Ducky and Teddy

So, as I may have mentioned in one of my first blogs, the first time I met the boys, before we had names for them, they were given the nicknames of Ducky and Teddy. These nicknames stem from the little gold sticker that secured their temperature monitor onto their tiny little bodies (pictured above). Dax had the Ducky, Trev had the Teddy. I hated the idea of referring to them as "Baby A" and "Baby B" but was still not ready to settle on their names yet, so Ducky and Teddy it was! Ducky soon became Daxton and Teddy became Trevyn. Now we have Daxton Ducky and Trevyn Teddy! I can't wait to scream "Go Ducky, Go Teddy!" at a soccer game when they are 12!

Well, I wanted to get a stuffed animal to take pictures of them next to as they grow so we would have a reference to see their progress. So, naturally I decided I needed a Ducky and a Teddy for their pictures. As I looked around, my requirements were that the stuffed animals were similar in size at around 12", similar in style, could be easily cleaned, and cute! This proved more difficult than I expected! It took me a while but I eventually found some I liked, they were just a bit bigger than I had hoped at about 15".

Now that I have the animals, I will be posting weekly update pictures of the boys with their animals respectively. That is, the Ducky will always be with Dax and the Teddy will always be with Trev. These first pictures are from 7/27. Enjoy!

My little boys are becoming babies more and more with every day. It is so amazing to watch! It is pretty interesting when I hold them to think that they are supposed to still be in my tummy and to think that this is what they would look like regardless if they were still there. There would have been two perfect little human beings in there growing, BIG! Every time they kick a leg I wonder, "Would that have been my bladder, or a rib, or eachother??!" I would have gladly welcomed every wonderful kick despite the discomfort I'm sure they would have caused.

A bit on Kangaroo Care...

Kangaroo Care - a technique practiced on newborn, usually preterm, infants wherein the infant is held, skin-to-skin, with an adult.

I have been getting a lot of opportunities to get my skin to skin cuddles with Trevyn over the past few weeks and have read a lot about the benefits. Interestingly, the benefits of Kangaroo Care were discovered by accident in a NICU in Bogota, Colombia. Due to limited funding, the NICU did not have enough isolettes for all the babies and in order to keep the babies temperature stable, the mommy would hold the baby skin to skin on her chest. They have since discovered the trend that generally, babies who receive kangaroo care are have fewer infections, gain weight faster, maintain more stable oxygen levels and are discharged sooner. While reading about the benefits I found one thing in particular very intriguing. A study found that, during kangaroo care, when a babies temperature would decrease, the mothers would subsequently increase to make up for the drop and thus giving the baby the extra heat they needed to warm up to a proper temp again. The bond between mother and child truly is amazing!!!

While I had ample opportunity to care for Trev this way, I was definitely lacking in my chances to really get that bonding time with Dax due to his ventilator and the fear he may extubate(remove the tube) himself while being taken out of his isolette. Only a few brave nurses were comfortable with the idea.

The main reason Dax was still on the ventilator was because he was having oxygen desaturations and bradycardia (drop in heart rate) that were so severe that he would lose all his color and almost have a grey tone to his flesh (bad and scary!). The ventilator was able to give him manual breaths when this occurred that allowed him to pretty quickly recover. However, as of 8/1 at 10am (38 hours and counting!) Dax was extubated and has been doing very well since. While on the vent he was having 1-2 bad color changing episodes a day. Since being extubated, he has not had a single one! I guess his severe bradycardia was his way of throwing a fit and saying "get this thing out of my trachea!!" He went from the ventilator straight to the nasal cannula which is the same machine his brother is on! He completely skipped the Si-Pap and CPAP machines and so far has not needed to step back to them. I'm so proud of him! Immediately after he got the tube out, he found his fingers and started sucking away at them! He must have been waiting so long to do that! Now, he loves his pacifier! Here is Dax showing off his new breathing gear! So proud of him!!

Along with yesterdays surprise of Daxton being extubated, my parents got a great surprise as well! The nurse let them both hold Trev! It was a great moment for all of us and my parents were, of course, very proud Grandparents!

My boys are really starting to chub up now! As of last night, August 1, Daxton weighed in at 2lb, 13.4 oz and Trevyn was 2lb, 12.6oz. they are going to be 3 lbs each before we even know it! I can't wait to pull out one of Athan's favorite outfits from when he was first born! I know my family missed this one!