Picture Tuesday: One week old

Our baby girls are one week old today!  The past week went so incredibly fast and overall was much smoother than we anticipated with only a couple of little bumps along the way.  When we were discharged from the hospital on Friday the pediatrician noticed that Taryn has a little heart murmur.  He had an echo done on her and we waited for the cardiologist to come read it and give us some feedback.  He said she has pulmonary valve stenosis, which basically means one of her heart valves is a little bit thick and constricts the blood flow just a bit.  Most likely it will be fine but there is a chance that it will get worse and then she'd need a simple surgery to fix it.  It was really scary to hear the news that anything is wrong with our new baby's heart, and especially to hear it the way I did, by myself in the hospital, with a very condescending doctor who was also really difficult to understand.  But we have a check up in a few weeks and are much less stressed about it now after doing a bit of research on our own.  Baby Kenna had high bilirubin so we had to go back on Monday to have her blood tested again.  It was quite the ordeal getting the lab, then waiting for over an hour to see a doctor who didn't even look at the girls, she just looked up the test on the computer and told us that it was still high and we needed to come back in two days again to have her tested.  I'm glad that the medical care here is free and advanced for the most part, but the bedside manner and procedures leave oh so much to be desired.

Here are some pictures of our teensy little girls in their car seats ready to leave the hospital.  Thanks Auntie Aubry for their darling little outfits!

The day after we got home Allison Redmon came over with her husband Andrew and their little girl, London.  We'd asked her to take newborn photos for us and her time was really limited since she's leaving the kingdom for the whole month of February but she squeezed us in anyway and we're so glad she did.  We would have had a few more days at home if we hadn't changed our delivery day but it worked out just fine anyway.

We gave them their first bath at home before the pictures so that they would be nice and worn out.

I'm so excited to see the finished pictures and glad we braved the semi-stressful morning to have her come take beautiful pictures of our ladies when they're so brand new.  It was a LOT of work for her to coax them into the perfect position and then quickly take pictures before they moved.  Tons of work with two little babies, but she was amazing and SO patient.

Other than the little health issues the week has gone blissfully well.  The girls were up and fussy quite a bit in the hospital but since we've been home they have been pretty much on the same schedule.  They wake up at about the same time, every 3 hours to eat and then the pretty much sleep until it's time for them to eat again.  Nights have been great as well.  The last two nights we've put them down around 10, they wake up to eat at 2, and then not again until 5:30 or 6.  Unbelievably fantastic for just one week old.  They are very sleepy babies still and seem to really love to be snugged together, which we think is pretty darn cute.

Until yesterday I was nursing them both at every feeding.  They didn't drink much and got super sleepy before they finished one side.  But after the bilirubin test yesterday we decided to try to give them a little more milk so we started feeding one a bottle while I feed the other.  The boys were thrilled to help out by feeding them bottles for the first time last night.  It's darling how much the boys love their sisters.

Their daddy likes them a little bit too.

I am healing fine.  MUCH better than I anticipated.  I feel like I must be receiving so many blessings from people praying for our family and this week has gone so so much smoother than it had any right to.  I was really sore at the hospital and for the first few days at home, but I'm already starting to cut back on the pain medication and I'm doing okay.  I get tired in the afternoons and at night but Glenn is great to let me take a nap when Finn does while he's home and so I'm not a huge mess.  It's awesome!  

So without further ado, here is our first picture Tuesday with our beautiful little one week old baby girls.