News

This page contains news about things that are going on in our lives. The newest stuff is at the top. The contents page contains links to the news for each month of the year.

2006

Wed 13 December 2006, 12h41

Been a Little Busy

My last proper update was way back in August, which may give you some idea of how hectic life has been in the last 4 months. Despite our attempts to have 'quiet' weekends to recover, we seem to have been busy with kids parties or baptisms or whatever the weekends bring. The oulook until Christmas isn't looking much better either.

Ian and Jennifer are now 6 months old, and are taking solids now which is pretty challenging. Getting rice porridge into one 6-month-old is hard enough, doing it with two is an art requiring both lightning-quick spoon reflexes and patience only a mother can have. On the occasions I get to feed them, a fair portion of the food never makes it into their stomachs, but rather into their, hair, bib and pram.

Sarah turned 3 in October and had a fantastic party with a jumping castle. I started a wendy house on the jungle gym for her, but construction has been slow. I still have to make the front, door and windows. All in good time.

We had Ian's baptism on the 1^st of October which was lovely. As you may recall, Jennifer was baptised the the neonatal unit, so she took part in all of the cermony except for the baptismal blessing.

At the beginning of November we spent a weekend with Dave and Anne at Sun City which was a welcome rest.

Then it was Matthew's birthday, Kayla's birthday, Niel's baptism, Nicky's birthday, Leigh's birthday and a hundred other things that fade into my memory at this stage.

I've added a photo album of general pics of the kids unti I get time to post proper albums for all the events.

Cheers,

Gus

Wed 20 September 2006, 21h24

Sorry for the Delay

Sorry that I've not made an update for a very long time. I'm busy with a re-design of the site and not getting as much done as I would like.

Patience is a virtue.

Gus

Sun 13 August 2006, 23h01

Getting back to Normal?

I'm not sure what is considered normal any more. The picture shows a 'normal' evening in our house - one of my jobs is to make bottles for the next 24 hours, and this is what it looks like!

We had another good weekend. I managed to get a good deal of work done on the compactum and the main body is now complete and standing in the babies room. I even managed to get 4 coats of sealer on the thing - a record for me as I'm normally bored by the 2^nd coat.

Now I have to set myself on the task of making the drawers - something I've not done before so I'm looking forward to it.

The rennovation of our gates and garage doors went well and they are looking good again. Rasta has also done the jungle gym which desperately needed varnish before the summer rains, as well as the facia boards. He's also going to repair my garage roof which has leaked since the day we moved into the house, and I've not got around to fixing it until now.

Seems as if we are going to replace the main gate - seem like a bit of a waste to spend money on something that won't last much longer anyway. Financial decision still pending.

We ended the weekend with dinner with Dave and Anne who took on the daring task of looking after the three kids while we were ar mass. Apparently, chaos reigned for a while when we were gone. Bless their hearts for stepping up like they do.

On the down side, Sarah, Ian and Jennifer have all managed to get snotty noses. I'm seriously hoping that it's not serious this time - I don't need more kids in hospital.

That's it for me tonight.

Gus

Wed 09 August 2006, 16h06

New Photo Albums

I've added two photo albums, one for each of Ian and Jennifer's arrival home from the hospital.

Today was a public holiday, so we took some time out to do some chores - Leigh went to do some very overdue clothes shopping and I went to buy some paint for the garage doors, and gates.

The summer rains and heat really pounded them this year and they were in need of some TLC. I have our trusty painter Rasta doing them - if you need painting done - he's your guy. The gate is unfortunately rotten is a few places and may need to be replaced, but we'll see what a replacement is going to cost first.

Dave and Anne came around to help us with the babies while we were out, and we ordered some pizzas for lunch which were really good. Mum also popped in to give Sarah a dress that she had picked up at a sale. Sarah was ecstatic.

I'm looking forward to a day at Phakisa again on the 27^th, this time travelling with JMass from ThinkBike.

Our wedding anniversary is coming up so I have to make a plan for something special. I know that baby-sitters have already been arranged.

Compactum is still not finished. No comment.

That's it for now.

Gus

Wed 02 August 2006, 20h40

The Pace of Life

Things have been going well at home, apart from Ian and Jennifer going back to hospital for a bit of flu to that got to their lungs.

