Homecoming...

We finally have the first bit of normalcy to our family of four. Today we did what millions of other families do...we packed up our kids into their car seats, loaded them into the car and went for a drive. But for us, this would be a drive that would change our lives forever. This was a drive that brought our family home and started a new life together. Praise the Lord for his faithfulness to our family!!

Before I go any further, I want to say thanks to the unbelievable staff at Cook's Childrens. Hopefully, most of you will never get to meet these "real life super heroes" (that is what their shirts say), but if you do, you will meet one of the most incredible hospital staffs around. They blew us away with their kindness from day one. To put it in perspective, on the way out, it is protocol for the nurse to carry the babies out. Our nurse was showing off our babies to every other nurse on the way out and they were oohing and aaaahing about how cute they were. It is much more than just business at this hospital, there are relationships built that will never be forgotten.

The rooming in process went extremely smooth with the exception of a few problems with the vent in the room which kept freezing out our twinkers. The kiddos passed all their tests with flying colors. Emily and I were fed a slew of kid's meals (froot loops for breakfast, chicken strips for lunch, and spaghetti-O's for dinner), and we were forced to sleep on a bed which must have been manufactured out of plywood. We have heard stories of how babies make random "noises" while they sleep, but we weren't ready for the chorus of squeaks that the twinkers sang all night long. I got 3 hours of sleep and Emily got 4, but we were completely bright eyed and bushy tailed during the discharge process this morning.

We were finally discharged at 11:00am and we were packed and home by noon. We were greeted in our yard by a host of balloons and signs announcing the birth of our boys (thanks Jeanette!!!). We spent the afternoon feeding, burping, putting the boys down, taking a nap, feeding, burping, putting them down, taking a nap (repeat process).

For the record, now that the Twinkers have arrived home safe and sound, our blog will revert back to a normal blog with posts every week or so. Thank you all for your constant prayer and support of our family. I know that one day the Twinkers will realize what a blessing you all have been to us.

Psalm 145

1 I will extol you, my God and King,and bless your name forever and ever.
2 Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.
3 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,and his greatness is unsearchable.
4 One generation shall commend your works to another,and shall declare your mighty acts.
5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty,and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds,and I will declare your greatness.
7 They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
8 The Lord is gracious and merciful,slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 The Lord is good to all,and his mercy is over all that he has made.
10 All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord,and all your saints shall bless you!
11 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power,
12 to make known to the children of man your [2] mighty deeds,and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,and your dominion endures throughout all generations. [The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.] [3]
14 The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.
15 The eyes of all look to you,and you give them their food in due season.
16 You open your hand;you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.
18 The Lord is near to all who call on him,to all who call on him in truth.
19 He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;he also hears their cry and saves them.
20 The Lord preserves all who love him,but all the wicked he will destroy.
21My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord,and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.

The twinkers were taking a nap on the "rooming in" bed

Dad was having some fun with the boys...Matthew and I were watching Caleb sleep

Jerry was a nurse who "primaried" our boys and was there to discharge us. This was also the boy's first breath of fresh air. Their only other trip outside was in a Cook's Children's transport isolette.

Thanks for making our house look special when we got home

Sharing a boppy

Rooming in...

Well, the past two days have been so exciting we can hardly keep up with it all! The boys were circumcised Wednesday morning, moved to open cribs with no heat, transitioned to 8 feeds a day by bottle or breast, and the nurse called to ask us to bring their carseats up for the "carseat test" (the babies have to sit in their seats for 90 minutes with the monitors on to make sure their oxygen levels and heartrates don't drop). They are both gaining weight daily at this point. Caleb is at the 6 pound mark and Matthew is only a few ounces away. Both breastfeed one time a day and then bottle feed the other 7 times. The doctor wrote an order today for them to start breastfeeding every other feed when I am at the hospital which means they are doing really well! Also, Caleb's heart test came back negative..thank you Lord. He is still having infrequent heart contractions, but they are benign and the doctor says he should grow out of them soon.

