Day 10

Today was another quiet day, which was just fine in my book! Both girls had increases in their feedings again today. Melia is now up to 8ml every 3 hours and Madison is up to 6ml every 3 hours. Just yesterday they were increased to 5ml and 4 ml, so I can't believe that they're increasing them again so soon! Maddie is tolerating all of her feedings very well. She's digesting all of her food and spent most of her day today sleeping...I'm pretty sure she's on a growth mission to catch up to her sister! Lia is tolerating the majority of her feedings, digesting about 6ml of her 8ml feedings. I'm not sure if her body just needs time to adjust or if maybe 8ml was too big of a jump from the 5ml that she had yesterday and the 3ml that she had the day before. Time will tell I guess. Lia had a few apnea episodes today, but it seems that a lot of the time she can bring herself out of these episodes and doesn't need help from the nurses, so that's good - she's still learning how to breathe, so this is expected. Maddie is doing really good with her apnea and hasn't had an episode in a couple days. As of tonight, Maddie weighs 2lbs 3oz and Lia weighs 2lbs 12oz - so Maddie is 3oz over her birth weight and Lia is back to her birth weight. They're still losing and gaining water weight day to day right now - but now that their feedings have been increased and they're tolerating them well, hopefully we'll start seeing some consistent weight gain. They were both pretty sleepy today, so I spent most of my day just watching them sleep peacefully. They didn't get their head ultrasounds today because the NICU was pretty busy and it's not an emergent test, so the nurse said that they will probably be done early tomorrow morning.

The highlight of today was that I got to hold both Maddie and Lia at the same time. It was incredible. Although Maddie started to desaturate and Lia had an apnea spell while I was holding them - I'm wondering if these two hate each other and didn't want to be near each other or something! Haha. Of course I'm sure that's not true. I think maybe all 3 of us were overwhelmed by being back together again. Last time I held my girls together, they were inside of me - so to hold them together today for the first time, outside of me, it was a really overwhelming, extraordinary feeling. Unfortunately, Mike was working today, so I was at the hospital by myself and the nurses were so busy (two sets of triplets came into the NICU today - it was chaos!) - so I wasn't able to get a picture of this - but, there will be time for that. It was a moment that me and my girls shared that will only be in my memory - and that's okay with me.