Thursday, May 25, 2006

The girls are now 10 days old!

So, the girls have been with us for 10 days now. After the shock of yesterday it was good to see the girls today and have a long cuddle with Phoebe. Lydia had a "long line" (big drip pipe) inserted today to make it easier for the doctors to administer the medicine she needs, so we haven't wanted to disturb her today, despite the strong urge to give her big kisses and cuddles. She seems comfortable and is taking things in her stride. It will be a case of monitoring her minute by minute to see how things develop over these critical days. They are both now having the maximum amount of milk hourly, which is a big step - well done to Helen for all the expressing! She will be supplying Sainsbury's at this rate! This means they are both off one of their drips and are now being fed the milk through a tube into their stomach (the green pipe in the photos) and some "lipid" which is presumably a fatty substance that is administered through a peripheral drip. Phoebe was off her oxygen for 6 hours today, which is a great step forward and it looked like she enjoyed having the pipe taken out of her nose, which I can totally understand!
Here are the latest photos, taken at 19:00 this evening...





This is Phoebe in her "I'm chilling out for the night" pose.






And this is Lydia in her "I'm glad today is over with and they've stopped prodding and poking me for a while" pose, bless her! I'm not sure her cousins Sara and Rachel will approve of all the pink sheets, but Lydia quite likes them!!




Apologies for all the medical details in these updates, it's a record for me more than anything, so I remember what the doctors are telling us! Thank you so much to all those of you who have contacted us or passed-on your thoughts and regards, we are much appreciative of your concern and prayers at this time. Thank you SO much.