Our Sweet Little Miracles: November 2012

So technically we're at about 5 1/2 months (adjusted age almost 3 months) now, sigh. Such is life with twins - so hard to keep up with everything! But they're oh so worth it. Anthony and Aryanna are at such a fun stage right now! They're so interactive, smiley, and love talking to us. Anthony always looks like he's concentrating so intently on your mouth and tries to mimic the shape with his mouth. He's making lots of different sounds these days (this seems to be a developmental area where he's ahead of Aryanna). Aryanna does her fair share of "talking" too and she is just so darn happy!

On the flip side of all this fun stuff is some not-so-fun stuff: REFLUX. We've read/heard so many stories of other preemie families and feeding issues can be one of the biggest stressors post NICU. Anthony and Aryanna have always done quite a bit of spitting up, but things have gotten much worse over the past month or so. For several weeks Aryanna would throw up almost an entire feeding about once a day or once every other day. It would come through her nose and choke her up and totally freak her (and us) out. That has finally stopped, but both of them have gotten to the point where they don't want to eat after about the first half of the bottle. After that they scream, cry, arch their backs, and bat the battle away because they're in so much pain from the reflux. Many times we end up waiting and feeding them the second half of the bottle a while later, but that way almost the whole day is spent feeding babies. Needless to say, it's exhausting for us and them and we feel so bad that they're in so much pain. We took them back to the doctor about a week ago and she put them on Zantac for the reflux. She said it can take about 2 weeks for it to work and we're not seeing much improvement yet. Please join us in praying for healing for their little bellies - that they wouldn't be in pain and that they would be able to eat and continue to grow. Thankfully, through all of this they have continued to grow and they are BOTH ON THE GROWTH CHART FOR WEIGHT!!! Anthony also made it on there for length! Praise God! We're so grateful that they're continuing to thrive through all of this.

Here are some of their pics from month 5 (Aryanna needed her tender grips changed and can be off of oxygen while she's awake so we took the opportunity to snap some pictures of her without anything on her face):