Five Pounds!!!

Hazel was five pounds, one ounce today!!!  Cheryl (our nurse today - and the same one who taught our discharge class) knew I'd be excited when I checked the records today.  Five pounds seems like such a huge milestone!  Abby weighed in at 4 pounds, 14.9 ounces, so she's really close to the five pound mark too.

Check out my five pound baby girl:

The girls were visited by their Aunt Mary today!  She met me at the hospital and fed Abby her bottle while I held the five pounder (hehe).  Pics:

We worked on breast feeding again today, but only with Hazel (I forgot, and pumped too close to Abby's feeding time to make it worth her while).  She was on for about 10-12 minutes, but bradyed several times.  Cheryl figured it was probably the combination of being tired out from her eye exam this morning (Dr. Breed said the eye doctor would follow up in a week) and the caffeine leaving her system.  

At Hazel's second nipple feeding while I was there (this time with a bottle) she got so worked up initially that I'd have to pull the bottle after 3-5 sucks so she would stop to breathe (otherwise she bradyed/desated).  After about five minutes she was generally able to regulate on her own, but zonked out with about 20 ml left in her bottle (out of 42 per feeding), so she gavaged the rest.

Abby, as always, was slow and sturdy.  She did great when Mary fed her, and did pretty well when I fed her later via bottle.  In fact, Cheryl commented that Abigail may be getting her feeding tube out pretty soon.  Hard to believe!

I spoke to Arianna and Arwyn's mom again today (found her name was Jennifer).  She appreciated my tip about the possibility of social security.  We also talked about breast pumping, and she asked how much I've been producing.  Apparently she is already "behind" with producing enough for her girls, while I'm (fortunately) still "ahead."  In fact, Cheryl and Cindy (along with Terri, one of the nurses in NICU3 today) both seemed impressed with my milk production; Cindy saw the bottles after I pumped in the NICU and was surprised I had produced that much at one sitting.  To be fair, though, it had been seven hours since I had last pumped (with a breast feed attempt in there), so it was a bit more than normal.  But overall I am feeling better about my numbers, at least right now since I'm ahead.  :)