Beads of Courage

There’s a program here in the NICU that we just started called Beads of Courage. Basically, it’s another way for you to visualize and track the experience that your kids had while growing and developing, including all medical treatments and milestones. While writing about this time has helped, these beads will offer another way for us to look back on this journey and truly appreciate what these kids went through, and really understand how brave and amazing they are.

Current weigh-in: Sammi: 3lb, 3oz; Josie: 3lb, 13oz.

Two Is Better Than One

An awesome thing happened today when the twins finally got to meet each other again! I think Josie was a little skeptical about the whole thing, but they both eventually settled onto mom’s chest. It really drove home how amazing having twins is, and made me so incredibly excited to have them learn and grow up together. It also allowed us to have our first family selfie :)

Current weigh-in: Samantha: 3lb. 1oz.; Josephine: 3lb. 10oz.

Goodbye HFNC

Excellent news on the respiratory front, with both girls being tested with no respiratory support! So it’s up to their own little lungs. We had a quick reminder of how different things are with this setup when Josie had an oxygen saturation dip during kangaroo care, and we forgot that we couldn’t just reach over and turn up her oxygen! But she recovered on her own pretty quickly. Both are doing amazingly well.

Reunited At Last

We had an amazing surprise last night when the NICU admittance nurse told us that Josie had moved to bed 32, meaning that the Wahlmark girls are finally next door neighbors! They even are off in their own isolated room with only two other beds, so we’re enjoying the slower pace and quieter sounds that are accompanying this move. This also means that skin-to-skin with both girls at the same time should be possible soon. Can’t wait for them to be kicking each other again :)

It was a full day for the little ones. It was decided at rounds to drop both to 2L HFNC and increase feeds. In addition, Josie had a great PT session where we did some range-of-motion exercises and learned about stress signals and how to create a more calming environment for the girls. Also, both had their first eye exams where they looked at retinal development, and everything checked out normal. But with the pupil dilation and stress that was associated with that, they were pretty tuckered out by the end of the night.

The girls also had a great time visiting with Nanny and Grandpa Wahlmark!

We Are!

Dad made it to rounds this morning and then had to leave in order to assist with the summer music festival happening at Penn State the next two weeks. Of course immediately after dad left I was approached by a NICU PR person and asked if members of the Penn State football team could meet our girls and take a picture with them! Now, I don’t know much about football but I knew that if Chris were here he would have been honored to have the girls take a picture them so I said “yes.” 

Now, both girls did not understand the magnitude of the situation so neither of them even cracked an eyelid when they came in but we did get some fun photos. I mentioned something about Sammi surely being close to the size of a football and one gentleman (who turns out is 6’ 7”) stretched out his hand to size her up and said, “Yeah, I could palm her.” 

Please don’t palm my baby…