Dr. Arnold thought both Paige and Andrew looked great yesterday! They are still BOTH gaining quite a bit of weight (23 ounces in 19 days), but we aren't going to worry about it. I told her that I was sometimes having to give an additional bottle after Andrew's feed because he's still starving after his 4+ ounces! She told me to give them as much as they want for the next two weeks and we'll come back for their 4 month check-up with weight check on the 23rd. If they continue to pack on the pounds, we'll call the Georgetown clinic and get their advice on stopping the preemie, higher-calorie formula. So today, Paige weighed 10 pounds, 4 ounces and Andrew is 10 pounds, 15 ounces! Hard to believe.
We did talk to her about some strategies for getting them to sleep longer at night. We have had some really rough nights recently and are struggling with how to handle things. The problem is that one of them will have a good stretch, but is often woken up by the other. If they aren't woken up, we can feed the one that's hungry and go back to bed, but then we're up in an hour feeding the other child, who inevitably will wake up the first again. We played this game for a quite a while last night and I think Jack and I got a total of maybe 4 hours of sleep. We thought the sleep thing was supposed to get easier! I guess its different with twins...
I did join the Northern Virginia Parents of Multiples (NVPOM) group a couple weeks ago and they are providing some great resources, advice, and often times just sympathy! We are actually going to a talk on "Training your Twins to Sleep through the Night" this Saturday. I cannot tell you how excited I am to learn a technique that just might work. I have to get them in a better routine before I go back to work!
Speaking of work, I am counting down now. 5 1/2 weeks! I am super nervous about how I'm going to balance everything and about being away from them so much and missing a huge part of their lives. I keep telling myself that many great moms have similar schedules and that things will be okay. I can only imagine how busy we are going to be though. One thing that may help a little, although I am sad about how soon it ended, is my pumping. My milk supply has been falling off for several weeks and is now officially gone. I really wanted to make it until at least 6 months, but since they've never been able to latch and all I've ever done is pump, I guess I should be grateful I got this far. I feel a little bad about not being able to sustain my supply, but I cannot tell you how happy I will be to not have to pump after their feeds! This will save a HUGE amount of time and will make going back to work a whole lot easier. I think I need to have a party for the return of our rented hospital-grade pump!
Time to make bottles and prep things for the day. I did want to share that I found a project to help with my craziness being stuck inside -- I'm stripping the wallpaper in our powder room during naptimes and will hopefully paint next week! Only thing, is that this project is turning out to be a little bigger than I originally planned:)
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