Here She Comes to Save the Day!!

Auntie Kimberly arrived early Saturday afternoon to take control and let us sleep. As an infant/twin specialist, she has lots of tricks and lots of experience.

Her first goal was to get them eating.

Step One: Lose the feeding tube. Natalie has had hers out since her appointment on Tuesday. She has been taking all her feeds orally since then. Natalie, as a big sister should, helped Abigail out by pulling out her tube during a nap. So the tube came out yesterday and has been out since.

Step Two: Choose the right nipple. Kimberly made a trip to Babies R Us and bought $60 worth of bottles and nipples. To that Ben and I both responded with "what!". Hopefully, we'll be taking some of those back. She chose some with shorter nipples with the idea that the longer ones were reaching back to their throats and irritating them or making them gag. It's phenomenal how many different kinds of nipples and bottles there are. Poor breast feed babies only have one choice! Honestly, though, I'd rather the girls just have one choice. Maybe after we get this eating thing down and they are continuing to grow well, we'll try breastfeeding again. However, I digress... back to the nipples.

Step Three: Feed, feed, feed. Now that there are three of us, we can feed both at the same time, which saves a lot of time. Our first attempt was great. They both took their full bottles in about 30 minutes. Since then, we've had varied success trying a variety of nipples and combinations. As always, the first 40ml or so, goes great, then the rest is a struggle.

Current assessment: It's going fairly well. Abby actually seems to be doing better than Natalie overall. She really likes the shorter nipples. We've had a harder time finding the perfect nipple for Natalie.

Prognosis: Looking pretty good. The girls may not be taking all of every feed, but sometimes they are taking more than necessary (especially Natalie). Overall, they are doing quite well. I'm hoping to continue to make progress and go into our appointment on Thursday completely tube-free!

Kimberly also saved us by doing all the 3am and 6 am feeds. Ben slept from 12am to 9am. I slept from 1am to nearly 12pm. Ahhh, pure bliss. Thanks Sister. We sure so love you:-)