Anna, at home in the bassinette.

Welcome home, Anna.

Mouse is home!

We brought Anna home from the hospital this afternoon.  It's great to have her home, but a little sad that we had to leave Evelyn behind for a while longer.

Also, it's just a little bit terrifying not to have her hooked up to an oximeter.  I find myself wondering what her oxygen saturation is right now.  And right now.  And right now.  Of course, after this much time in the NICU and SCN staring at monitors, I'm sometimes distracted wondering what my sats are.  And those of all the strangers I meet.  It seems like criminal medical negligence that we don't all have oximeters on at all times.  There should be large blue numbers floating above all of our heads.  99.  98.  100.  100.  97.  78!  Get that man to a hospital!  Or just poke him until he remembers to breathe again; I'm not sure what you do with an adult to treat a desat.  Probably administer caffeine.

We had a bit of a kerfuffle (as Christine would call it) at the hospital today.  First there was a controversy over whether Anna had been carseat tested yet.  Her chart said "yes," but all of the nurses said "no."  So they did it again -- or for the first time, whichever -- an hour in our fancy new Italian carseat hooked up to the monitor, to prove that the body positioning of the carseat wouldn't inhibit respiration or circulation.  She passed with flying colors, although unlike her sister she got cranky at the half-hour mark, thereby establishing a radius of free movement from our house.

But when we put her back into the seat to take her home, one of the nurses opined that the straps were in the wrong position for a newborn of her size.  I was holding Evelyn at the time, so Ginger and about three nurses crowded around Anna in her carseat, working on getting her positioned just right, putting folded and rolled up towels all around her.  And they still weren't satisfied -- the shoulder straps entered the seat too high up, and there appeared to be no way to string them into the seat through any lower holes (as was our experience with our prior infant carrier carseats).  Verdict:  This carseat was unsuitable for a newborn of Anna's size, and we therefore wouldn't be allowed to take her home in it.  There was much tut-tutting about the sloppy design of a carseat that couldn't be made proper for a newborn.

This struck me as odd, because the particular strap problem they noted would have made the carseat unsuitable for any baby under, say, 15 lbs, and you can't really make much money selling a carseat to babies between 15 and 22 lbs -- even Italian ones -- no matter how beautifully designed it may be.  Nevertheless, we resigned ourselves to sending me back to Lullaby Lane today to return the carseat and express our outrage at being snookered by the purveyors of these fancy Italian $150 infant carriers that were good for nothing.  I would tell them where they could put their beautifully designed but nevertheless fundamentally defective Italian-made infant carrier, and I would buy a good old-fashioned Chinese-made $150 infant carrier in its place, thank you very much.

As I picked up the infant carrier to storm off to Lullaby Lane, I looked at the underside, and noticed a red handle that seemed to serve no obvious purpose.  There was no such handle on our old infant carrier.  So I did what comes naturally -- I pulled it.  (Well, actually, I admit that first I pushed it, but when that changed nothing, I thought "Aha!" and pulled it instead.)  As if by some kind of strange magic, the entire interior of the carseat shifted smoothly downward on some kind of hidden guillotine mechanism, bringing the entry point of the straps seamlessly down to newborn shoulder height.  (Odd that they don't sell it in that position, but whatever.  Maybe they think American babies are all monstrously large.)  The nurses all oohed and aahed -- not at my technical prowess, but at how slick the carseat design turned out to be.  That makes a lot more sense than re-stringing the upper straps through holes, they said.  And so it does.  Of course, if the experience of Fiat and Alfa Romeo owners is to be credited, we can expect the carseat will soon be sitting in a cloud of steam and smoke by the side of the road, looking as beautiful as ever -- perhaps more beautiful for its flaws.

But for now, we're grateful that the carseat did not present a barrier to our beautiful little Anna coming home, where she belongs.  Feel free to stop by if you're in the neighborhood.  Our hygiene standards are much lower than the NICU's.  In fact, you may even be asked to lactate.

Evelyn's car seat test.

Mouse and Kitten, together.

When are they coming home? (Updated.)

A bit of a blow yesterday. As you know, one of the benchmarks we've been dealing with is that, to be discharged, a baby must go a week without a serious oxygen desaturation episode. Anna had one last Saturday; Evelyn didn't, and that's why we were concerned that Evelyn might be discharged mid-week and Anna would have to stay until Saturday.

Well, Ginger arrived at the hospital Thursday morning to learn that Evelyn had a serious desat the night before. This re-sets her discharge countdown clock by a week. Anna's still cleared to come home on Saturday, when her countdown from her last desat runs out, but Evelyn will need to stay in the SCN at least until Thursday the 28th.

We're struggling to figure out what our lives will look like with one baby in the SCN and one at home. We're told the hospital doesn't enforce any "no siblings" rules as to twins, but once Anna is discharged, she's not a patient and the nurses won't be able to treat her as one. There are therefore some serious impracticalities to bringing Anna to the SCN every day, and even more serious impracticalities to leaving her at home. And the idea of spending more time at home with Anna and spending less time with Evelyn is, under the circumstances, abhorrent. This little twist is during out to be a major drag. Putting aside the actual medical issues, it's the first real inconvenience we've encountered in having twins -- or, specifically, the first inconvenience related specifically to having two kids each with a different compelling need from us at the same time.

When are they coming home?

We've wanted to know the answer to this question for a while, and we finally have something on which to pin our hopes -- Saturday morning.

Today Evelyn is 2395 g, which translates to a little over 5 lbs 5 oz. Anna is 2085 g, which translates to almost 4 lbs 10 oz. Each is just over a pound past her birthweight. Neither of them is yet showing a consistent weight gain on the 22 calorie fortified breastmilk. However, the neonatologist is not concerned because she thinks going home will help. So Saturday it is, unless one of them has some kind of episode that concerns the doctors.

So here's the story on the fortified milk: Ordinary breastmilk (and the ordinary infant formula that aspires to replicate it) is 20 calories per ounce. Babies in need of faster weight gain are sometimes prescribed high-calorie formula or fortified breastmilk -- either 22 or 24 calories per ounce. The baby formula manufacturers sell special formula in both concentrations for preterm infants, and there is a powder you can add to the breastmilk in order to boost its calorie content. I gather the special powder consists of -- get this -- regular formula powder. So it's a bit like making hot chocolate by melting superpremium Scharffen Berger chocolate into superpremium milk from a very very local organic dairy, and then adding Nestlé Quik because it wasn't chocolatey enough. Anyway, this is part of the reason that, when they're home, we'll only be nursing them on a limited basis. The rest of the breastmilk needs to be pumped, fortified, put into bottles, and then fed to them. Our guess is this cycle will require nearly constant attention on our part -- or so we've been warned.