It's official - new NICU!

Love the new NICU! Although it took stepping on some toes, the new NICU is awesome. The dr. did confirm that it was b/c we complained that they moved us. How about that? They didn't want to hear our side of things and just defended their nurses, they basically just ignored the problems and wanted to put out the fire. Oh, well.....I guess they are scared we will sue them or something b/c everyone is walking on eggshells and watching the girls like hawks --- AS THEY SHOULD. It's very small, quiet, the lights are dimmed.....this is how any NICU should be for proper development of preemies. If the girls even make a sound they are right on it. There are 5 nurses/staff for 4 babies at the new place, and they sit right by the crib to monitor. Love it, love it, love it.

Things are moving very quickly. Avery is eating from a bottle all the time so she got her feeding tube out yesterday. So, get this.....she has nothing aiding her any more!! She looks like a real baby now! The only things attached to her are the sticky monitor things on her foot and tummy to make sure her heart rate and breathing saturation are ok.

Miss Emily is no longer on oxygen and in an open crib (which means she is regulating her own temperature)!!!!!!!! She is taking the bottle very well so they will be upping her to all bottle before we know it. They are both about even as far as the Apnea is concerned. They will both be coming home on monitors, so we have to get trained on that and CPR. We are pretty nervous about them coming home still having breathing issues, but figure they wouldn't do it if the risk was too high.

So, the big news is that Avery is coming home TUESDAY!!!! We are spending the night at the hospital Monday night in a room called "night watch" where we practice everything on our own, but if we need help we call and the NICU nurses walk around the corner into the room. I think we will feel better if this goes successfully. We are in crunch mode buying the little things to finish off our stockpile of supplies. Wow this is happening so fast....but we are ecstatic!! Also, we have a sneaking suspicion that Emily is only about a week behind Avery.

We got the straight scoop on twins running in families. The bottom line is that some families are predisposed to twinning (doesn't matter if it's fraternal or identical) and some are not. There is no exact science as to who might have them (skipping generations, etc) but just know that if you have twins in your family you have a chance. In our case, my great-grandmother had boy/girl fraternal twins and Bob's great-grandmother had identical girl twins. So, together we had a pretty good chance of twins.....who knew!!!!!!!!!!!! The other interesting thing we learned is that since they are twins, the genes are actually pulled back from prior generations. Therefore, certain characteristics are passed from them not us - like hair color and eye color. That's why sometimes parents with both brown hair and eyes can get red haired, blue eyed children. B/c twinning is a recessive gene it tends to pull other recessive genes with it. Cool, huh?

FYI...announcements will be sent out in few weeks. We have this really great photographer for kids magazines lined up to get newborn shots (www.heathermosher.com). As soon as they are both home we can get it done and get them send out.

Thanks again for all your love and support. We have only had this site up for a few weeks and we over 600 people (ip addresses) who have logged on!!!! That's awesome. Thank you all again for helping us get through this crazy experience.

Heather