Where are my happy babies?

We are battling on with temper tantrums and screaming fits in the Z household.

Ciara is back to waking at 3 am (although yesterday it was Enya to give her her due too) and was not to be quietened, she stopped crying if I tickled her back but started again as soon as I stopped. I eventually left her to cry it out- around one hour later I finally got to sleep, I don't actually know when she stopped crying!

We had to wake the girls then this morning after their very disturbed night and I tried to keep them up after breakfast so they could only get one nap today but that wasn't happening! I might try not letting them have a midday nap anyway, because at nearly 2 years they should only need one nap and they wake up in such a rotten mood after a second nap that my gut feeling is they may be getting too much sleep. I will really miss the 2nd nap, as that is when I blog but heyho it has to go!!

Enya has in the last couple of weeks developed a high pitched yell which she uses everytime she doesn't get her way or feels frustrated, she is using it constantly right now. If she can't get a bottle lid to fit she yells, if I tell her no she yells, if I won't give her my knife she yells etc. etc. Ciara can do it too, but a) her cry isn't quite as piercing and b) she does it much less frequently. I'm going to mention this to the play therapist when we visit this week, see if she can add that to our list of goals- help Enya to control/work through her frustration constructively.

My darling daughters have also decided that their buggy is the worst form of torture ever. They want to walk (for 20m then they want to stand in front of their buggy and play with the straps) or run across the road. If I can keep the buggy moving it's usually not too bad (we try and outrun the crys!!) but stationary is way bad! If I could trust them to walk with me I swear I'd abandon this instrument of torture.

The only plus thing about the tantrums we've been having is, I've been getting more cuddles from my girls. They keep coming to me for comforting and cuddling which is always nice but I'd still like my happy babies back please!!

In a completely different direction: we weighed the girls this week and for the first time Enya is over the 10 percentile curve for her adjusted age- she is around the 25 percentile line (10,5 kg or 23 pounds, approx 80cm tall), Ciara is taking after her daddy and is plotting over the 90 percentile line (13.2kg or 29 pounds and approx 86cm). Hard to imagine they were born both barely on the 10 percentile curve! Although we now seem to be entering the "otherwise" toddler stage, with food refusals par excellance this last week, so I expect the weights to plateau until they master feeding themselves. I'm trying to relax and let them self regulate the amounts they eat and now that I know we are doing so well on the charts I think we have the leighway to let them experiment with what they need/want. I'm also trying to cut down on offering them biscuits as a snack, although Ciara refuses fresh fruit she will eat dried fruits instead.

I think I've babbled enough today so I'll stop typing and just wish you all a happy Monday!

Enya did it

She did so well at physio yesterday that we're having a summer break! We go back in about 7 weeks for a check up and if she is maintaining the progress she made so far and continuing her development alone we won't need any more physio (although we may keep having check ups at regular intervals)!! I'm obviously delighted and I think Enya will be too, no more fights on top of the washing machine for us over summer (we have our changing mat on the machine and that's where we did physio too, as it is the right height and padded).

In other news they have both learnt to climb a ladder this past week. Our neighbour has a ladder set up for her granddaughter (Anna) to reach her slide and after watching her do it, both my girls decided to give it a try. Enya manages better than Ciara as she is more flexible and has less weight to heave up, but Ciara can do the first 2 rungs as well (then she freezes, I think she may have a little fear of heights as she does the same when she climbs the open metal grate stairs to our overhead neighbours). I want to take the ladder away but C and E also saw Anna running up the actual slide and if the ladder isn't there they try climb up the front of the slide too, Enya has managed halfway up the slide when Ciara distracted me for a second. Twins teamwork I tell you!

For today we have an exciting outing to the Preemie neurodevelopmantal clinic planned, this is the extra appointment Enya got after the last routine check up, where the doc freaked out about Enya's walking. She insisted on a 3 month follow up with a view to involving other specialities if Enya didn't improve- I'm really hoping she is impressed with Enya's progress as we all are. I saw some video from March last night and Enya has a much more stable and normal gait pattern now, even her tummy isn't as protuberent anymore. She will also get weighed and I'm quite intrigued what the scales say (I packed our scales away over a month ago), I doubt she has put on any weight but lets wait (weight ;0)) and see.

