The Boys In Hospital
The boys spent the next 8 weeks in hospital, seven days in Intensive Care and the remainder in the Special Care Nurseries. Richard and I are both so grateful to the doctors, nurses and midwives at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital for all the fantastic work they did to help our boys.
It was very scary with the boys in Intensive Care but we quickly got used to the system. I was taken to see them very early on the Monday morning after they were born, but was unable to see them as the drugs from the operation were still affecting me and I felt so sick. I did get to see them later in the day. It’s all a little bit of a blur now, but the pictures tell a thousand words. The boys were both so small, but they looked lovely, with full heads of hair and pink skin.
We were reassured often that their weight was good for their gestation and they were doing very well. However, they were both put on a ventilator within the first 24 hours, and they required phototherapy for their jaundice. Daniel came off the ventilator first (after a day) and tried my milk for the first time. He started a trend which continues still, and threw it up. Lachlan remained on the ventilator for a little bit longer (another day), and blood was found in his lungs which was thought to have been caused by a pulmonary bleed. He required a blood transfusion and was also given drugs to (successfully) close the duct between the heart and lungs. Daniel also required a blood transfusion and the same drugs for the duct. After being removed from the ventilator, both boys were off and on the CPAP machines for the next few days. Lachlan took to the milk much better than Daniel and very quickly became the biggest consumer.
It wasn’t until five days after they were born that I was able to hold the boys, I held Daniel first and cried my eyes out. Later I held Lachlan and he cried! My first double cuddle was when they were a week old. Again, I was a blubbering mess, but it was the best cuddle! It must have been good for the boys too, because they graduated to the Special Care Nursery the next day.
The time in the Special Care Nurseries was much more relaxed than the Intensive Care had been. It was more a case of waiting for the boys to grow enough so they could come off the machines. They had a lot of bradycardias where their heart rate would drop, but this was something they were expected to grow out of. The boys put on weight very quickly, though Daniel continued to have problems with his digestive system. It took him a long time before he could keep milk down.
I was surprised that Daniel had more problems than Lachlan as he was 
the bigger twin when he was born. I was told that it’s often the case that the smaller twin has less problems because he’s had to fight harder in the womb. Daniel continued to have a lot of problems during our stay in SCBU, scaring us often and worrying us a lot. He had a slight bleed in his brain when he was born, and it blocked a duct in his brain causing fluid to become trapped. The doctor told us that the worse case scenario was that he would require a shunt to be inserted to drain the fluid, but that we could wait a while before doing that. The fluid wasn’t completely blocked, so any swelling in the brain wouldn’t be a problem as the skull was yet to solidify. We were terrified that Daniel would require an operation, but in the end we had the best possible outcome, and the blood cleared up and the fluid buildup disappeared within a week. Still, it was the scariest week of my life.
He also worried us with his lungs, as he needed to be on oxygen for a lot longer than Lachlan. Even though we were assured that it was just a ‘trickle’ of oxygen, it was still quite nerve-racking. But again, he pulled through at the last minute, and he came off the oxygen on the day they were both moved from the humidicribs to open cots.
The boys couldn’t have been more different than with their breastfeeding ability. Lachlan took to it like a duck to water, even when he could barely fit his mouth over the nipple. He had his first feed about four weeks after he was born. Poor little Daniel, on the other hand, was like a rabbit caught in the headlights with breastfeeding. He’d take the nipple into his mouth, and then do nothing. The expression on his face was priceless – his eyes would widen and dart around the room and you could just see that he had no idea what he was supposed to do. For weeks we tried to force him to attach and suck, and we used nipple shields and had midwife after midwife instructing us on what to do. Nothing made any difference, even though he sucked on a bottle with no problem. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks after we got home that he figured it out – all on his own!
After about six weeks, the boys graduated to the second Special Care Nursery, where they came off the heart and respiration monitors for the first time. Here we gave the boys their first actual bath, and we started practicing the twin feeding even though Daniel still had problems taking to the breast. Unfortunately, the boys also developed the worst case of oral thrush, which took us weeks to fix. When the boys were big enough, we tried to make arrangements to get them transferred to a hospital nearer to home, but failed because the hospital was always full. In the end, we made arrangements to go into the parenting room at the WCH and to come home on the NEDS program – Neonatal Early Discharge Scheme. On this program, the boys are sent home with the gavage tubes inserted, and we give some of their feeds through the tubes. Midwives come and visit every day to check the tube and they change it when required. However, after the first day in the parenting room, our lovely midwife decided that the boys were feeding well enough (Daniel on the bottle) for the tubes to be removed and we were able to come home on all suck feeds. So on June 4, exactly 8 weeks after the boys were born, we came home.