Sarah has settled down a lot and is enjoying being at home. We had to take her out of school to reduce the risk of the babies getting the various bugs that Sarah was bringing home. We have decided to net Nomvual in 3 full days a week to help out with caring for Ian and jennifer so the she cn spend more time with Sarah and it seems to be working well.

Work is going well and my new role is proving to be most challenging indeed. I now have 5 people working for me, and co-ordinating their efforts is key to my further success at the bank.

Not much else has happened - just keeping ourselves busy with family life.

Cheers,

Gus

Sat 08 July 2006, 21h14

Getting Back to Work

It's been a while again since the last news, so I guess I'd better post something before I go back to work and things get really interesting.

It has bee glorious having Ian and Jennifer home, it was two weeks yesterday. With me being off work, it's been a real family affair, and I managed to spend some valuable quality time with Sarah between the 4-hourly feeds.

We have been fortunate that both Ian and Jennifer are good sleepers, with only Jennifer having a bit of trouble in the last few days with a bout of bronchitis.

Other than that we have just enjoyed spending time at home and with family over the weekends. I've been getting into the workshop every now and then to do a bit more work on the compactum, and the base unit is almost finished apart from the drawers which will take a bit more time.

It was my Dad's birthday on Monday last, and the local kids got together and bought him a special bottle of Islay whiskey that he has been salivating over for a while. It remains to be seen if we ever get to sample it.

As I mentioned above, I'm going back to work full time on Monday, and Leigh has been preparing for the logistics of dealing with the all three kids by herself from 12h00 to 18h00, which I think is going to be challenging.

If you add to that the issue of sleep it gets even more troubling - al least in the last two weeks I could have a nap during the day if needed, and that won't be possible at work (unless I can find an abandoned meeting room somewhere!).

I'm pretty sure that we'll manage though and Leigh has already starte to figure out how to feed both babies at the same time in order to reduce the total feeding time to around 45 mins instead of the current 90 mins. That will effectively give her 3 or 4 more hours in the day to rest or attend to Sarah or other tasks.

The thing I'm most dreading is the midnight feeds - the real hairy ones like 1, 2, or 3 am - they can really suck the life out of you.

I better go or else I won't be able to upload this before Ian wakes up for his bottle, which was at 9pm, almost half an hour ago. I hope this is a sign of things to come - I can't wait for the first time they sleep for 6 or 7 straight hours!

** Edit : I'm still sitting here at 10:49pm waiting patiently for them to wake up. Their last feed was at 5pm so they've been asleep for nearly 6 hours. I'm ecstatic!

** Edit again. I must have jinxed it, Jennifer woke up not 5 minustes afterwards!

Cheers,

Gus.

