Thank you for your prayers and praise the Lord...the babies have been steadily gaining weight in the past few days! Tycen now weighs 4 lbs 6 oz and Shaylie weighs 3 lbs 14 oz!!
Shaylie has had very bad diarrhea in the past few days. Unfortunately as a result, her poor little tooshie has gotten very raw. We have had to put her back in the isolette occasionally to try to let her air dry while still keeping her nice and warm. We also started to use Boudreaux's Butt Paste on her rash, which has really helped (we've tried it all...desitin, proshield, nystatin...to all you mommys, I recommend this for little ones with sore tooshies). The doctor also decreased her fortification today to 22 calories instead of 24 and her total fluid volume to 160 mL/kg/day vs. 170 mL/kg/day.
**Please pray that Shaylie's bottom will heal quickly. Pray that she will start to have regular stools again and that she will continue to gain weight despite her irregularity.
Shaylie is now on a 30 minute feeding schedule (every 3 hours)! This is considered a normal feeding schedule for babies. Tycen is very close at 45 minutes! The next step is continuing to work on breastfeeding and then introducing the bottle. The doctor said our babies are ready to start feeding by bottle (and have been for a few days), but I have decided to wait a little while to make sure that breastfeeding is really established first. Hopefully by the end of the week they'll be ready to start with the bottle. This is our last barrier before we can go home... they have to be able to take full feeds by bottle and breast. We're getting there!!
**Please pray that our babies will be excellent feeders! The sooner they can take in all their feeds by mouth, the sooner we go home!!!
The babies had a hearing test last night, which they passed with flying colors. We didn't really have any concerns about this because they can obviously recognize voices, but still is another potential obstacle that we don't take forgranted.
**Praise the Lord for our babies' normal hearing ability!
**We can always use continued prayers for good health, no infections, and continued steady neural development. Again, thank you all SO much for your love and support!
**We can always use continued prayers for good health, no infections, and continued steady neural development. Again, thank you all SO much for your love and support!
