A Day in the Life....

4:20am - Mommy's shift begins. I wake up and immediately pump

4:50am - finish pumping and measure out the good stuff for the morning feeding

5:00am - I transfer the girls from our bedroom into their bedroom. Then I pick a baby, any baby - a quick diaper change and begin feeding (usually the one that looks like she's about to wake up or fuss - if they're both sound asleep, always wake Melia first and deal with the wrath of Mad Maddie last)

5:20am - first baby should be done feeding - swaddle her back up and put her in the crib on her bobby - now change and feed the next baby while saying a small prayer in the hopes that the first baby will hang out quietly and not spit up on herself or lose her binky and go into a fit of rage while I'm feeding her sister

5:45am - baby number 2 should be finished eating - swaddle her back up and put her in the crib on her bobby

6am - give Maddie her Pepcid (medication for her acid reflux)

Now I'll go downstairs and straighten up, sterilize bottles, empty the dishwasher, throw in a load of laundry - and if I have time, I think I'm going to make this my blog time. There were a couple of days that I would go back to sleep at this time, but when I have to wake up again at 7:20am, I'm more tired than if I'd just stayed up. Plus, I need to get myself used to staying up because when I go back to work I won't have the luxury of going back to sleep, so why tease myself now.

7:20am - it's been 3 hours already? time to pump again. When we were in the NICU we learned just how long 2 minutes can be when we had to stand there and scrub our hands and arms for 2 full minutes before being able to go into the room to see the girls. Now, we're learning how quickly 3 hours can go by. Just when we think we have some time on our hands, it's time for the girls to eat again.

7:50am - prepare bottles for the second morning feeding

8am - begin diaper changing and feeding process - usually starting with the same baby that ate first last time, but you never know - gotta go with the baby who looks angrier at the time ;-P This feeding takes a little more effort for the girls to get through because their vitamins are added to the milk for this feeding. The vitamins look like motor oil and smell something so awful that I have nothing to compare it to. So needless to say, the girls aren't really happy about the way it makes their food taste.

8:45 - both babies should be fed and are now back in the crib on their bobby pillows - this time I don't re-swaddle them. We only swaddle them at night and in the very early morning so they learn that those are bedtime hours. 8am, it's rise and shine! Maddie seems to like this time of day and will stay awake for a while, but of course, Melia goes right back to sleep.

9am - breakfast time for mommy

9:30am - if either of the girls are still awake upstairs in the crib, I'll rescue her from confinement and bring her downstairs to hang out and play - it's been an hour and a half since eating, so maybe I'll put her in the swing - they both love to swing! We hang out and play for a little while and then it's time for Mommy to pump again.

10:20 - pump

10:50 - prepare bottles

11am - once again it's feeding time at the Marcino zoo - this feeding they get formula instead of breast milk (so what I've just pumped goes into the freezer for future use). They get two bottles of forumula per day because it gives them a few extra calories to help them gain weight. This time we add changing out of our pjs and into our outfits for the day into the mix. Mike should be up by now, but if not, I just let him sleep it out. If he is up we each take a baby and do a diaper change, wardrobe change and feeding so that we get them done at the same time

11:25-11:45am - feeding is complete. Mike should definitely be up by now, so maybe I'll take a shower - wait, Madison is crying and wants to be held. Okay, no shower for me.

1pm - lunch time for mommy and daddy

1:20pm - pump

1:50pm - prepare bottles

2pm - feeding time

3pm - okay, now I have time to take a shower.

3:20pm - Get out of the shower and get dressed. Madison is hating life again - I hold her and she calms down - I go to put her down, she screams. Okay then, blowdrying my hair is overrated anyway.

4:20pm - time to pump

4:50pm - prepare bottles

5pm - feeding time

5:30 - both girls should be done eating and one of us hangs with the girls because one or both of them are usually awake at this time - and the other starts making dinner

6pm - give Madison her second dose of Pepcid for the day

6:10pm - dinner time for mommy and daddy

6:45pm - Whoever cooked will hang out and play with the girls while the other one cleans up the dinner mess

7:20pm - time to pump

7:50pm - prepare bottles

8pm - feeding time - before feeding we change the girls into their pjs - if it's a bath night, we'll give a bath right before this feeding (can't bathe them afterwards because all the moving around will aggravate their acid reflux and make them spit up, so we bathe them beforehand and then put them in clean pjs and feed them - so that 20 minutes after their baths they've got spit up dripping from their mouths and old milk burped up on their pjs - haha - can't win either way)

9pm - transfer the girls and all their gear (monitors, boppy pillows, etc) downstairs into the family room (Mike's man cave - which has now been taken over by double trouble). We get them situated down there, where they'll hang out with daddy for the next few hours.