PS I bit the bullet and cut out the evening bottles, they are drinking well during the day even if they refuse everything but water. We'll see how things go for the next few days.

Dummyless

Not very much going on this side of the Channel.

We've taken Enya's dummy away from her as she was leaving huge puddles all over her bed at night (well see if you can swallow when your lower lip is hooked over an upside down dummy. I tried it, not a pretty picture). She hasn't cried for it once, she just cuddles with her Cuski and her snake instead. She also hasn't started sucking her thumb again so we believe the dummy is history in her case. With Ciara though not so much. I'm still getting regularly woken at 2-3 am in the morning as she has lost her dummy and wants a replacement. Ignoring her doesn't work she just gets louder and louder until Enya eventually wakes up too. We are going to have to grasp the bull by the horns at some stage but not just yet!

They are drinking better and better from their sippy cup. Yes I mean sippy singular! That 50 cents secondhand cheapy that I bought at the bazaar is the one they both drink best from (i.e. the only one they will drink any volume from). A couple of days ago they drank 100mls each from it (vanilla flavoured milk), I was dancing. We just have to supervise closely, as Enya in particular likes to turn it upside down and watch the water run out all over her legs.

I'm also experimenting with nappies again as our solution to the night time nappy failure also failed last night. We were putting a maxi pad in their night time nappy to soak up some of the fluid so the nappy would hold but Ciara managed to overload even that solution. Instead I'm trying cloth nappies, my preemie group has a very vocal pro cloth nappy contingent and they are convinced that cloth nappies will be able to hold back the flood waters, if only because you can keep sticking in extra doublers (act like the maxi pad, as extra reservoirs). We are trying bum Geni.us and I will get back to you on how successful they are. I still can't believe my girls are unusual in the amount they pee overnight, Pampe.rs Baby Drys are supposed to be for overnight, aren't they?

PS Enya has almost cracked the 9 kilo mark, 70g to go!! Ciara has however cracked the 11 kilo mark. I have got to get rid of the baby scales!

Survived

It was great to get out and practice my skills last week but I really missed the girls when I was at work, since they've been home from the hospital I haven't spent so much time without them. Once again it has brought home to me how lucky I am that we can afford for me not to work, rather to stay home and enjoy our childrens babyhood. Although they aren't really babies anymore, sob sob!!

I can remember seeing newborn babies just after C and E were born and thinking full termers were enormous (Hell, I thought the 32 weekers were pretty damn big!), now I see newborns and I find them tiny, it is hard to believe C and E were once (much) smaller than they are. I'm also slowly relaxing about Enya's weight. She is now about 2kg lighter than Ciara but as she is developmentally on track, I've sort of accepted it and am even contemplating getting rid of the scales and not checking her weight religiously every week (yah for me!). It'll probably take me another few months to do it but we're heading in the right direction.

Ciara has taken to waking up multiple times during the night and entertaining us with a screaming concert, we've tried going in and giving her a dummy, comforting her in bed, picking her up but as soon as we put her down or try leave the room she starts screaming again so we are now trying CIO (cry it out). There is nothing wrong she quiets as soon as she hears someone coming. We think that due to her blocked nose (both girls have runny noses), she is waking up during the night and then gets bored so screams until someone comes to entertain her. The knock on effect is that both girls are sleeping longer during the day to try make up for the lost sleep at night. Hopefully this will stop once the noses clear up as I've mentioned before I don't do well on less than 8 hours sleep a night and given how grumpy C and E have been this week, neither do they.

blogging hiatus over again

Sorry that it's been so long since I've updated. I've been enjoying the first few weeks of the girls' second year. Z has paternity leave for the next while (gotta love the German social system!!) so I've got help at home and things are finally getting done.

We've changed the girls to only 3 bottle feeds a day (170ml ~8oz a feed) which seems to be agreeing with Enya. She is not fighting the feeds at all right now and has put on a grand 280g this week. Ciara as always gobbles down her feeds both solids and liquid and is heading for the 75th percentile weight wise (Enya is heading away from the 3rd percentile towards the 9th!!!). I should add the percentiles are for their adjusted age.

