I Can See It!

The light at the end of the tunnel! The finish line! The prize!

THE ROAD HOME!!!

Not sure if I've told you this, but the main problem the boys have been having is with finishing a bottle. They had done it a couple of times, but never with any consistency. We had them on some fancy bottle that the hospital gave us which is about as close as you can get to breast feeding with a bottle, which was fine while the boys were still learning to nurse, but its flow was so incredibly slow that the boys had to work really hard to get milk out of it and they got tired before even getting half way through. And this one little thing was keeping us from feeling like home was even a possibility in the near future.

Well last night's nurse asked us if we wanted to switch to a slow flow bottle nipple, which lets the milk out a little faster than the other one we were using. As soon as we switched to that, we saw the difference; both Asher and Levi finished a full bottle in about 2o minutes!!! Yay! So in the last 24 hours, Asher only had to get 20 ml total fed to him through his tube, while Levi only had to have 10 ml...their current full feed is 43 ml!

And then this morning, when I got to the boys' room for their 9 am feeding, their nurse greeted me with more awesome new: both of the boys get to have their feeding tubes removed this morning. AND...

AND...

They get to room in with us as soon as the right room is ready and as soon as we want them!!!!!

If things go well and they still gain weight, they will room in with us for two or three nights and then we should get to take them HOME! Not only that, but they are now feeding by demand, which means that we don't have to force them to finish their feeds, we can let them stop when they are satisfied/asleep, and we can let them sleep up to 4 hours before waking them up to eat if they don't wake up on their own!

In case you didn't do the math...we could be home by Tuesday or Wednesday!!!!!

We're taking the boys' car seats over to their room as soon as I get done posting/emailing this, so they can do their Car Seat Challenge whenever the doctors and nurses want them to. Just a couple more hurdles to go, and those hurdles seem to be coming faster and faster! Keep us in your prayers that the boys continue to gain weight and do well on the car seat challenge, so we don't have to stick around even longer. A month and a half is long enough!