Hard to believe that one week ago--last Thursday--was when we brought Dylan home to be with Andrew. Only one week??? So crazy! I feel like it's been much longer then that!! I'm sure all first time parents must go through that stage where you just have to figure some things out, and of course we are no exception. I feel like we are learning so much about their personalities with each passing day and learning things that work and don't work.
For example, one thing that is working is our 3 hour feeding schedule. We are on a 12, 3, 6, 9 schedule and the boys seem to have adjusted their internal clocks to adapt to this. Sometimes they wake up before their time and need to be held, other times we are going in to their room and waking them for their feeding, but no matter if they were awake or asleep, they seem to be doing well in the eating department. One thing that we've had to adjust (I can't believe I'm saying this....) is the bottle situation. I'm sure you know how PROUD I was of the beautiful (handsome) polka-dotted, color-coded bottles for each boy. Well...when we brought them home from the hospital, they were used to these hospital brand bottles, so we decided to help ease their transition between hospital & home and stick with those bottles for the first few days. Those bottles worked well, but were not for "long-term" use. So on Monday morning we transitioned into my favorite color-coded bottles--for my "blue baby" Drew, and my "yellow baby" Dylan. Hmmm. Not so good. The bottle brand (which I only discovered yesterday!!) is a great one, however is better suited for babies who switch between bottle-feeding and breastfeeding, or who have eased off the breastfeeding. The nipples were way too large then their mouths were used too and they were getting these funny red marks (ring around the mouth!) around their lips. We decided to do some investigating and went out and bought a new brand of bottle yesterday to try out. (We only invested in 6 of this new kind in case this brand doesn't work out either--since we now have a total of 24 polka-dotted bottles that we're not using at all!!) Still too early to tell if this new brand will work better since we only started it late yesterday, but so far it seems to be ok.
Another thing we're trying to figure out is when/how to give these men their vitamins--that smelly, yucky green liquid that they do not like at all. We have been giving them their vitamins mixed in a bottle with 10ml's of formula at their 6pm feeding. Once they gulp that down first (surprise boys!) then we give them another bottle made up with just formula (their reward for taking their vitamins). We *thought* that this was a great idea, however now we are not so sure. Right after their 9pm feeding, the boys are soooooooooooo fussy, gassy, and just overall miserable (read: screaming their lungs out). We are thinking that maybe this is when the vitamins are settling into their stomachs and making them so miserable. So....this morning we decided that instead of doing their entire dose of vitamins at the 6pm feeding and having the boys so unhappy (to put it mildly) at 9pm, we'd try to give them half a dose at 9am and half a dose at 3pm. That way it's not as potent, and it's not settling in their stomachs at nighttime. Sounds like a good theory, right? Again, time will tell as we started it this morning. We'll see what it's like at 9pm. (The last few nights have been that our 9pm feeding has just rolled right into our midnight feeding as the boys have been up that whole time.)
We are also learning about the sheer amount of diapers & formula that we need. You'd think that one of those cans of powdered formula would last a while, but oh no! They are going so fast (one can in about 3 days!! yikes! and that is with only 2 boys!) Also, we bought some pampers preemie diapers, but not that many thinking that the boys would be moving to newborns pretty soon. And while they probably will, I did not plan on the amount of diapers that they would go through a day...all those little "extra" changing times, etc. We offically "ran out" of the preemie size the other night (not the time to run out!) and had to use the newborn size ones. I think that night we went through our entire collection of little sleep sacks for the boys as the diapers were huge on their little bodies and they wet right out of them! Couldn't believe when we saw the amount of laundry to do the next morning between the sleep sacks, the blankets, crib sheets, etc. Ha ha. So I just ordered a ton of formula and preemie size diapers and had them delivered yesterday (phew!).
So many funny stories and it's only been a week!! We're learning!! And I'm sure we'll have lots more stories as more things work/don't work. Danny may be the smartest guy to let us experiment on his brothers and come home when we have things figured out!!
New project for the day....bathtime!!!! We'll see how that goes.......
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