100 days

Well we were hoping to never have to write this post but our babies have now been in the NICU for 100 days. When you walk up the long NICU hill there are photos lining the walls of other NICU graduates where they are now and the stats of where they were then. When we first read the inspirational captions we were amazed at the babies that had spent 2 weeks - 30 days in the NICU, how sad we thought! But now as we read through the captions, we smile at our own ignorance as we now fall into a very small category of babies who have been there 100 days +. I will say though that the fact that our babies, as tiny as they were, are ALIVE and thriving, makes every single day worth it. We'll take what we have to to ensure a successful transition home and a lifetime of hugs and smiles.

With that said, our 100 day birthday was terrific! Slade has been doing so well on his feedings that today his feeding tube was removed! From now on, he will eat as much as he is hungry for and can have more if he wants more and less if he wants less. So if he doesn't finish a bottle, it won't be tube fed to him, but rather he will have to hopefully make up for it on his following bottle. This is a huge step and we couldn't be more excited. The girls are still only eating 4 of 8 bottles per day and aren't quite ready to lose there tubes, but hopefully they catch up soon. Also, all the babies have been on caffeine since their birth to help with heart rate drops. Well Claire was removed yesterday and Ella/Slade will be removed tonight. So far so good with Miss Claire and we'll be keeping our fingers crossed for the other two!

The only downside to today is that to ensure that the babies aren't getting the thrush from my milk, I must begin taking some medicine and for the next 24 hours must dump everything I pump. It already looks like their thrush is clearing up but they want to take every precaution to make sure there is no cross-contamination. Arg....the agony of flushing oz's down the drain, I couldn't even do it, but Brian took care of it for me:)

Unfortunately before we could get a picture of Slade without his feeding tube in, the eye doctor came to inflict his bi-monthly torture so instead below is a video of him and Claire hanging out with their aunt Heather...