10pm - mommy goes to sleep - or tries to anyway. I think it was my sister-in-law, Marissa, who once told me that when you're a mom you just don't sleep the same - like you always have one eye and one ear open. Well ain't that the truth. I can hear the girls crying from my bedroom, which is 2 floors up from the family room - and of course, I can't sleep if I can hear either of them crying.

11pm - daddy prepares bottles and feeds the little ladies. This is their second formula feeding for the day. After this feeding they get swaddled up after each feeding for the rest of the night.

2am - daddy prepares bottles and feeds the girls

2:45am - daddy's shift is over. Both girls are fed, have clean diapers and swaddled. Mike brings them up to our bedroom and puts them in the bassinet. I am wide awake of course because now that the girls are in the room, I have to look at them for a few minutes. Then we go to sleep for a few hours.

4:20am - Mommy's shift begins again.

So there it is. A day in the life of the Marcino family. Truth be told, this is the IDEA for the day. Nothing goes quite as smoothly as mapped out here. Pumping on time and getting through a full 1/2 hour of pumping without interruption can be difficult at certain times of the day. Either their monitors alarm, making me get up to check on them, or they realize that they're hungry a little sooner than they're due to eat and I have to stop early and feed them. Between that, and just life in general (visitors, doctor appts, etc), there's just no way to pump every 3 hours for a 1/2 hour, but I do the best I can with that. I mentioned quick diaper changes - no such thing. These girls can poop with the best of them. Just when you think they're done, they're not - one diaper turns into 3 by the time they've finished - and 9 times out of 10, we change them before a feeding because they have "poops in the diaps" as I like to say and then half way through their bottle I can hear and smell that they've pooped in the diap again! So yeah, a quick diaper change is hardly ever possible with these two. They make it quite the project. And poor Madison suffers with her acid reflux so badly that we can't even put her down until about 45 minutes after she's eaten (which is why I can't find the time to shower and/or blowdry my hair) - by the time she's okay to lay down, it's time for me to pump and then it's time to start feeding them again. Her reflux is relieved when she lays on her tummy and is held upright - it helps her digest. Unfortunately, the only way to keep her in this position properly and without her getting upset is to hold her. This has made for some rough nights for us over the weekend. Saturday and Sunday I didn't sleep a wink. I held Madison after each feeding as I laid in the recliner in order to keep her from being in pain. Yesterday morning I was able to get their pediatrician to prescribe the Pepcid. So she's only been taking that since yesterday afternoon, and what a difference it has made! Last night she didn't need to be held after feedings - we could put her in the boppy pillow and prop her upright and she was fine. Melia has relux too, but it's not as severe as Madison's. We could always put her in the boppy after a feeding, and as long as she's propped upright and not laying flat, she's fine. So we're hoping that Maddie can get into that same routine now that she has medicine to help her out.

Other than Maddie's reflux problems, the girls are so good. They are so much fun! They don't do much but sleep, eat and poop - but they still make my day! The faces and noises that they make are so funny. They make me smile all day long. My only complaint right now is lack of sleep - which is impossible to avoid with one baby at home, let alone two. Both of their apnea monitors alarm more often than I'd like and that noise in the middle of the night is pretty frightening. On Monday morning, we called the clinical coordinator of the apnea program, Debbie, to let her know how often the alarms go off. We figured that if she could look at the memory strip from the monitor, we'd be able to tell if these alarms are false, or true events. Melia has a lot of apnea alarms and Maddie has a lot of brady alarms. Maddie's constant bradys concern me more than Melia's apnea since the apnea is something that we know Lia will grow out of. The brady thing can be an indictor of another problem, so this worries me. So, the monitor company came to the house on Monday to download the memory from the monitors. Debbie took a look at their downloads and said that the majority of Melia's apneas are false alarms - that was great news. Maddie, on the other hand, is having true events when she is having her brady episodes. I've been keeping a chart of the girls alarms, so Debbie and I went over the chart I'd been keeping on Madison and we came to the conclusion that the bradys are more than likely reflux related. But just to give me some peace of mind we're going to go to the apnea clinic on Thursday to have Dr. Kamtorn give both girls a quick assessment to ensure that everything is okay. We'll be going to the apnea clinic every 2 weeks, so we have an appointment scheduled for next week, but Debbie thought that it would be a good idea so I can relax and get some rest to come in this week and confirm that Maddie is doing well.

Once they can go through the night without having to be woken up every 3 hours to eat, it will be easier for us to sleep a little longer. We can start letting them sleep once they've reached my due date (August 20th), which is when they'll be considered full term AND they are 7 1/2 pounds - both of these requirements must be met before we can let them sleep a bit more and adjust their schedule.

But we do stay pretty much on schedule. The girls have various doctors appointments throughout the week, which of course can put a kink or two in certain parts of the schedule, but we still do pretty good I must say. Having two sets of hands definitely makes it easier and Mike and I are a really good team. When Mike goes back to work at the end of next week - and I go back to work in October - these will be the real challenges.

**pictures to follow - I gotta go feed the little ladies**