A typical conversation

I used to be articulate.
I used to be able to enuciate my words and be fairly understandable.
use to.

Lack of sleep has away of washing all that away and turning you into a babbling fool who just sort of makes sounds with his mouth which may or may not have some slurry resemblance to actual words. Mary Jane is in the same boat, which means our conversations have gotten very simple. Many go something like this

(sound)
huh?
(sound...with accompanying head nod)
oh
(sound)?
pft
(grunt)
iwuvoo
iwuvootoo
hmm (with contented sound)

(baby cries in the background)

First Noel

Well, okay, not the first Noel. But it was the girl's first experience of one.



As the time approached they were equal parts eager...

...and terrified.

They are still too small and fragile to go to church, but they did get some Christmas loot.

as well as some Christmas fruit.

Believe it or not, Parker ate these in one sitting.

Attack of the Christmas Cuteness

We've been asked a lot recently how people can pray for us, specifically. First off, thanks for asking. We have been so appreciative of all the prayers. I guess the big thing on our minds is eating. Parker is still having a lot of troubles with it, and the last 48 hours haven't been so hot for Emma Jane either, but we think that is because she might have a little bit of a cold. Parker, on the other hand, just seems to still be in a lot of pain when she eats.
If you were looking for more things to pray for I will be honest and tell you that Mary Jane and I would love sanity...sanity probably comes from sleep...of course it will be a while before that really happens, but all of you out there who are parents know what that is like. I guess we just pray that our three hours or so a night would be amazingly restful.
All that probably sounds pretty bleak. But it isn't so bad.
Nana (thanks again for all the help you gave us over the past two weeks...I really don't think we would have survived without you.)left on Thursday and we suffered through the weekend together just the two of us, but grandma and grandpa (Broge) are in town this week to celebrate Christmas with us, so once again we are blessed with some help.
--Blessings,
The Broges
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Warning....The E-mail is officially over....proceed at your own risk. The following pictures are so cute they may cause you permanent harm. Those with a known heart condition, or those who are pregnant or nursing are encouraged to look at another blog post now. If you should choose to proceed and examine some of these pictures the management will not be held responsible.




Okay...so Parker is completely asleep here. Some how, and for some reason we don't understand, she worked her hand up and decided to hold her eye open...and kept right on sleeping. (okay...cute but maybe not devastatingly cute)


Here we have Emma Jane...our chubby little munchkin. Generally this girl LOVES to eat. As you can see from the empty bottle...which she just keeps around in case she finds a ready supply of milk. The exciting thing about Emma Jane is that while she is only a few ounces bigger then Parker, she is really starting to fill out. She's getting some baby fat and looking more and more like a new born...some 17 weeks later.

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Warning...seriously....stop reading this blog...the next few pictures hurt a little
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You were warned
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Emma Jane in her hat, getting ready to go to the eye doctor

The little monkey herself, also sporting hat, in prep for going to the doctor.

You will note that she has been denied the use of her hands.

Silly monkey.

What's that smell?

Who? Me?

When people talk about babies they talk about the cuteness, and if you are a parent you talk about the not so cute things. You talk about the thow up, the spit up, the poop and the pee. But one thing that I have never heard anyone talk about is the farting. Now it could just be that I have "farty" babies, but wow...babies have a lot of gas.

Speaking of smells....
My girls have smelly eyes today too. They went back to the eye doctor again. We're pretty much on an every two week schedule with that docotor as they keep an "eye" on their progress. The appointment starts with ... well let's face it, it starts the way all doctor's appointments start, in a waiting room for a ridculously long period of time as you watch your appointment time come and go...but eventually you are escorted back into a room and they dialate the girls eyes and then make you wait another thirty minutes before they bring out the torture devices and examine their eyes. I was particularly amused today by the doctor's assurance that this whole procedure doesn't hurt. She was telling me this while she had their eyes pried open with a device which would have scared the marqui desad and was poking at their eyes with another equaly devilsh device, wearing a bright light hat which was shining in their eyes and of course she had to speak loudly because the girls were screaming...so...I'm sure it doesn't hurt. But anyway....we were talking about smells.
The eye drops they put into the girls eyes smell. It smells just like an old bandaid. If you pause for a moment you can recall the smell. It's that smell from your childhood, when you cut your finger and came crying to your mother. She would sterolize it, putting some bactine on the cut and then place a bandaid on it. You would sniffle your way back outside, quickly forgetting all about it. A week would go by before you would get around to touching the thing again. By that time it had picked up a permanent moist like quality. The only reason you even realized it was on was because you ran your hand through your hair and thought...what's that smell.
Take a moment. Close your eyes and breath in through your nose. You can still smell it.
That smell, that is exactly what the eye drops smelled like. It was as if they had taken a whole bunch of those nasty bandaids and squeezed them to get all the juice out, and that was what they were using for eye drops.
Nasty.

