Leaving the house twice in two days!

The learning is constant around here for all five of us right now!  The pediatrician Isaiah saw in Danville on Weds morning was concerned about his continued weight loss so she recommended we try feeding him every two hours and supplement nursing with 20ml of breast milk from a bottle.  Well, we tried that, and quite honestly,  it is impossible to do with three babies, even with two moms nursing and having a third person to help!  By the time we wake them up enough to eat, change all their diapers, nurse them (allowing time for rest breaks), and get them all dressed and swaddled again, we were left with about 30-45 minutes to sleep.  The good news is that at our pediatrician visit yesterday, with the doctor we chose (Dr. Lela Brink) and she was like "no no! you can't do that!" and said the 3 hours schedule they're used to from the NICU was fine.  She also highly recommended a different way to do the supplemental feeding to support weight gain...finger feeding using a syringe and small tube of expressed breast milk or using that same tubing at the breast.  She recommended that we meet with Karen, a local lactation consultant to learn more about that.  We already had an appointment scheduled with Karen for today so that worked out well.  After the pediatrician visit we walked down the hall to the OB office to pick up a prescription for more pain meds for Michelle and of course all the nurses and one of the PAs wanted to come out and see the babies.

First outing

Getting our family of five out the door to the doctor appointment yesterday morning was a bit hectic, but we managed.  When we got there it was raining so I pulled up under an awning, got one baby in the glass entry way and went back quickly to grab a second, while Michelle got the third baby out of the car seat, since she can't carry something that heavy yet.  Pediatrician visit went well.  Isaiah and Avery have both gained weight since discharge so that's good.  We need to concentrate on getting Ellie to eat more and getting her the fatty hindmilk by eating after one of her siblings because she had lost a little weight. And adding in the supplementing by finger feeding (see picture below). Otherwise she was happy with how they are doing.  She said Ellie's rash is a classic newborn rash that will hopefully go away in the next couple of weeks.

Today's appointment with Karen was good.  We got a few positioning tips and she showed us a way to try supplementing them while they latched on.  It is a little tricky, but with practice I'm sure we'll get the hang of it.  She also thought they were all doing well and seemed to be more mature than she would expect for babies born at 34 weeks so that's good.  They're just in this tricky spot where they expend so much energy eating that they fall asleep before they really get full so the idea with the supplement is basically to get more milk in them more quickly.  Karen was also supportive of aiming for a 3 hour schedule and even said we could start to let them sleep a little longer at night if they start eating more using the supplement. 

Here are some cute pics of the babies!