We had our one year assessment with the paediatrician last week and he was astonished by Ciara. She is crawling and climbing everything. She even demonstrated bear walking (walking on hands and feet) over a meter for the doctor. He said she has no abnormal reactions anymore and has given us the all clear to quit physio with her. I think he was quite shocked when I told him she was crawling everywhere, I had to put her on the ground so he could see for himself- she is in the normal range for crawling for her corrected age which he said given her extreme prematurity was surprising.

Enya is also doing well, she is army crawling around. Today for the first time she army crawled the whole way down our passage to find us. OK, I admit I was sitting at the end egging her on, but she still covered the whole distance (~5m) by herself. We have caught her a couple of times making the motions of crawling properly, however the most she has managed to crawl up to now has been about a meter. The important bit though is: she is trying to crawl and I doubt it will be the 2 months the doctor suggested before she is crawling all over. I have to admit as much as I've bitched about the Vojta therapy it has been worth it (but I still can't wait to quit with Enya too!!)

Both girls are pulling up on everything, Enya onto her knees, Ciara all the way onto her feet. Their favourite pull up objects are my legs or the musical table they got for their birthday. Unfortunately with our tiled floors they can only pull up when supervised but they don't seem to understand that ;-). The toy therefore spends most of the time turned on it's side and we can no longer leave them in a room unsupervised (so much for my babyproofing- who knew they could pull up on pot plants!) even for a minute.

Now you are all generally up to date with the happenings in the House of Z so I wish you all a good nigh and I'll continue tomorrow.

Next installment includes a 14 hour sleep story.....

Happy 6 months adjusted Ciara and Enya

I can't believe that if they had been born full term they would now be 6 months old. I knew pretty much from the start of my 2nd trimester that we would not go full term but I had hoped for 34 weeks (my OB hoped for 32 weeks). In the end we didn't even get that but it was enough.

Ciara celebrated by waking up at 2am and refusing to go back to sleep, she was wide awake and wanted to be entertained. We tried giving her bottle but even after she drank her full, she refused to go back to sleep. Unfortunately Ciara and Enya share a room and she was so loud she was disturbing Enya's sleep. In desperation we eventually left her to sleep in the lounge and went back to bed ourselves. We could hear her happily playing by herself until we fell asleep, she must have fallen asleep herself, because the next we heard from her was at 6am when she woke us all up again.

Today, despite a mega physio session, she has not slept much so this doesn't give me a lot of hope for tonight.

Enya in the meantime celebrated by cracking the 6 kilo mark (by 10 grams, I'm glad I weighed her before she peed!) and by sitting for the first time. We had to put her in the postioin but she then held the position for about a minute. We have however been advised by our physio not to practice sitting- she should bring herself into the sitting position (after she starts crawling). Before this time she does not have the muscle strength in arms and back to hold this position safely. Has anyone else heard of this?

PS Ciara has almost cracked 7 and a half kilos!!

New pictures

Enya
Ciara

Sleep is still a very prized commodity in the Z household, with Enya now waking us all up because she is hungry. She is now drinking on average 50mls more a day than Ciara (WTF!!!). Hopefully we will see the results of this when we weigh them again on Monday. I have to really hold myself back from weighing her everyday now that we have a scale in the house, it's not even as though I'd be undressing her just to weigh her as we have to do the Vojta exercises in the buff (them not me!).

We have started on meat as well with the solids- they have had chicken twice. The first time they were not at all sure about it, but the second time I disguised it better with apricot and tomato and they loved it. Infact it was so good I'm adapting it for a grownup dinner tonight :-). I highly recommend the book: Annabel Karmel's New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner- the recipes are easy and the meal plans are also a great help when you feel like you are just fumbling through the whole intro to solids scene. I've pretty much done everything by this book although I'm starting to branch out this week. We have introduced meat sooner than described in the book as we need to get Ciara off her supplemental iron before she explodes. Constipation reigns here!

Weights updated

Well in the blue corner, Enya weighs in at 5150g having put on 230g in the last week (I love solids and thickened formula)
And in the red corner coming in at 6510g, Ciara. She put on....gulp... 400g in the last week. I promise she is not being overfed-a couple of days there Enya drank and ate more than she did. We have however been giving her milk sugar to get her more regular. I think we're going to have to find another solution for her constipation!!