Why the blogs have been infrequent

It is comingIt is always coming

You can't run from it.

You can't avoid it.

You can't prepare for it.

It takes no prisoners.

It takes the cutest of your family first.

It turns these

into these

It happens every day at 9:00 PM.
No one knows where it came from. No one knows how or why it chooses its victims. While one would expect it to attack Parker first it is crafty, it takes Emma Jane first. Usually it begins in the minutes directly leading up to 9. They begin to grunt. They begin to squirm. They are inconsolable. And then at 9...they scream.
They scream, and cry
and cry and scream.
It usually lasts hours.
The cure? No known cure exists.
The symptoms can, however, be managed.
The prescribed treatment involves doing deep knee bends (not bobbing or shaking, but slow deep knee bends...my leg muscles are going to be so strong...) while singing Christmas carols (not playing music, but singing it...not songs, but Christmas carols)

It is an oddly stressful and tiring yet entertaining time

blessings from the broges

PS in case you hadn't noticed, all this occurs during the usual prime hours for posting. (Sorry Liz, nothing personal)

A moment's rest

Contrary to how past blog posts may have made it sound, the girls aren't up and screaming all the time. Everyone sleeps eventually. And with the sleep comes the cuteness.

and when the little beautifuls rest then sometimes....sometimes...their mommy does too.

Christmas Comes to the Broges

So I'm sitting on the couch with the monkey in my arms, trying to keep her good and calm while Mary Jane prepares to give her a bath. Next to me sat Nana holding Emma Jane. The Chronicles of Narnia was just starting and we were sort of watching it, and sort of waiting to get the whole feeding thing started and sort of just cuddling with the babies. When all of the sudden there arose on the lawn such a clatter....at first I thought the neighbors must be having a party, and then I realized what I was hearing was singing. And I knew...I knew it was our small group. And sure enough...we were being "caroled" by our small group.
Tonight was the small group Christmas Party, and, truth be told, we Mary Jane and I were bumming about not going this year. Our small group decided to go ahead and bring the party to us. They didn't stay long (they had sick kids in their midst), but they brought with them food, song, and the "true meaning of Christmas". Something that is often missing during this time of year. They reached out to us, as they have so many times over the years, with the love of Christ.
It's funny. When Mary Jane and I moved to Saint Louis back in the summer of 2004 we did so with somewhat heavy hearts. We left a strong network of friends and felt quite lonely. It is hard to believe that in so short a time we could have been blessed with so many who would love and care for us so deeply.

Thank you.

The Cutest Sound Ever Heard

I always figured the sound of Maggie sucking on her pacifier in the Simpsons was an exaggeration. A little bit of baby hyperbole to amuse. Little did I know it was actually an understatement. Emma Jane has mastered the art of sucking on her binky. And when she really goes at it you can hear her from a couple of rooms away. It is easily the cutest sound ever. It is the sound of a content baby eagerly pacifying herself with her binky.
And with this wonderful ability to suck has come quite the appetite. Emma Jane is making up for all that Parker refuses to eat. That girl can eat and eat and eat. She is now bigger than Parker but only slightly. With the dislike of eating from the acid reflux (and the screaming that comes along with that) Parker has slowed down on gaining weight, but is still gaining. This might be because Parker has figured out how to "cheat". She still gets her calories without the work from time to time (via the feeding tube). We are using the feeding tube less and hope that with her new medicine (Prevacid) she started on Tuesday, life will get better for Parker.
That said both the girls have hit 6 pounds! At the doctor yesterday Emma Jane was 6 lb. 5 oz. and Parker was 6 lb. 2 oz!

