What's new today?

Ginger spent the day with them; I stayed home and painted the bedroom, with help from Mom and Brian, and much-appreciated visits from others.  (For those who are curious, we went with the Pink Hibiscus -- it turned out somewhat pinker and less peachy than the color swatch on screen, but it goes well with our crib quilts so we're happy with it.)  Kelsey and Bridget visited the girls also; they weren't allowed in the nursery so the nurse very kindly disconnected the girls from their monitors and rolled the bassinette over to the window so they could see.

The bottle feeding is hit-or-miss.  This afternoon Evelyn was bottle feeding, and she desaturated so badly that her lips turned blue.  In essence, she was so focused on keeping up with the bottle that she forgot to breathe.  Not exactly a confidence-inspiring move on her part, but human development happens in its own time.  It's all going well enough and nobody is worried, but transitions are -- well, transitional.

Uh, wait, what about Thursday's photo?

Careful readers of this blog will have noticed that the photo I posted on Thursday depicted a girl in a purple knit hat who clearly was not Evelyn.  I write to confirm that it was not.  In violation of the universal Bambine al Dente twin identification protocol, the SCN staff placed the purple hat on Anna and put some kind of hospital-issue hat on Evelyn.  Apparently this was because there was spit-up on the pink hat (we blame Anna for this, although there were apparently no eyewitnesses willing to step forward), and SCN staff put the purple hat on her to keep her warm. Evelyn was then given the hospital-issue cap, with no regard paid to your settled expectations as faithful and attentive Bambine al Dente readers.

We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.  However, because the photo caption correctly named the twins in left-to-right order, we here at Bambine al Dente cannot accept responsibility for loss or damage occasioned by this error.

Kitten, asleep.

Mouse, asleep.

Bigger brother.

Kitten, falling asleep.

What's new tonight?

Both girls have their NG tubes out.  Evelyn took a bottle tonight but fell asleep with five cc left to go.  That's not considered serious in terms of overall nutrition, but if either of them fall asleep with, say, 20 cc left to go in their bottle, the guilty party will get an NG tube inserted again and the rest will be force-fed.  So we'll see how that goes.

We heard an interesting theory about why the SCN rules (and, to a different degree, the NICU rules at CPMC) are they way they are.  Obviously, adults carry in germs from the outside.  So do kids, but more so.  And yet sibling minors are allowed in the NICU, while non-sibling minors are not.  The distinction is not merely to limit the number of germ-infected kids coming near the babies.  Rather, siblings are considered safer for the babies because whatever the mother has been exposed to will generate antibodies that will be present in the breastmilk.  It is assumed that the microbes to which the siblings have been exposed will also have infected the mother, and she will have generated the antibodies to combat the diseases that her own kids are carrying.  So allowing the siblings in to see the babies is actually a calculated risk -- siblings are more likely to bring in pathogens to which the babies are already naturally resistant, while non-sibling minors are flatly more dangerous.   Of course, all kids are equally dangerous to other people's kids in the NICU, but petting other people's newborns is frowned upon anyway.

The nurses and doctors at CPMC were always quite cautious about prognosis.  By contrast, the ones at Peninsula can't seem to stop stroking our egos about how great the girls were doing and how they'll soon be home.