Oops

Well there you have it. I'd so hoped that we had been doing well enough on the solids that Enya would crack the 5kg mark but she didn't she went from 4920g to... 4920g. You got it, in the last week she ahs not put on a single gram, for the first time since December.
In part I think it is due to the change over to solids- they are not as calorific as formula, but also due to the diarrhea caused by the corn oil we were giving as instructed by the doc (we had to stop concentrating the formula when we changed to the anti-reflux formula).
Where to now? I don't trust the advice given by my doctor.

Blah....

Butternut squash will not be featuring on the meal plan for the girls for the next little while. It definitely was not a success. Ciara retched a couple of times with the squash and even our little eat-it-all, Enya, only managed half her portion. I may need to thin it down or mix it with baby rice to dilute the taste even further when we try it again (the weaning book recommends trying again after a few weeks).
Our new scales arrived yesterday so we can monitor Enya's weight. Now that the baby massage course is over, I won't be seeing the hebamme again and the doctor doesn't want to see us for a couple of months hence no weighing for a while. I am not prepared to go that length of time without monitoring so we decided to invest in a set of scales. We've decided to weigh only once a week, tomorrow being the big day. I'm crossing fingers that Enya reaches 4.9 kg but am not holding my breath (sneak preview showed she had lost weight!!).
On that note our paediatrician basically told us we were overreacting to Enya's weight and that we should rather give her corn oil than concentrate her formula. My objection to this is oil will cause diarrhea (I was advised to give them oil when they were constipated for this reason) and his reasons not to concentrate don't make sense, so I will stick with concentrating the formula. The only reason I'm sticking with this paediatrician is he is very good from the neurodevelopmental aspect otherwise we would be looking for a new paediatrician.
I promise my next post will be a happier one with no whining or whinging in it!! I am so sick of my complaining but recently I just have been needing to unload and this is the easiest forum for it. Ende Gelaende, next time I will be more positive... promise.

Fallen off the bottom of the chart

Whoops! I had a nice long chat with Debs last night (dietician friend who specializes in preemies) and she told me Enya has now fallen off the bottom of the growth chart i.e. under the 3 percentile line. The scariest thing is this is the preemie growth chart and adjusted for her age. When Enya was born she was on the 10 percentile line and should have maintained this position on the graph. Debs was so concerned she spoke to her consultant in the NICU about Enya, he immediately offered us an appointment for this morning saying he was also concerned and would like to see her. The only problem is he is in Ireland and we are in Germany, so no go. He did recommend with her history (grade 3+ brain bleed and problems sucking) she should have a MRI just to check everything is still OK on that side. That will be fun, I can't even get my paediatrician to do an ultrasound to check her kidneys as was recommended in her hospital discharge letter, now I have to try talk him into referring her for a MRI.

Everyone has been poopooing my worries and telling me I'm overreacting and now I find out I had every right to be concerned, I feel vindicated but more than that I feel let down by the doctors (and therapists) whose job it is to follow up this fragile micropreemie!! I'm now going to start getting bolshie with them as they have shown they are not worthy of the trust that I've been giving them. My paediatrician has not even plotted Enya's weight on a chart so he probably has no idea where she is sitting on the graph. She is sending me all the graphs so I will take that to the paediatrician and see what he has to say to that (in the hospital it was not much better as I can remember one nurse hunting for the growth chart to show me- she landed up starting a new one as she couldn't find the old one!!!!)

On the positive side solids are going well, Enya ate 1/3 of the bowl last night and seemed to really enjoy it. Ciara ate 5 spoons and would have had more but I was a little uncertain how far to push her. The only downside of the solids is they have no interest in the milk afterwards. Tonight I'm going to give them half their bottle before we give the baby rice.

Operation sleep has crashed and burned with the advent of solids as Enya is waking every 4 hours overnight (during the day she can go 6 hours between feeds). She has not drunk enough over the day to counterbalance the missed bottle after eating. My options are to try the solids around midday (recommended) or increase the amount of milk she gets per feed (very difficult). I'll see how tonight goes and how the SLT appointment tomorrow goes and then decide.