Chase and Reilly are in the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit at Mt. Sinai Hospital. They are on the same floor we were on before and after we delievered. It was a much shorter walk from there, or usually a quick wheelchair ride if Adam had his way. It is an amazing unit that holds upto 32 babies. There are so many lights and buzzers and sensors going off that at first it is incredibly overwhelming. You look up at every light that goes off and hope its not for your baby. We are starting to get used to noises now, becuase we are starting to understand what they mean and why they are going off. All the nurses are incredible and take time with us as often as they can to explain what they are doing and why they are doing it. They try to get us as involved as possible. Dad has changed Chase and Reilly's diaper, and Mom just changed Reilly's for the first time yesterday. We have yet to hold either of them outside of their incubators and expect it will be a little while longer before we can do that. We have to phone in each time we enter the unit, wash our hands a gazillion times and use hand sanitizer every time we touch her incubator cover, or our jeans or hair or anything. You instantly become as paranoid as possible. They are so tiny so infection is a major concern. The unit is open 24 hours a day, and it is hard to stay away but the nurses are so great so we know they are always in good hands. We can talk to them from outside the incubator and sometimes even open their little windows to tell them we are there. Reilly goes nuts when she hears Dad's voice. She cant stop moving when he is around. Its adoreable. They aren't placed side by side but we can keep an eye on Chase's monitor from Reilly's bedside and make plenty of trips back and forth.
So we usually head over there in the morning for our morning check in. Spend time with them. Mom pumps. More time with them. Pump. Another visit and maybe slip away for a nap. Dinner. Visit. Pump. Visit and then peel ourselves away for the night. When we were staying in hospital we, or mostly Adam, would go and visit throughout the night as he was the Milk Delivery Man. Its harder to do so from here, and we are finding ourselves so exhausted so are trying to sleep as much as we can during the night. It sounds like we are there a lot but our visits tend to be short because Sio is still in lots of pain and cant handle long visits. Dad is clocking lots of hours though and the babies love it. Its really hard to find a balance because we want to be in there so much, but have to keep ourselves healthy too. We cant go in if we have any symptoms at all- no cold, cough, sore throat, anything! So we are trying our best to stay healthy so we can be in there for the little beans. Only parents hands are allowed anywhere near the unit. Its even hard for us to keep our hands away but we know how important it is for them to be as germ free as possible so we are touching with our eyes! Adam does some hand-hugging, which is when you place your hand inside the unit and hug the babies. They dont like to be touched lightly, they like a firm hold so that is as close as we've got to holding them for now! Another tough thing is that you cant bring in phones or cameras, so we dont have any pictures of Chase or Reilly in their unit. Hopefully soon we'll find a way to capture some of these precious times. Both of their eyes are still shut, hoping they will open in the next week or so. They yawn and stretch and pee and make lots of facial expressions, but no open eyes yet. We cant wait to see them looking up at us!
So that's that! We are limiting visitors for now because it is so incredibly exhausting when it is just us, let alone having others around. We know you are all thinking of us and wanting to be here for us. Know that you are- your support and love is being felt and we are grateful. Until the beans get a bit more stable we are going to just focus on letting them grow and get strong and that way you can all meet them sooner or later. Doctors think they'll be here in the NICU until sometime in January, at which point they'll move to Grand River until sometime around their due date - end of Feb. We cant wait to bring them home and have you all over to meet our little miracles.
Yesterday was World Premie Day. They lit up the CN Tower purple in honour of all the premies. Take a look:
Thats all we have for now. We head home to KW tonight for another tough day tomorrow where we'll lay our beautiful angel Shea to rest. Keep us in your thoughts tomorrow, we'll need all the strength we can get.
Cody, here we come!
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