Living the NICU Life

I'm sorry it's been so long since our last update. We leave the house so early and get home so late and the hospital life is starting to wear on me just a little, so I'm just exhausted when I get in at night. Things are going well though. The boys made a whole lot of progress right at first, so we were hopeful that learning to eat would come as quickly, but we seem to kind of be at a standstill. As soon as they start taking all of their feedings by mouth, we'll be able to go home, but in the meantime, we wait patiently for them to get the strength, skills, and stamina to do so. The nurses say that one day we'll come in and they'll suck the whole bottle down - that it's something that just clicks in their brain allowing them to suck, swallow, and breath at the same time. I just can't wait for that day! In the meantime, here is a glimpse into life in the NICU.

A Day in the Life of Eli & Landon:


This is our very own area. We have our stuffed animals back on the shelf and a big tub of clothes and blankets that mom brought up here for us. We each have our own monitor that shows our heart rate, respiration, and oxygen saturation and several times a day, we give mom a little scare when our heartrate drops pretty low. We're just keeping her on her toes. Eli is on the left and Landon is on the right. This is where we spend most of our time - just snuggled up together. When we are not being held, this is our favorite place!




The next few pictures are of the only activity we really ever do...eat. Don't let these pictures fool you though, most of the time we get our food through a tube. You see...we are lazy and don't want to work for our food. We know that if we just sit there, eventually they'll just dump it in our tummies. We are a little spoiled!

After we eat, we are supposed to go back to bed, but mommy and daddy don't give us up too easily. Mom just avoids eye contact with the nurse so she can hold us longer and sometimes she acts like shes asleep because no one wants to pry a baby from a sleeping momma. We are happiest when we are in daddy's arms and he is singing to us.

Every three days, we get a bath. Now there are pros and cons to this situation. We really don't like being wet and cold all that much, but after we're clean, they wrap us up and massage our heads and we love that! It feels so good! We get our diapers put back on, new sticky things on our stomachs with all kinds of cords, a lotion massage all over, and then mom always picks out really cool clothes to put us in. We look the cutest right after a bath because our hair sticks up and mom goes on and on about how precious we are. Sometimes she goes a little overboard.

We get held until mom is absolutely about to pass out from exhaustion and then we just curl up next to each other. We sleep best when we are touching each other.

Life in the NICU isn't that bad. We have really nice nurses that take care of us and we are always pretty happy. Mom keeps talking about going home and it sounds like a nice place. Maybe one day we'll start to eat on our own and we can check out this place called "home."