	Mon 26 June 2006, 21h17 Betting Results You may remember that we started two betting pools on the 23rd of February, one for the date of arrival, and the other for the babies sexes. A total of R910 was bet in the two pools, with the sex pool contribution R550 of the total. The winner in the date pool was Sarah McPhail, thanks to a bet of 9 June 9h30 made by Dave Segor on her behalf. I will be paying the winning amount of R180 to Dave to spoil Sarah with. We decided to donate proceeds of the pool to Nazareth House, another R180. There were 3 winners in the sex pool, Dave Segor, Barbara Segor, and Tony McPhail, who win R106, R212, and R42 respectively. We have decided to donate the proceeds of the sex pool to CWL Adoption Society, a total of R190. Congratulations to all the winners and losers for supporting our charities. On the home front things have settled into a routine, but not without the usual hiccups and surprises. Feeding is going a bit better, but still takes a while although Ian and Jennifer's sucking has improved greatly since they arrived home. The compactum is making slow progress, but is still due for completion before I go back to work (sans drawers). We are going on our first shopping trip with Ian and Jennifer tomorrow, so that should be interesting! That's it for tonight. Gus.
	Fri 23 June 2006, 22h17 The Journey Has Begun We have been waiting for this day for a long time. Jennifer was finally discharged, and we are truly grateful that everything has turned out perfectly. Getting everyone in the car at the hospital took almost 10 minutes, which is not bad considering that it was the first time we put three seats across the back of the car. I'm starting to think that a bigger car isn't such a bad idea - the current one works, but it's obviously not ideal. They both slept in the car on the way home and were fortunately on the same feeding schedule, so they slept well until 1:30pm. That was when we go a most rude awakening to what it's like to care for twins. It was complete chaos in the babies room. Sarah was joining in the fun, and was fairly tired and sensed that our attentions were focussed on Ian and Jennifer. This made her try even more to gain attention by either demanding to hold or cuddle a baby, or burst into tears. Both babies were crying for bottles. When Leigh changed Ian's nappy, he proceeded to shoot a stream of urine across the room, hitting Leigh and Sarah, who instantly burst into tears at the horror of being drenched by her brother. Things were tense. I had Jennifer to feed, and they are still not managing to properly seal their mouths around the teat for the entire feed, so much of the second half of the bottle dribbles down their chins or squirts out the side of their mouths. It may seem trivial to an outsider, but when your goal is to get milk into the baby, any wasted milk seems like failure. We finally got both of them down to sleep after more than an hour of effort. At 5:30 it started all over again. Getting this all done is quite a production, we make all the bottles up in batches of 16, and there is a whole shelf in the fridge dedicated to it all. We have found it impossible for one of us feed both babies at the same time, there just aren’t enough hands on one person. We either both have to get stuck in or, feed then one after the other, which means that one of them ends up crying a lot while the other is fed. It can also take up to and hour too feed them individually, so that makes only two hours of free time between feeds to sleep. Eish. I'm sure we will figure something out though. I've gotta get some sleep now, they feed again in about 2 hours. Cheers, Gus.
	Thu 22 June 2006, 00h31 Ian Comes Home Great news is that Ian was able to come home yesterday. On Monday the paed told us that he was sucking well enough to manage at home and said that we could take him on Tuesday. I had to shuffle and cancel some meetings and Leigh had to quickly do the last few things in the babies room before going to fetch him. We picked Sarah up from school and went through at around 11h30. We were at home at around 13h00 with Ian and a very excited Sarah in tow. The first day with Ian was fairly easy because we can share the feeding which mean that one of us can get 6-8 hours of continuous sleep at a time. It's going to be a very different story when Jennifer comes home! We are going to be like zombies! I tried to visit Jennifer today, but the Neonatal unit had a serious operation for one of the babies and the ward was closed. Now that I'm on leave, I'll be able to go any time tomorrow. We are hoping that Jennifer will come home in the next 4-5 days, but it all depends on how fast she learns how to swallow while sucking. At the moment she's not getting it quite right and her mouth fills up with milk and it squirts out the side of her mouth. I know everyone wants to know the results of the two betting pools that we had running on the births, but I've got to do a bit of an audit before publishing the results, so perhaps on the weekend. I know there are going to be quite a few satisfied winners. We've also selected the charities, and we'll announce those at the same time. Well, that's all I have for now. Cheers, Gus
