Mouse & Patrick.

Follow-up.

Ginger advises me that our carseat is now universally acclaimed as the Best. Carseat. Ever. As awarded by the nurses of the SCN, who are in a position to know.

How was your night?

We have had two pretty different and very typical newborn nights with Anna at home.

Saturday night went really well -- all the way down to me somehow sleeping through the 4 a.m. feeding despite the alarm, which probably made Ginger feel misty-eyed with nostalgia for pretty much every night we'd had with Charlie, every one of which I was also very inclined to sleep through. Much like Charlie, she ate when she was supposed to eat, and she slept when she was supposed to sleep.

Sunday night? Not so much. She was a lot more restless in between the feedings. I was up with her three times, and Ginger as well. Anna's clearly very tired today as a result. She's still taking bottles pretty well, and the nursing, while technically "non-nutrative," seems to be progressing just fine.

A silver lining in taking her to the SCN every day to visit Evelyn: We can strip her and weigh her anytime we like on a medical-grade scale. Being able to advise her pediatrician over the phone about her daily weight gain in grams has been an unexpected boon. We fervently hope that being able to report weight gain between now and Evelyn's discharge from the SCN will permit the pediatrician to recommend converting more of her bottle feedings to nursing sessions. If we could replace one bottle per day (or, putting too fine a point on it, per night) with nursing instead, the quality of life goes waaaay up. For me, especially.

The neonatologist in the SCN today said that they've charted Evelyn's discharge date as Wednesday rather than Thursday. We're not sure how that happened, since we heard about her apneic episode last Thursday morning. Maybe the medical profession has some new-fangled way of counting to seven. Anyway, we're not arguing.

Anna's first pediatrician appointment is tonight. Our pediatrician is the only doctor on the planet who still makes housecalls -- something he does for newborns only. He has a black leather bag and a horse-drawn carriage and everything. Actually, putting aside the obvious marketing benefits, it's a pretty smart way for a doctor to see the daily context in which a family is intending to raise a baby and to assess likely health and safety risks. We love our pediatrician. And no, you can't have his name.

Counting our blessings.

1. They were born at 32 weeks. This seemed too early at the time, but in retrospect, it could have been a lot worse. And basically everyone has told us so. "Oh, thirty-two weeks? That's not so bad."
2. They are twins. Twins do better in pre-term births than singletons. Much better. Of course, they're also statistically more likely to be pre-term than a singleton.
3. They are both girls. Girls do better than boys as pre-term births in general and with lung development in particular. Who said life was fair?
4. They got betamethasone 48 hours before birth. Not everyone gets a chance to get this intervention before they go into preterm labor. The fact that we showed symptoms a few days before it happened made it possible for us to use this to ripen their lungs. And they've had no lung issues -- they were on room air from Day One.
5. The smaller one was born first. This made it possible for us to avoid a C-section as a preventative measure. If it had been the other way around -- and this was some kind of cosmic coin-flip coming up "heads" -- we might not have had the choice.
6. They were not our first birth. Having a track record for labor allowed us to make decisions and get advice like a couple of real experts. And that track record gave the MDs confidence to allow us to proceed as we had wanted. As Dick Vitale will probably never have the opportunity to say, "Proven pelvis, baby!"
7. They were born after school started. This was not immediately obvious as a blessing, but having Patrick start school when he did made it possible for us to get to CPMC as quickly as we did.
8. They were born before school started. This one is harder to fathom, but if they had a later due date and had been born at the 32-week mark right now, Christine would be back at work we would have had a lot fewer options for Charlie and Patrick. Christine and Mom have been a real blessing.
9. We have had tremendous support from our family and friends. Frankly, our only real chore has been coordinating the abundant offers of help. We've been really grateful for everyone's generosity with their time, particularly those who have cared for Patrick and Charlie throughout.
10. They were born without medical issues. Obviously, this is the most important one of all -- really, it's a culmination of all the other blessings. They needed to be in the NICU and then the SCN not because they were sick, but because they needed further development. We've seen the heartache of the families for whom a positive medical outcome was far from assured, and we feel blessed that all of our angst has been wrapped up in "when" and not in the more awful cloth of "whether."

I'll probably think of more.

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.