Now on to the exciting news... a few hours ago, our doctor called us from Cooks to tell us that we are "rooming in" with the babies Friday morning. AND, if all goes well, we get to bring them home on Saturday. There are tears streaming down my face as I write this because Tim and I have wanted this sooo badly and finally we are so close. I can't explain how unbelievable it feels to think about these little boys being in our home with us. Things were so scary for us when they were first born and there have been so many little setbacks along the way. But, God has blessed us beyond what we could ever imagine even in these tough circumstances. WE ARE GOING TO HAVE BABIES IN OUR HOUSE................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to everyone for the prayers, emails, cards, calls, text messages, meals, flowers, errand running, etc.... Please pray for the rooming in process. The boys have to eat all their feeds , pass their carseat test and gain weight the next day for us to take them home. Will keep ya posted....Love to all from Matthew and Caleb :)

This was the boys first time to be held Grandpa Lefty



The Stanford Clan!!


I can't tell if the carseat is really big or our babies are really small...I think it is the later of the two

The Homestretch

We've had a wonderful few days with the boys. They've both reached several milestones in their journey home. Just today our Dr. recommended that Caleb should switch to bottle feeding every meal and Matthew to bottle feed two out of every three feeds. The Dr. made it sound like the boys are rounding third and headed home. Just like in baseball, just because you are headed home doesn't mean you always get there. You could get thrown out at the plate, you could pull a muscle, the shortstop might cut the throw and gun down the over agressive baserunner who was trying to stretch a single into a double before you cross homeplate. In baby terms, they could relapse into apnea spells, they could resist bottle feeding that much and get switched back to 2 bottle feeds per day, or they might not be able to be able to maintain their temperature.

The boys are both still in the isolettes (because there are no cribs available) but they are shut off so they are regulating their temperature completely on their own. This, along with increasing their bottle feeds, will cause them to burn more calories than they have been in the last two weeks so hopefully they will be able to continue getting fatter. In regards to their fatness, Caleb is now 5 lbs 15 ounces and Matthew is 5 lbs 13 ounces. Caleb started slow, but is surging ahead in the race to 6 lbs!!

The nurse practioner noticed a heart murmur on Matthew yesterday and ordered a heart echo. This was a little troublesome for us because Matthew is not the son with the heart issues. But the Dr. called today and told us that his heart looks perfect and his echo was normal. Praise the Lord!!

Caleb had the bolster monitor on that records every heart beat for 24 hours and that ended at 8:00am this morning. It normally takes a few days to get the results back because there are a lot of heart beats over 24 hours (to the tune of 200,000!!).

Emily and I got our first chance to bathe the boys last night. Our nurse told us ahead of time that she adopts a "baptism by fire" strategy when teaching parents how to bathe their kids. We are both pretty slow learners so I think she should have modified her strategy. She put the two bath tubs (they might not be called bath tubs when they are for kids???) together so that we could learn from each other while we bathed simultaneously...bad decision. Instead of watching what we were doing, we kept looking to see what the other person was doing. This resulted in Emily knocking over her cup of rinse water, the nurse telling daddy that the water is supposed to go on the child, not on my shorts, and two screaming urine soaked babies. I don't think it is supposed to take 45 minutes to bath a child, but in the end, we had two somewhat clean babies!!

Caleb is already in work clothes - "Glendarroch Homes" onesie..thanks Grandma GiGi

Raise your hand if you hate bath time.

Daddy got to wash Caleb's hair for the first time.

GrandMary got the twinkers each these "I'm the Favorite" outfits!!

More family portraits...Matthew was completely unplugged for this one.

Go Frogs!! Emily took this picture and coincidentally you can't read TCU very well.

Picture Mania

We had a blast tonight feeding the boys during the night shift. They are now up to 4 feeds per day and both are gaining weight. Matthew may get to move to a REAL crib tomorrow if he gains weight and will get to progress from his isolette bed. Hopefully, Caleb will follow his brother in the next day or so and get HIS own crib, too! The nurse tonight was so thorough and answered lots of questions for us about the babies. She also let us take some REALLY fun pictures of the boys so enjoy! Also, please pray for Caleb's test tomorrow on his heart. We pray that it will go well, but if there is a problem with his heart that the doctors would find it so it could be fixed.