	Fri 16 June 2006, 20h59 Getting Cuter by the Day OK, I'm really sorry that it's been nearly a week since the last post, but to be honest, there hasn't really been much of a change, and things have been crazy. Both Ian and Jennifer continue to gain weight and they are learning to suck very well - the nursing staff say that they should only be sucking like they are at 38 weeks, and they are only in their 36^th week. Great stuff. They are currently taking 2 of every 3 feeds through the bottle, which is great progress considering that they only started sucking 8 days ago. They need to work at taking all feeds through the bottles before they can come home. The hospital like 'err on the side of caution' in sending prem twins home, as they are easier to care for if they are nicely developed into a routine - one we plan to maintain! They were weighed during the week and were over 2.2kg if I'm not mistaken, although Ian hasn't gained as much weigh as Jennifer. On the downside, Leigh decided this week that it was going to be impossible to feed both babies on her breast milk volume. We are going to bottle feed them so that we can be 100% certain they are getting enough milk. It was a very brave and caring decision in my opinion - I know how much she wanted to feed them naturally. All I can say is that coming off the Eglonyl and Maxolon has been difficult emotionally for Leigh, and she has been in a significant amount of pain. Physio and pain pills don't seem to help much, and today she has slept most of the day, and didn't get out of the bed this evening and is now asleep for the night. Other than that, I've been working on the compactum, which is starting to look good, but I'm not sure that it's going to be finished by the time Ian and Jennifer come home. It's a bit cold in the workshop in the middle of winter to go out there at night after work, so most of the work need to be done during the day on weekends. We are very happy and feel truly blessed to have these two miraculous lives to care for, but the homecoming still looms! I've added a photo album for the stay in Neonatal. Cheers, Gus.
	Thu 08 June 2006, 21h39 Jennifer takes the Lead I've talked for so long about Ian being ahead of Jennifer in breathing, and feeding. Well now it's time for the tables to turn. But first a bit of history since the last post on Saturday. Ian managed to get an infection on Saturday and started puking his feeds up so the doc put him back on the IV to rehydrate him and give some anti-biotics. It also meant that his feeds went gone back down to 10ml until he could tolerate them again. The doctor put Jennifer on the same course of ant-biotics just in case she had also got the infection. Jennifer came out of the ICU on Sunday and was moved to an incubator. This meant that Leigh was able to hold our little girl for the first time. What a great feeling for both of us. It's hard to believe that a few days before she was still on the ventilator. I got a chance to hold Jennifer for the first time on Monday evening. I managed to feed her as well with the tube. They moved the two incubators together on Monday so that they were at least in the same part of the ward. Ian has mostly recovered from the infection not and is back to 40ml feeds. They are both over 2kg now, and only 40g apart, not much at all. A nice surprise today was that they had been moved out of the incubators into one cot, so they are getting to know one another again after two and a half weeks apart. Today was also the day they started to teach them to suck, so I was tasked with giving each of them a bottle. I think it went very well, and this is the reason for the title of the news today - Jennifer took slightly more milk than Ian, and was definitely more eager to suck which means that she could potentially come home before Ian! Jennifer took just over 15ml of her 40ml feed through the bottle, and Ian slightly less than the 15ml. So good progress on all fronts! The talk is that they still need two more weeks in the hospital to come home though, so I guess we have to be patient. Sarah is much the same, still very chipper and carrying on with life. Leigh still struggles with milk volumes and we have tried everything to get them up - pills, elixhirs, rest, shoers etc, etc, but nothing seems to help. The last restort is to put Ian and Jennifer on to see if they can stimulate some more volume. The catch-22 is that when they latch, there is no way of telling how much milk was produced. Guess that's another thing we're going to have to take as it comes. Well, I'm going to bed. Cheers, Gus.
	Sat 03 June 2006, 12h12 Getting Stronger I'd like to start by thanking everyone who has prayed for Ian and Jennifer. We got so many messages from family and friends of grandparents, office colleagues and others who said prayers that we can count ourselves truly blessed. No doubt that these prayers and the will of God have helped Ian and Jennifer to gain strength and become well. Jennifer is now completely off any breathing aids, but still has the oxygen saturation monitor just in case her levels get too low. She is taking 10ml per feed, but I'm sure that by the time we visit today, that would have increased. She really is a feisty little girl and can kick and scream with the best of them. I can't wait for her to move to an incubator so that we can hold her. That will be the first time we will get the opportunity to take a family picture. Leigh is doing well, but still struggling with getting enough milk volume. We will make a decision whether to continue or move to formula in the next few weeks. I was back at work this week, which is a tad disrupted because my normal 7 to 6 day has been cut to 8 to 4:30 because I have to drop Sarah at school in the morning and visit Ian and Jennifer at the hospital after work. I suppose it will take some getting used to. Sarah is still the same, but is getting used to the idea that Ian and Jennifer are her little brother and sister and that she is the 'big sister'. We are going to visit them with Sarah today, so at least she can start to bond with them before they come home. So I guess that we are find and have come through the worst of this ordeal. The updates will be less frequent, but I will post a photo album of the hospital stay sometime this week. The next this to cope with is the home-coming and the first two weeks of caring for Ian and Jennifer while juggling Sarah and a few visitors I guess. Till next time, cheers. Gus

