On August 18th, our twins were born at 32 weeks. Once they arrived, they were rushed to the level 2 NICU to get further vitals, get under warmers and receive oxygen. It’s a strange feeling of bliss and surrealism mixed with a lot of worry as our little girl was significantly smaller than her brother. Pictures of her alone don’t really do justice to just how small she really is. To put it into perspective, she is 3 pounds and when fitted with a new born shirt that fits a 7 pounder, the length of the shirt goes past her feet – it’s basically a long dress with the arms rolled all the way up to fit her little arms.

The size restriction that she suffered from was not enough to keep her down though. She and her brother are fighters, not needing to be intubated, being taken off the oxygen five hours after being born and yesterday drinking 50% of their feeding by a bottle for the first time almost a week after being born. To put it simply, they are doing fantastic and moving a lot faster than the nurses and doctors expected. Hopefully this can translate into them being able to come home in 2 weeks – that’s the really hard part.

Having your children born and then not being allowed to take them home is a lot harder than I realized. Even though we’ve never had them here at home, outside the womb, there is a sense of them missing and not being here for us to hold and tend to. We can’t comfort them when they cry, we can’t feed them, we can’t be there to make them feel safe, we can’t just stare at them in amazement anytime we want. We have to schedule time to see our children and that just feels wrong even though it is for their own well being.

While everyone is doing much better than expected, mom is doing fantastic in all areas, we’re not whole until our son and daughter come home.