Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: a concept I associate with victims of crimes or veterans of wars, not parents of preemies. But after reading an article in the New York Times, “For Parents on NICU, Trauma May Last,” it’s clear that PTSD, and the awareness of its prevalence in parents with experiences with the Neonatal Intensive [...]
A friend of ours was struck with preeclampsia earlier this week. The doctors were able to get her blood pressure down with magnesium sulfate (which I had after delivery for preeclampsia, as well) which bought them enough time to get her two steroid shots to boost the surfactant in her baby girl’s lungs. Her little [...]
Finn and Luca are six months old today!
We all want to say thank you for your support and well wishes that have kept us going. The boys are doing great and are growing like weeds. They are both rolling over now and talking and laughing, a lot! We couldn’t be happier.
Birth stats:
Finn 2 lbs 4 [...]
Dear Finn and Luca,
You just turned four months old, two months “corrected” age for gestation. You’ve been in our lives for four months so we’ll go with four. Finnegan, you just became an oxygen free man two weeks ago and have done nothing but grow since then. You both have been chatting us up for [...]
Wednesday night’s homecoming for our first preemie twin went off without a hitch. With planning reminiscent of the invasion of Normandy, a major consideration was how best to introduce our Aussie Heeler dog to her new housemate.
The introduction started the day our twins boys were born. Returning home from the hospital, I brought the two [...]
We made it. Feed number three for the evening. Some snap shots from earlier…
“If we come in and find you guys sleeping with the baby in the bed with you, yeah, we pretty much take the kid back” – our nurse giving us an idea of the bottom of the preemie graduation test bell curve.
“Only [...]
Two down, one to go.
One bright side of the NICU has started to emerge. Our preemie twin is like a swiss clock. Sleeping in his crib beside us, we awoke to Luca’s squirms about ten minutes before my alarm was set to go off. We turned on the lights, changed a diaper and got him [...]
“Guess what?” Lisa asked from the other end of the phone call. “When you get home from work tonight, pack your bag, we’re rooming in!”
Like the runner who turns the last corner and spots the finish line, in disbelief from fatigue but with a side helping of euphoria, it was the call I’d waited weeks [...]
One of our doctors in the NICU is someone we particularly enjoy. Brilliant (as they all are in our group of neonatologists,) slightly mercurial, and always ready with a folksy story to impart some nugget of wisdom about parenting.
Over the past four weeks in the NICU, it’s been fascinating watching our relationship with this hospital unit change. Soon after the birth of our twin boys (9 weeks early, planned c-section), I was walking briskly down the hall following a parade of respiratory therapists, a neonatal doctor, nurses and isolettes (with boys inside) to the inner sanctum of our local hopital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU.) The education of this place’s strange customs began immediately- stopped from instinctively following my boys, I was kindly given a lesson in “scrubbing up”- cracking open an iodine brush pack, rolling up my sleeves at the sink, and then scrubbing vigorously for 2 minutes to sanitize myself as much as possible.
You Know You Are a Mom of Twins When…
Posted on April 30th, 2010
Snow Day
Posted on December 7th, 2009
A Weekend of Face Plants
Posted on September 6th, 2009
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the NICU
Posted on August 26th, 2009
Get Your Twins Outdoors!
Posted on August 3rd, 2009
Happy 6M Birthday!
Posted on May 29th, 2009
4 Months, Give or Take a Week
Posted on April 13th, 2009
Feeling Like a Mama
Posted on February 8th, 2009
Twin Dreams
Posted on January 20th, 2009
The Cycle Continues: a Letter from Grandpa
Posted on January 18th, 2009
Join the Growing Twins Flickr group.
Twitter