	Tue 30 May 2006, 22h13 Even Better News The big news is that Jennifer is off the ventilator! I simply cannot believe the progress she has made since Friday! What a little fighter! This may be a sign of things to come in teenage years, so I don't really know what we are going to do then, but now at least, we are very, very thankful. She still has some kind of machine attached to her nose, to help her breathe, but it's not actively pushing air into her lungs. I'll have to find out more about what it does tomorrow. She still has the respiration monitor that measures how many breaths per minute she is taking and her oxygen saturation in her blood. I'm sure this will be taken off as soon as her breathing is perfectly stable. She is still very swollen and puffy, a consequence of all the treatments and fluids she has received in her first 9 days of life. We are assured that this will reduce once she starts taking in enough milk. She also took a 5ml feed of EBM again today and the nurse was so happy with the response, that she gave another 5ml as well. Let's hope that the feeding goes well so she can catch up to Ian. I was able to feed Ian his 20h30 feed tonight, and he is making strides too, up to 35ml of EBM. Heck at this rate he'll be on beer by the time he comes home! His IV for fluids has also been taken out, so the only obstacle for him now is learning to suck. It will take some time for him to learn, and during this time he should gain a bit of weight, enough for him to come home once sucking starts. For me it's back to work tomorrow, although my schedule will be somewhat disrupted with taking Sarah to school - these are the things we have to do. Leigh seems to be very tired at the moment and is struggling to get used to the 3-hourly milking sessions that disrupt her night time sleep. She will try to sleep once or twice during the day to catch up. Well, that's the news. Have a fantastic Wednesday and remember how amazing life can be! Gus.
	Mon 29 May 2006, 21h07 Really Good News I'll start with the really good news first. I seems that the Brufen treatment for Jennifer's heart has done the trick and that the murmur has gone. This means that her lungs should start to improve from here on, and indeed, today she is taking 34 out of every 46 breaths every minute herself, with the machine making up the other 12. If you add to this that they have again reduced the inspiration pressure, then the progress in the last 3-4 days has been fantastic. They are still not feeding her EBM (expressed breast milk), but her stomach is no longer so swollen, and maybe they will try again in a day or two. With a lot less fluids being provided by IV, there I hope that the swollen appearance of her body will reduce, and she will begin to gain some weight and get some of the vital antibodies EBM can provide. I'm so proud of my little girl for being such a fighter, if only I could give her a hug to show her how much. Maybe in a week or two? Speaking of hugs - I was able to hold Ian for the first time today. We are only allowed to handle him once a day, and Leigh had her chance last night, so this morning just before his 8h30 am feed it was my turn. It still amazes me how much human touch can create bonds. I was surprised that the experience didn't make me cry, but I suppose that's because the stress of last week is less of a memory and that the future of is starting to look a lot better. While he was taking his feed on my arm, I had a little chat to him about some of the things he might consider doing in his teens, like stealing the car for a joyride, sneaking out of the house at night to go jolling, etc, etc. He promptly fell asleep, so I guess I have to have another chat to him when he's a bit bigger. :-) Leigh is also doing well, and we have invested in an electric pump for, well, 'milking'. This has reduced the amount of time she has to spend on producing enough milk daily, and increases the amount of time she can sleep and look after herself and Sarah. I have started back at work on a flexible basis and will continue until Ian and Jennifer come home, when I'll take some proper leave. Sarah continues to amaze me with her resilience to the current complexity of life, but I suppose it has something to do with us keeping her in a routine, and the fantastic amount of support we have from the grandparents who literally have stopped their lives to baby-sit at any hour of the day. We are very grateful indeed to have such support. That's all I have for tonight. Gus.
	Sun 28 May 2006, 11h57 Ian's First Cuddle from Mom Sorry about not posting last night, but we were just too bushed to even think about switching the PC on. Jennifer's breathing continues to improve, the ventilator is down to 26 breaths per minute at 18mm of water. This is from 52 breaths and 25mm of water in the beginning. The transfusion seems to have gone well and they have removed the urinary catheter, to see if she will pass urine normally. They are still not feeding her EBM, but her stomach is no longer so swollen, and maybe they will try again in a day or two. They have finished the course of Brufen (3 doses) and we will have to wait until tomorrow before we will know it if it did the trick on her heart. She also continues to be more alert, her arms have started to move much more than before. So despite the problems, she is making slow progress and we are assured that when she turns the corner, the improvements will be rapid. I certainly pray it will