Ciara's anniversary

A year ago today we brought Ciara home after 120 days in hospital, we were finally "proper" parents and could care for our daughter as we wished to, without having to ask permission from the nurses before we did anything.


Ciara all packed up and ready to go



Arriving home, the decoration is courtesy of friends. In german it is tradition to decorate the house front when a baby is born to the house, our friends waited until a baby came home, 4 months later. What you can't see is that the line is being held up by a stork on a pole, it was wonderful, completely unexpected and underlined that we were really parents.



First meal at home, I was unbelievable nervous as this was the first time we'd ever made a bottle of formula and were responsible for serving it at the right temperature etc.

2 steps

To celebrate her "would have been" birthday Ciara took 2 steps yesterday! The day before I'd seen her take one step a couple of times but thought they didn't really count as she stepped and fell immediately. It kind of looked like she was stepping more to try hold her balance. Yesterday though, I held out my hands and she made 2 purposeful steps towards me before she fell. Enya is also more stable in standing and yesterday stood holding on to my leg and then let go, standing alone for a couple of seconds before she fell, progress I tell you.

Unfortunately our music class has fallen through, we went last week for a taster session and it was OK, lots of singing and clapping etc. Unfortunately with twins it is difficult to keep both interested in what's going on but for 60 euros a quarter it was good fun. Yesterday we went again and this time Ciara wouldn't leave my lap, while Enya was crawling all over the other moms and the teacher. There were 2 three month old babies and I could picture her hitting them in the face as she does Ciara, stress pure! Anyhow as I was filling out the forms after the lesson I realised the monthly course fee was 60 euros, GULP! We could afford it but I just couldn't justify it. That is 15 euros for a 45 minute lesson where the instructor doesn't even know his material well enough to sing it without cards and the girls don't really pay attention. I guess music lessons will have to wait until I go back to work and the girls will get more out of it. Oh well back to lullaby CDs, now I need to find a german CD as we have english, irish and african ones already!

how far we've come

OK, enough already with the self pity! I'm lucky I've still got both my daughters and we've come a long way since August last year. I can't believe in little over one month we will be celebrating their FIRST birthday. And this year we will be celebrating! Last year for obvious reasons we didn't celebrate their birth so we will be making up for it this year!

first nappy size

as a comparison: on the left is Ciara's nappy size now, on the right is the nappy size they wore when they were born.

I have photos from shortly after their birth where the nappy is wrapped almost twice around Enya's waist (she lost over 100g in the first week of life-the lowest weight I heard was 520g) and covers her almost to her armpits. Like I said we've come a long way since then.

Now if Enya would just quit going on feeding strikes, we might get her to grow even bigger ;-). We've had another week where she has put on a grand total of 30g!

8 months yesterday

I can't believe they are 8 months old already!! When I think that at this time 8 months ago we were terrified that they would not survive, it seems like it was forever ago, but at the same time like yesterday.

Ciara now weighs nearly ten times as much as her birth weight and Enya ten times as much as her lowest weight (520g about a week after she was born). Enya still fits into size 0-3 months but Ciara has already moved up a size and will soon be fitting into size 6-9 months! She started life on the 10 percentile line for weight and height but is now at the 50 percentile line for both. She must take after her dad in that respect. Enya is a little pixie and takes after my side of the family (Z calls us the hobbits).

They are both "smiley" babies mostly and it's usually not difficult to get them to laugh. That being said we suspect that they are teething as they are both drooling a lot, chewing on everything, off their milk, and sometimes very whingy. I can however not feel any lumps along their gums so we will have to wait and see.

And last but not least, I wrote that Ciara was waking us up at 3am with her screeching, well she can't anymore, she has no voice left!! Over the weekend she was screeching at Z the whole time and now she is completely hoarse. It is so cute when she trys to squeal and this hoarse little croak comes out. She doesn't have any pain, that we can tell, and she hasn't stopped trying but we are no longer getting woken up by her.

Sweet dreams for all

5th anniversary

Warning: Whinge follows
At the start of April I had my 5th anniversary of when I moved to Germany. In some ways it's hard to believe I've been here this long. I've lived longer in Germany than in any other country other than South Africa (I've also lived in Australia and England).

When I arrived in Germany I didn't speak any german (I hated languages in school-always my worst marks) but I found there is nothing like living in a country to help learn a language. It helped that my boyfriend, now husband helped me by not laughing at my attempts to speak german and encouraged me as soon as possible to get a job where I was forced to speak/practice (highly recommend the "deep end" method of learning a language). I feel sorry for the first few patients I had as I really battled to communicate but after the first 3 weeks my german came on in leaps and bounds.

Now 5 years later I still don't like talking too much but don't (often) hesitate if I need to phone /speak to strangers. My german is by no means perfect (can one learn a second language as an adult so thoroughly, that one could be mistaken for a native speaker?) but I can usually can communicate my thoughts. Why then do some people not take the time to listen?

Case in point I needed to order new SaO2 sensors for Enya's monitor, the old ones only go to 3 kg and she weighs 5kg now (Yup we cracked 5kg on Monday ;-)). First phone call, they listened and sent a sensor that goes from 5kg, unfortunately it didn't have the correct connection to fit our monitor. Second phone call the guy wouldn't listen- I tried repeatedly to explain that we wanted sensors that fit a child who weighs over 5 kg but he kept interrupting and talking over me. I thought he had however understood as he did repeat back to me "for over 5kg" but when the sensors arrived they were the old type ie under 3kg. Now we can still use them, as they still read overnight when she is still, but really is it such an effort to listen to what was being said and not immediately jump to the conclusion you know what I wanted to say?

Okay whinge over.

Guess who are 6 months old today

I can't believe it but the girls are 6 months old today!! I can remember right at the beginning just wishing that they were a week old, a month old, 6 weeks old and time seeming to drag by and now they are 6 months old!!

We had our assessment at the Social paediatric centre yesterday, the appointment should have been next month (preemie check up to see that they are on target with their development) but we had it brought forward as we wanted to see if we could get Enya speech therapy (ST). Unfortunately Enya has been struggling with her feeding from the get go (see History posts) and te last few weeks we have been battling to get her to drink 450ml in a day. She weighs a kilo more than at her discharge and that was the minimum daily amount she needed then!! We have been referred to ST and to an ENT specialist as she has a very soft voice and she often has very noisy breathing especially after eating. The down side was the doctor warned us we are probably going to keep her heart rate, breathing and sats monitor longer than we thought (we were hoping to get rid of it at the end of this month or at the latest in 3 months time) as due to her receding chin she could be obstructing her airway with her tongue when she is sleeping- the doctors explaination of why she desats down into the 50's even when she is not moving. I prefer my explaination- she remains rosy so it is obviously a false reading. I hate the monitor!!!

On the positive side they are very pleased with Enya's development although Ciara concerns them a bit. WTF!!! Ciara has had no brain issues apart from the suspected fitting and she is going for an EEG next week just to check on that- she has received no meds or had any suspicions of fitting for 4 and a half months now. In the meantime I'm to concentrate a bit more on Ciara during our 3-4x daily physio sessions (in between the hour long feeding sessions with Enya!). On the plus side Ciara impressed everybody with her social skills and her ability to vocalise i.e. scream shrilly at odd moments during the assessment. They did say she had a good range of sounds, so no ST for Ciara;-). Always a silver lining.