Week One

This week has been quite a whirlwind! Saturday 10/3 the girls had their first visitors! Busia and Papa and Grandpa came to meet the girls in the NICU. Grandma was up North when the girls were born and we knew it was killing her to not be there, but she came home early on Sunday to meet the girls. It was pretty cool to see the excitement on all of the "first time Grandparents" faces, they are so proud!

I was finally able to go home on Wednesday morning, I can not explain how much I was looking forward to being home. It had been over two weeks since I had been home and I could not wait to be home with Chris and the doggies. I missed them so very much! That night Auntie Angela, my sister, flew into town to meet the girls. We picked her up from the airport and wasted no time getting to the hospital for her to meet her tiny nieces!

Wednesday evening was very exciting for us because Chris and I got to hold Brooke and Taylor for the first time. They both were only on the ventilator for about a day, their lungs were more mature than their younger yet bigger sister Sydney. Wow they are beautiful and oh so tiny. Unfortunately we were not able to hold Sydney just yet as she had to go back on the ventilator, she was having to work just a little too hard to breath:( She should be off soon and we couldn't wait to hold her too! Over the next few days Chris and I did "kangaroo care" which is holding the girls skin to skin on our chest. The skin contact and sound of the parent's heartbeat has proven to be extremely beneficial to preemie babies. It is an amazing feeling to be able to do this and help them in any way possible because it can be a very helpless feeling just looking at them in their isolettes. Thank God the nurses have been just wonderful and do a great job putting our minds at ease. Auntie got some good holding time in as well, she also had many encouraging words for little Sydney! Sydney's middle name is Angela after her Auntie so it was very special she was there to talk to her and give her strength! Auntie Angela's husband Uncle Eric will be in town for Christmas and is looking forward to meeting his nieces then. They live in Northern California, we look forward to the day we will take the girls out there to the beautiful town of Petaluma!

The girls also have an Auntie Beth, she is Chris' sister and she lives in New York. She will be coming for Thanksgiving with her boyfriend Justo, which we are all very excited about. Brooke's middle name is Elizabeth after Auntie Beth. She can't wait to meet and hold her first "set" of nieces! Taylor's middle name is also a family name. Both of my Grandmother's first names were Sophie, so we chose to make it Sophia. It was important to us and meaningful to use family names for our girls.