Mouse, asleep.

Kitten, asleep.

How's their weight?

Anna's up to 3 lbs 11 oz, which is up 3 oz over her birth weight. Evelyn is right about 4 lbs 5 oz, which is almost an ounce over her birth weight.

But the really good news is that they gained 70 and 80 grams respectively in a 24 hour period. An ounce is 28 grams, so that means they gained between 2 and 3 ounces overnight. That's pretty close to "smooth sailing" in the weight and nutrition department. Evelyn's getting 44 ml per feeding and Anna's at 35 ml, so we're likely to continue to put up good growth numbers.

What's new this afternoon?

There are days when this city gives you reason to remember the answer to the question, "Why didn't we sell our cars and sign away our lives to buy a place in the City?" Often it's the summer weather, as it has been since about August 4th or so. Sometimes it's the traffic, which isn't as predictable as it should be. Nearly always it's the parking, as it has been every day except yesterday.

But not today. Clear as a bell and 68 degrees, a pleasant drive, abundant street parking, and two good reasons to be here. It's a great place to be and a great day to be here.

And I would trade it all for two empty beds at a hospital in Burlingame. Funny how parenting lowers your expectations.

When can they come home?

There's no hard and fast rule.  Apparently, at various points in the past NICUs had benchmarks like "five pounds" or "full-term birthdate."  We have been told neither.  Instead, it's all about whether the girls are able to behave like full term babies in the most important respect -- by never ceasing their core respiratory and circulatory functioning even during their most demanding activity (nursing).  We don't know when that will happen, but we know it's as much a function of the normal progressive development of the autonomic nervous system during gestation as it is a matter of training.  Expecting the girls to maintain perfect balance amongst respiratory and circulatory functions at 33-34 weeks of gestational age is a bit like expecting a ten year old to drive a car -- there are a lot of aspects of the task that are within the kid's grasp at any given moment, but you can't trust that developmentally he or she is ready for every circumstance that could be presented.

So we'll wait for a green light from the MDs.  It's frustrating to see them doing so well and still know that it will be a while before they can go home.

Thought for the day.

"Too much of what women do either gets eaten or dirty."  -- Cousin Dibby (82), explaining why she still mows the lawn.

What's new today? (And yesterday?)

Both girls are doing well with nursing.  Showing somewhat more determination than either of their parents, both of them pulled their feeding tubes out early this morning.

The entire CPMC labor and delivery unit had a busy day yesterday.  In absolute terms, San Francisco has the largest ethnic Chinese population of any city in the United States other than New York City -- 152,620 as of Census 2000.  On a percentage basis, Chinese Americans constitute 19.6% of the total population of San Francisco -- the largest such percentage of any city in the United States.  And apparently, in Chinese tradition, 8/8/08 is considered a very auspicious date.  That's why the Beijing Olympics were scheduled to begin yesterday.  And it's auspicious not only for opening an Olympic Games, but also for being born.  Which means scheduled C-sections.  Seventeen of them, or so goes the rumor around the NICU.

Annoyance of the day:  We're required to supply all of our pumped breastmilk in sterile 4 oz bottles provided by the hospital.  According to the procedures, we cannot sterilize and reuse these bottles.  You need two bottles at any given session with the pump (do I need to draw you a picture?), but the production at this point can be consolidated after pumping into a single bottle.  The sterile 4 oz bottles are supplied in a sealed pouch, each of which contains three bottles.  So three bottles are taken out of the pouch.  Two are used.  One used bottle gets rinsed and put into the recycling bin; the other is placed into the refrigerator and then later carried in a cooler to CPMC.  Unless I'm mistaken, it would appear that the perfect number of bottles to include in each pouch would be "two," with "four" coming in a very distant second.  But three?  Now, we don't throw the third one away; we save it for use with another orphaned third bottle at the next session.  I have no idea whether this violates NICU sterility procedures, but I don't have the heart to throw one away each time.  There is probably a "Seinfeld" episode about this, but if so I haven't seen it.