So, life in the La Chica – Payne household continues despite the lack of blog updates!
The twins are 7 weeks and 4 days old now and doing quite well. But let’s go step by step:
Feeding.
They are 100% formula fed now. I managed to feed them breastmilk for the first 4 weeks and I am quite happy about that. It wasn’t an easy decision to move completely to formula, and Jon and I discussed it at length for a few days. But it was the right move for us and our life style. It would have been very stressful to continue with the expressing on top of the bottle feeding.
At the moment we’re giving Elisa 120ml and she’s drinking most of it all the time. Eric is on 150ml but we struggle to get him to drink the full amount most of the time. Sometimes (but rarely) Elisa finishes off Eric’s bottle! We will be increasing Elisa’s amount to 140ml soon (although I wonder if she’s just going through a growth spurt!)
Sleeping.
In the last week or so, I’ve noticed that their naps are much shorter than before, and sometimes they even don’t sleep at all between feeds. Long gone are the days when they used to sleep for two hours straight between feeds! Also, depending on the day, they fail to settle in the cot at night, and Jon and I have had to cuddle them to sleep in bed… I know you’re not supposed to bring them into bed with you when they’re so little, but we’ve found that it’s the only way that they will settle to sleep, and we’ll do anything!
Also, when they’re very cranky in the afternoons or early evenings and we can’t get them to nap, we take them for a walk around the estate in their buggy. They seem to love it! The movement, the fresh air.. They don’t love it as much as the car journeys, but the buggy seems to do the job to send them to sleep!
Development.
Elisa is still on size zero nappies, and Eric is on size 1 (he’s been on size one for a good two weeks now). We’ve put size one nappies on Elisa by mistake a couple of times and we’ve kind of regretted it, as there have been leakage incidents… Doh! But, anyway, I think she’ll be ready to go on size one herself in the next week or so.
They have just started smiling a tiny bit. They’re not quite there yet, but they’ve started showing signs that the big step will be happening soon, like staring at your eyes more intently and kind of pulling a smile. I think they will be smiling properly in the next week or two.
They both hold their heads quite a lot. They do a bit of tummy time everyday (on our shoulders) and they hold their heads for a bit. I am unsure how much they should be holding their heads for, but I think they’ll doing well. In the next couple of weeks I will start putting them on the play mat and let them do proper tummy time.
The twins are “only” 7 weeks old but they are growing so much! Elisa is now bigger than Eric when he was born, and Eric is over 4 kilos! I can feel their weight more and more each day, especially when feeding them and I’m holding them… And we’re going to start rethinking our burping technique soon! No more burping over the shoulder…
Socialising.
The great majority of our friends have met the twins now. We have had visits to the house pretty much every single weekend since we came home from hospital. And when friends haven’t been able to come home, we’ve gone to meet them elsewhere. We have been out with friends several times, especially with the NCT girls, who meet up several times a week in town for coffee.
I am now able to drive and hopefully this will mean that I will be more mobile, not having to depend on Jon to take me places I went out with them for the first time last Friday and it wasn’t too bad! Truth be told, one of my friends had to help me with the feeding, and I didn’t even attempt to change their nappies. But I didn’t struggle too much with the maxi cosys and the pushchair on my own…
Later on this week my mum, my brother and sister in law will come to visit. They’re only coming for a long weekend, but that will be more than enough! It’s going to be interesting to say the least… we’ll see how I ask my mum and sister in law to wash their hands every time they want to hold the children after they’ve had a cigarette (and knowing my sister in law, it will be quite often!)
Health.
It seems like Eric is having problems with the hearing in his left ear. The health visitor came to do their hearing test a few weeks back and she didn’t get any results from his left ear, so she referred us to the hospital for a more in detail test. However, this test came back as inconclusive again, so now we have an appointment with the audiology department where they will do a more definitive test.
We’ve had the 6 week check up already and both Eric and Elisa passed the test with flying colours. They are putting on weight nicely and the doctor didn’t find anything wrong with them at all. It is always a relief to hear doctors say that your children are healthy and doing very well! On Wednesday next week the twins will be getting the first set of immunisations and I’m not really looking forward to it, as I’ve been told that they will be crying for the rest of the day!
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And this is it for now. It’s taken me most of today to write this post… 5 minutes here, 15 minutes there, and so on. I’ll try to write again soon with updates on their medical tests and injections.