be so. Ian is doing fantastically, he is up to 26ml of EBM each feed now (3 hours) and is doing so well that Leigh is going to be able to take him out of the incubator for the first time, and give him a cuddle just before his 17h30 feed today. They have taken off his oxygen saturation monitor, and he is only on an apnoea monitor now. The IV electrolytes are only 1ml/hr too so that will come out in the next day or two depending on how much he feeds and if the blood tests today show that he hasn't got an infection in the last 4 days. We have been really tired in the last two days, and I think the last week and all the activity has finally caught up with us. We got to sleep really early last night, and while Sarah kicked up a storm in the middle of the night, managed to get some good rest. Leigh has managed to have a good sleep this afternoon between expressing, so I think we are getting back our strength. Sarah is starting to show signs of the disrupted household - her sleeping has regressed and we are 'fighting' with her at night. Other than that she is coping fairly well with being left with family while we are at the hospital. Cheers, Gus.
	Fri 26 May 2006, 21h36 So Many Things to Keep Track Of Let's do Jennifer's update first tonight. She is still a very sick little girl. Her breathing has improved and they have reduced the amount of oxygen being supplied, and the ventilation rate and pressure. The down side of the lung improvement is that it has revealed a heart murmur, which is common on day 5. There is a blood vessel from the aorta to the pulmonary artery, and in full term babies, this vessel constricts, preventing blood from flowing from the aorta into the pulmonary. In Jennifer's case it has not closed and the pressure in aorta is generating excess pressure in her pulmonary and therefore lungs, which is stopping them from improving. There are two common treatments for this, and the first is to give an anti-inflammatory drug like Brufen, and the second is to surgically tie-off the vessel. The doctor gave the Brufen tonight, and we will know early next week if surgery is going to be required. This may sound alarming, but it is a common condition with prem babies and is a routine procedure. She has also been taking some EBM, up to 6ml at 12h30 today, but her abdomen has become swollen so they have stopped giving it to her until she improves again. On the up side, the doc said that she looked like she was retaining some water for the first time, so perhaps the kidneys have begun to sort themselves out and she will stop passing so much urine. Yesterday she passed 550ml in 24hours - about 1/3^rd her bodyweight in urine. Jennifer's haemoglobin levels have dropped steadily since she was born because of the numerous blood test that they perform daily and her inability to produce her own blood. They warned us that a blood transfusion would be necessary in the next few days and in fact phoned as I was typing to tell us that they were doing it tonight. Another apparently normal thing for a prem baby to go through. But apart from these problems there is some good news. They have reduced the amount of sedation they are using, and this means that she reacts to our touch by kicking or screwing up her face which is great to see. Ian is doing much better. In fact he's getting so strong that he pulled his oxygen feed out of his nose today and the nurse didn't bother to put it back. So he is breathing perfectly normally now. They are still giving him electrolytes by IV, but as soon as his feeds go up to 30ml, then he will be getting enough fluid and they can take that out as well. Then all we need to do is teach him to suck and he's good-to-go! This may take some time, and we still don't expect him to leave for another 3 weeks or so. Leigh's milk production is miles better than when she had Sarah and we are taking enough milk for them both each day to the hospital. She is getting tired tough, and we may have to slow down in the next few days to make sure she doesn't get too stressed and slow production. And me? Well I'm doing OK, but also not sleeping enough, so I've put off doing anything more to the photo albums for tonight. The anaesthetist managed to take some pictures at the birth, and we collected them tonight, so I can post some of them later in the weekend. Thanks again to all those who have sent e-mails, SMSs and left voice-messages on our phones. Please forgive us if we don't reply to them all, our intention is not to ignore you, we will chat when we see you soon. Sarah is doing well too, and there hasn't been much change in her behaviour, she even accepts that Mom has to go and 'milk' herself for the babies every 3 hours for half and hour. She just goes and plays in her room. Going to be interesting to see what happens when the babies come home and latch onto Leigh every three hours. WWIII here we come! :-) That's all I have for tonight, sleep tight one and all. Gus
