Sleep? What's that?!?

If it's not the babies waking us it's something else.

Our nights don't leave us with much sleep so when we wake up from something other than the babies it's frustrating. A couple nights ago we had a hard time getting some shut eye. Simon was awake FOREVER and crying really hard. We couldn't seem to get him to sleep. After hours of rocking, etc. he fell asleep and we ran to bed to catch some sleep before one of the others woke up to eat. We slept for about a half hour when we woke up to a loud beeping sound. We figured it was a low battery in the smoke alarm so we ran around the house searching for the source. Ben changed the battery in the alarm in our room and just as we crawled into bed again the beeping was back. It was the carbon monoxide detector in our room. I ran down stairs to bring that CO alarm upstairs to see if it would go off and it didn't. Ben ran a test on it and the alarm went off and said the CO level was 254. We thought that would be strange to only have CO problems in our bedroom so we took it outside and ran the test again. Turns out the test falsifies the CO level to make the alarm go off and what we were really dealing with was a low battery. The level wasn't 254 after all. Whew. We changed the battery and crawled into bed for about 30 minutes before our 2 am shift began.

Nights are long in our house right now since the babies aren't sleeping through the night yet. Isla almost always sleeps 6 hour stretches (hooray!) and the boys range from 3 hours to 4 hours. Occassionally a 5 hour stretch sneaks in there. We love those little gifts. :) It sounds like we should be getting decent sleep if they are sleeping those stretches but we don't. If one wakes up and we feed them all we are up for 1 1/2 hours with feeding and then add another 30 minutes to an hour to get them to go to sleep again and it's almost time for the next feeding shift to begin. If we don't feed them all at the same time it seems like a hungry baby is awake almost every hour throughout the night with a few non-consecutive hours as a break. Add pumping in there for me and bottle making for Ben and it's that much more sleep we've lost throughout the night. We still have our shift times but if a baby isn't waking up, the shift doesn't happen. Ben takes 11 pm - 2 am and I take 2 am through the rest of the night. Ben usually feeds a baby or helps make the next batch of milk before running off to work. In the evenings we share the responsibility until 11 pm. It's tiring but we're surviving. We know this phase won't last forever and knowing that helps. Here's a picture of our bottle counter right before we pour the milk (3/4 breastmilk + 1/4 formula) for the next few feedings:




The babies are continuing to grow like weeds. We had a moment where we thought we might have to begin adding rice cereal to Isla's bottles since she was spitting up a lot and she's a pokey eater too. Fortunately her last weight check showed that she gained 7.4 ounces in a week which was .4 over the minimum. Hooray Isla!! Isla and Simon are taking 80 mls in their bottles now and Solomon is taking 90 ml. We don't have to do bottle refills as much anymore but every once in a while they will eat as much as 110-125 mls in one feeding. This typically happens after a longer stretch of sleep at night.

Here are their weights as of last Tuesday (9/8):
Isla - 6 lbs 10.4 oz
Solomon - 7 lbs 10.2 oz
Simon - 7 lbs 8.4 oz

Milestones:
All three have rolled over during tummy time. They are all beginning to play with the toys on their playmat by swatting them or grasping them. They track items with their eyes and turn their heads toward our voices. Their head and neck strength is excellent. The home health nurse has said several times that they don't act like preemies. She was very impressed with their muscle tone and head/neck strength. Hooray!!!

Here are some pictures. Enjoy.

Mommy feeding Simon and Isla playing in her boppy pillow.


Simon and Isla playing with the toys on the playmat.


Daddy and Solomon cuddling on the couch.


Solomon and Simon hanging out together after tummy time.