Caleb is ALWAYS trying to pull out that feeding tube! We took off his mitten and it's the first thing he went for!

Buddies reunited!
It was so much fun taking pics of the 4 of us together...
Caleb James...
Matthew Ryan...grandparents, did you guess right?

Caleb says "enough already!!!"
Daddy and the twinkers...
These boys are TOO fun...
Our family of four...praise God!!!

Nurse Prediction

I am a very inquisitive person. I have probably asked a hundred different times to a hundred different nurses "How long would the typical baby in our situation expect to remain in the NICU?" The nurses have held the company line and always responded with "I really can't tell you because every baby is different". This was until today, when our favorite nurse told us that she was going on vacation and wouldn't be back until July 2nd. She said that she doubts the kids will be there when she gets back. I know it isn't as strong as the word "prediction" insinuates, but we'll take it. It was the first crack in their armor...now we just have to keep chipping away.

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Caution - the following paragraph has the word "nipple" in it. If you don't feel comfortable with that type of language, please feel free to skip down

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During one of our pumping visits with a nurse, we were asking what the appropriate suction power should be. She told us that we probably didn't need to go higher than the medium strength. Then she proceeded to tell us the story of a former patient the nurses dubbed "nipples of steel" (NOS). When they first brought in the commercial strength Medela pump, NOS immediately cranked it up to the highest setting. The nurse quickly told her that this would cause unnecessary discomfort and she could lower the setting. NOS retorted that she had prepared for the pumping/breast feeding experience by rubbing her nipples with a tooth brush for the last 4 months to "toughen them up". The nurse said NOS needs to stop listening to her grandma's advise on breast feeding and that there have been many advances in the last 80 years on this topic.

After reading this, Emily wanted me to clarify that she is not NOS and she has never adopted the practice of tooth brushing her nipples.

*********end of paragraph that uses the word nipple*********

Now to the boys....They did well on their first day of getting bottle fed three times a day. There were no major spit up. We did come in to see them wearing socks as mittens. This is because they've learned how to scratch themselves around their faces and also the art of pulling out the NG tubes that go down their noses to their stomachs.

We met with Dr. Levy today and he said that the boys will likely be increased to 4 bottle feeds per day (half way to the goal of 8 per day). He also reassured us that we shouldn't be worried about the 24 hour surveillance of Caleb's heart. They just want to have a base line so that for future visits to the cardiologist, they can compare and check for progress in the amount of PAC's. He told us he is very pleased with their progress and said their doing great.

We both got a lot of rest today and it made our day a lot more enjoyable. Thank you all so much for your prayers. It is wonderful to know the body of Christ is making their requests known before God on our behalf. It is overwhelming to think that 12 days ago I thought that I might lose my wife and both my children and now I might have them all home and healthy in a few weeks. We have a wonderful God!!

Another thing I haven't mentioned is how wonderful it has been for Emily to provide all the nourishment these boys need. As most couples are, we were nervous about her milk coming in or the thought of nursing twins. Not only has Emily's milk come in, the nursing staff in the NICU has asked us for the second time this week to stop bringing in so much because our area of the freezer is full. I can't explain it, but when you are unable to bring your children home, there is a special connection to know that Emily is providing for them in this way. We feel like it is the one thing we can do for them.

Three generations of Bates' men hanging out in the NICU

Matthew is attempting to proselytize the other babies in the NICU with his Noah's ark jammies.

Another three generations of Bates (but only two originals)

Firday Night Fun

What would a Friday night be without a 3 hour visit to the NICU. I can tell you that nothing in the world could have made me happier than spending a few hours at the NICU with my wife and sons. For those of you who have been reading our blog, you know that I struggle with the constant worry that our children might stop breathing. I want to let you in on the dialogue between me and our British night nurse during our bottle feed tonight.

Frances (Night nurse) - You both are doing a great job

Tim - I want to make sure, is Matthew's head tilted at the right angle.

Frances - Yeah, you're doing fine, love.

Tim - Does his color look ok?

Frances - He's a bit purple, but he'll start breathing well soon enough.

Tim - Can you please quantify "a bit" purple?