	Thu 25 May 2006, 22h15 If life was golf : Ian leads with 1 under, Jennifer a close second on level par It's Ian's turn for a picture today. Unfortunately we have to take all the pictures through the perspex of the incubator, which makes focusing and reflections a problem, but Leigh managed to get this really sweet picture of him. He has started gaining weight, and tonight took an 18ml EBM feed without a problem (the white tube going into his nose down to his stomach). He is breathing fine on 25% oxygen, which they say they will begin reducing in the next few days. Leigh seems to think that he's got Segor legs so unfortunately he won't be playing in the Springbok tight five. :-) He is still not interested in learning to suck, but that will come with time. Jennifer is unfortunately mostly unchanged. The ventilation and sedation levels have been maintained and the doctor changed to a broad-spectrum anti-biotic to ensure that any infections are gone before they start using a cortisone drug to help her lungs heal from the ventilation. As I understand it, the air sacks in the lungs get inflamed from the pressure of ventilation, and that it needs to be treated for her to begin absorbing more oxygen from the air. To understand how delicate her lungs are, the maximum pressure the ventilator puts out is 25mm of water. This is equivalent to the amount of pressure it takes to blow bubbles in a glass of water with a straw 25mm below the surface. Try it. Scary. Jennifer also has a kidney problem that is causing her to pass a massive amount of urine every day. This poses a dehydration risk that needs to be monitored as electrolytes cannot be administered excessively. I'll find out more on the physiology of this tomorrow if I can.
	Wed 24 May 2006, 21h08 A Better Day Today was a little better. Ian continues to gain strength, and the UV treatment has done the job on the jaundice so he should not need to have it again. He is also taking in more formula - a whopping 10ml at a time! Leigh is expressing milk for him that she will take each day when she visits. He is still on the oxygen, but should come off than in a few days. We seem to think that he looks like Dave Segor - there is resemblance in the chin somehow. Jennifer is still under sedation and ventilation. (Picture) The paediatrician said however, that she is happy with her progress, that that they reduced the oxygen and pressure levels of the ventilation because she was absorbing more through her lungs than yesterday. The pneumonia is still a concern and will be day-to-day until she is stronger. Tomorrow they will try to introduce a feed into her stomach to see if she will tolerate it. Hold thumbs. Our parish priest came to see both of them today and we had a brief baptism service for Jennifer just in case there is a problem later down the line. That made me cry. I feel so helpless standing there looking down at her. I feel for the other parents who have babies in the unit that are far smaller and sicker than her. Leigh is really on the mend and was much more mobile today and has been discharged. We made the decision for Leigh to come home instead of lodging at the hospital to be with Ian and Jennifer. While it breaks our hearts to leave them alone, we have to keep Sarah in her routine, and while they are in the Neo-natal unit, there is nothing that we can do ourselves to care for them. Not even hold them. It's tough, but we have to leave the staff to do their job so we can focus on taking them home in the weeks ahead. Thanks to everyone who has sent gifts and wishes, we really appreciate it. Although we can't reply to all the mails and SMSs, I will continue to update you via the web site so keep reading. Good night. Gus
	Tue 23 May 2006, 21h45 Good and Bad News The good news is that Ian is doing very well, and is only on 25% oxygen now and is in an incubator. He is also taking food well through the tube down into his stomach. He has developed jaundice which is expected on day 3, and will be undergoing UV treatment in the next few days for that. More good news is that Leigh is recovering well and walking up to the Neo-natal Unit a few times a day to visit the babies. She will be discharged either Wednesday or Thursday, which means that the daily visits to the hospital to be with Ian and Jennifer will become part of the routine. The bad news is that Jennifer is not doing as well. She is still in one of the ICUs and she continues to struggle to breathe and is now under sedation and full ventilation. She also has pneumonia and is receiving anti-biotics to fight it. They are still feeding her intravenously. We have still not been allowed to hold either of them so it is especially hard for Leigh to see all the other mothers in the maternity ward cuddling and feeding theirs. My heart cries out for her, at least I have Sarah to keep me busy during the day. Sarah is being a real soldier at the moment and taking all the logistic changes in her stride. She was only allowed to see the babies once, so she is a little confused as to where the babies in mommies tummy have gone. She still puts her hands on Leigh's tummy and tells us she can feel them moving. It will take some time for her to understand that Mommy is coming home but the babies aren't. This is a very hard time for us. Pray. Gus
	Sun 21 May 2006, 23h05 Ian and Jennifer Arrive Early Ian Graeme McPhail and Jennifer Claire McPhail were born today by c-section at 33 weeks. Both Mom and babies are doing well. Ian born at 18h35 weighing 1.76kg. Jennifer born at 18h36 weighing 1.80kg. While very small at this stage, they are perfectly fine and just need to grow a bit in the Neo-natal ward before going home. Because of the early delivery, they are being given oxygen to assist breathing. We will probably bring them home in 6 weeks. Cheers, Gus.
	Thu 18 May 2006, 21h13 Neil William MacKenzie Arrives! Nicky and Rod's second boy, Neil William MacKenzie was born today by c-section. Both Nicky, Neil and Rod are doing well. Cheers, Gus