Simply the Best

We came home from the hospital today to find a delicious dinner of fresh strawberries and NC BBQ waiting for us in the fridge, a gift from one of our neighbors -- and then another neighbor showed up with a wonderful meal for tomorrow night! Cooking has fallen a bit by the wayside since the boys were born, so we very much appreciate the rescue from another night of frozen pizza or hospital cafeteria food! (Although Mike wishes to note that he cooked hamburgers, chicken a la king, some vegetables, eggs, blueberry muffins, and some boxed rice dishes since the babies appeared).

We feel so fortunate to have such wonderful friends and family supporting us during this time. Your emails, your comments on the blog, your thoughts and prayers for our family -- they mean so much to us. Thank you for being there, thank you for everything you do! James and Matthew are lucky little boys to have so many people cheering them on!

We're also grateful for the wonderful care that the boys are receiving at UNC hospitals. The doctors are great, but the real heart of their care is from the nurses, who are with the babies all the time. (The doctors rotate in and out of the NICU, and also don't necessarily spend much time with each individual baby -- except of course when the babies get sick.) Although the boys have had a number of different nurses during their time there, they also have some nurses who are with them regularly. The nurses can choose to be a "primary" for a particular baby, which means they'll be with that baby when they're working, or an "associate" for the baby, which means they'll have the baby if the primary person isn't working. Each of our boys has a primary for days and at least one of them has a primary for nights. (It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that someone chose our babies in particular to work with! And Matthew's primary was there when he was born, which is cool.) We've pretty much liked all the nurses we've met, but we LOVE the ones who are primaries for the boys -- we're always happy when they're on duty! I think it really makes a difference that they get to know the babies. They know what's normal for them, and when something is off, and they're great at solving problems. For instance, one day James was having more breathing problems than usual, and his nurse thought that his feeding tube might be too big and he was choking on it a little -- and they changed the tube and everything was fine. It's sometimes hard that we can't be there all the time, but we're confident that the babies are in excellent hands.

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We had a nice afternoon with the boys. They're doing fine -- and I may have to take back my skepticism about James's weight gain, because it looked to me like he is starting to fill out a bit! Hopefully he'll keep up that trend. Matthew is still doing well with his feeds (up to 17.5 ml per feeding), and having stinky poops. :)