For the month of June, I decided to write a series of posts about my twins' first month of life to help raise awareness about prematurity and TTTS (twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome).
Seven years ago today, after 8 long days of waiting for him to be stable enough, I was finally able to hold my Bearhug for the first time! He was so precious and I was so happy to be able to finally cuddle with him. He had some issues with his heart that we were watching, at that point the dr's didn't know if he'd need surgery or if it would resolve on its own (thankfully, resolved on its own but he had to be seen for follow-ups by a cardiologist periodically for the first 9 mos to be sure everything was ok).
Now that both babies were able to be held, I even held them together sometimes, with the help of the nurses. What a joy! After 7 1/2 mos pg w/ my precious babies it had been so hard to lose that closeness after they were born, it probably sounds weird but I finally felt "whole" again when the three of us could cuddle together.
The boys were both still under phototherapy lights for much of the time due to jaundice. At some point (don't remember the exact day) they had been taken off the IV's and given feeding tubes (through their noses into their stomachs). They weren't able to nurse yet so I was still attempting to pump. I had milk supply issues (that's a looong story for another post) but they got all the milk I was able to get - it was given to them through their feeding tubes along w/ special preemie formula.
At this point I had been discharged from the hospital, so I was going to the hospital every morning to visit the boys, I spent my days there until dh got off work and came to visit them with me and then take me home. I'd gone home when they were 4 days old. It was hard leaving the hospital without our babies, and seeing other new moms taking their babies home, and it was hard going home to two empty cribs. I especially got annoyed with people who told me to rest while I could, because I didn't want to rest, I wanted my babies to be home waking me up all night! Not to mention I wasn't getting rest anyway, I was waking up to an alarm every 3 hours so I could pump. But, I knew my babies were where they needed to be for the time being...
To be continued...
