some tons and transition into a Walnut!

As for her sister, Gwen has transferred from an incubator to a crib in her room at the hospital. Her head circumference has decreased a half centimeter since the shunt was inserted which is fabulous. After her little feeding issue a couple of days ago, she’s now known to down her milk quickly and cry for more. She even altered her feeding schedule today because she was hunger earlier than her scheduled feeding. The nurse staff has told us that her wound is healing up great and that it doesn’t even require a regular cleaning of the dressing anymore. Instead it’s done on a “as needed” schedule. Let’s continue to hope that she continues her amazing recovery.

Heather is still in a lot of pain but gets better and better each day. Typically, she nurses Braelyn and then while I give The Peanut formula via bottle, Heather pumps for Gwen. Needless to say, it’s been a process but we’re starting to get the hang of it… heck, mom even gave me a feeding off last night so I could catch an extra 40 winks.

We “introduced” our dogs Angel and Joker to Braelyn this morning and that went well. They seemed to understand that she was part of the family but weren’t “in her face” much. Apparently babies do hear in the womb because Braelyn doesn’t wake when the dogs go into a bark session and she’s napping. She just acts like it’s no biggie.

Unfortunately, Nana & Poppa leave tomorrow to visit Braelyn and Gwen’s new cousin Ava in Florida. However, as you can see from the photos, they’ve gotten plenty of quality time with their granddaughters. As for Ava, she’s also quite new to the family. My brother and his wife welcomed her on October 1st and Ava even came home from the hospital with her mom yesterday just like Braelyn.

That’s all for Sunday… Talk to you all later!