At this point, Frances grabbed him and did some nurse magic to get his color back to "pink". After telling Emily that I wouldn't feel comfortable holding him the rest of the night, she told me that I would be sleeping on the couch unless I held Matthew immediately. I held Matthew immediately!!

At the end of the night, I had to put Matthew up because the nurse wanted to minimize the stimulation to make sure he wouldn't have a major spit up. Then Emily asked me to take a picture of her and Caleb. By the time that I grabbed the camera, she had slipped a Texas Tech hat on him. For those of you who don't know, Emily went to Texas Tech and I went to TCU. To put it in perspective, TCU and Tech have played in football twice since we've been married and for both games, I sat in the TCU section and she sat across the stadium in the Tech section. Some bonds are stronger than marriage!!

Back to the hat. I told her that I would simply not allow the first school colors on our blog to be Texas Tech. We settled on a farkle (paper, rock, scissors), best out of three series. I won the first game with a bold scissors over paper. She fought back in game two with rock over scissors. In the rubber match, she trounced me with a paper over rock. How could I have known?

Here is Caleb in that silly hat that his Mom made him wear!!

Now to the medical condition of our children...which is the reason people read this blog. The doctors have increased their bottle feeding to 3 times per day. This is great news because it is a step closer to bottle feeding 8 times a day, which is required to bring the babies home. The doctors aren't happy (but aren't worried) about Caleb's premature atrial contractions (PAC's) in his heart. This means that the ventricles aren't beating at the same speed as other parts of his heart. They are going to put him on a 24 hour heart monitoring process on Monday to better understand what is going on. This was implemented due to a visit that our doctor had with a cardiologist. The good news is that our primary neonatalogist, who has been on vacation and is returning next week, is also board certified in pediatric cardialogy. Praise the Lord!!

There has not been any significant change in their weights since they reached their low a few days ago. The nurse told us that over the period of a few days we should see weight gain in the range of 2 to 3 oz. That would indicate real weight gain and would be another sign that they are a step closer to coming home.

Also, please pray for Emily as it is getting more and more difficult to be at home without our babies. We both completely understand that this is what is best for them, but is doesn't change the fact that it is extremely difficult to be home without our kids. We miss them dearly.

Roommates Again!!

Alas, the Matthew and Caleb have been reunited in the NICU. They spent 7.5 months as roommates and then had to endure over a week separated. We are still not allowed to touch them together and we have to change gowns/gloves when we go from one isolette to the next...but it helps us feel more like a family.

What comes along with them being next to each other is the family circus adding some more acts to the show. In the first 15 minutes with the boys last night, we managed to unplug Caleb's leads, knock over the water cup that was being used to heat up Matthew's milk and continually call our babies by the wrong names!!

They are both doing so well with their bottle feeding, but the relocation has added a little tension to our marriage. When we were on opposite sides of the NICU, Emily and I were both supportive of each other trying to feed our children. Now that we are face to face during the feedings, the competition has begun...and so has the trash talking. In the heat of competition, I might have used phrases like "you call that bottle feeding, you couldn't even feed a full term baby" and "Caleb, let's teach your mom and brother a lesson in humility". However, it was Emily who did the victory dance in the middle of the NICU after feeding Matthew 50mL in 20 minutes with no major spit ups.

Also, the both gained over an ounce last night, which means they might have turned the corner and hopefully will start gaining weight consistently. They will start the process of teaching them to regulate their temperature in the coming days so the nurses are weening them off the heaters in the isolettes. One major prayer request for daddy is that I stop worrying about their breathing. It has been two days since their last apnea spell and when I'm holding them, I still look under their blanket every 20 seconds or so to make sure they're breathing. That isn't doing me any good and one of the nurses said the babies can "feel" when you're nervous and it negatively affects them. That sounds a little like karma to me, but these nurses have spent a lot of time with babies and I've got a grand total of 9 days under my belt to speak of...so I'll take their word.

The first family photo!!!

This is me getting to hold both boys for the first time.

This should help us remember their names.

Grandma was stealing some kisses while we weren't paying attention.

Emily is all snuggled up with her boys.