3 hours

Life is broken up into segments of time. For us, right now, a period of time is 3 hours long. This is because we need to feed the girls every three hours. The girls are getting really big (I'll do a statistic post tomorrow) but they are still too small to let wait until they get hungry. If they're asleep we wake them up and feed them. So at 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, and 0 we're feeding the girls. Seems simple enough, I know, but as any of you who have children know, there are a few catches. The first is a simple arithmetic issue. Neither of the girls is able to take a bottle without direct one on one supervision. So two babies means that you need two adults to feed the girls. Now, throughout the night time hours, this problem, while annoying, is simple to solve. We both get up. The real catch comes when I go to work. Last week I came home a couple of times, but mostly we made it due to the help of some of the nurses Mary Jane works with. Laura, Shannon, Mel, and Wendi all gave up bunches of their valuable time to help Mary Jane out. Thanks girls...you made last week possible.
The next big catch is a time issue.
It currently takes about an hour to feed the girls. Then there's the clean up and what not. When all is said in done in any one period of time (3 hours) we are left with an hour and a half to do...well everything there is to do in life. Everything from eating, to showering, from doing laundry to going to the bathroom, and even sleeping. This of course assumes that neither of the girls are fussy forcing one or both of us to stop everything and comfort. (which we gladly do...Mary Jane is insisting I add this sentence. She's afraid that the previous sentence makes it sound like we're mad at the girls or something. I figured the natural insertion of the next sentence would cut down on that problem...but my editor in chief would really like that assertion to be clear. So here it comes again. We gladly hold our babies. We love them) Now holding and cuddling with the girls is my favorite thing to do, but this really cuts down time to do anything. (see...I think my sentence would have done the trick. Well...either way...its all there) Usually the thing that gets dropped is....sleep (which is no surprise to any parent out there I am sure).
All this will change with time. As the girls get a little bigger and a little older a time will soon come (January...I hope) when they will eat a whole lot faster and stretch to four hours at night. This will change everything. As it is we are lucky to get 3-4 hours of broken up sleep in a 24 hour period of time. That faster eating and four hour time interval will revolutionize life here at 5452 Nagel.
Of course one would expect that even now we would be progressing towards this goal. However, things have steadily gotten worse when it comes to sleep during this last week. This is mostly because of Parker. Emma Jane is steadily eating faster. Parker has taken a sharp turn for the worse when it comes to eating. I believe Mary Jane mentioned a couple of days ago that we were praying for Parker to learn to eat. At that point she was steadily getting better, just excruciatingly slowly. Now she is doing worse. Parker starts screaming half way through her feed like it is really painful. It used to be when she decided she wasn't going to drink any more she just stopped drinking. Now she screams about it like she is in a lot of pain. Then when we drop the remainder of the feed in through the feeding tube she screams like it is hurting her (which is also new). We had a regularly scheduled appointment with the pediatrician last Monday. We talked about it with the doctor and she agreed with Mary Jane's gut feelings. This is probably due to acid reflux. So Parker has been put on zantac. Unfortunately it takes 7-10 days to have any affect. And then there is the possibility she needs something a little stronger. If that is the case we'll have to start the whole process over using a new medication. In the mean time Parker has been steadily getting worse about it. Which means feeding her is taking longer and longer and is breaking mommy and daddy's heart even as it causes her a lot of pain. We are praying this medicine will do the trick.

sorry to end abruptly but I am writing this Saturday night and she is having the biggest breakdown yet....

Happy Birthday Nana and Pop

Nana got into town Thursday and is here for the next two weeks just to help out. To say we are thrilled is the biggest understatement of the week. We need the help. She's doing all sorts of little things during the day, but the biggest help is probably in the form of help at night. She gets up a couple of times during the night allowing one of us to sleep through that feed. This finally gives Mary Jane and I the chance to trade off a little and get a little of sleep. Of course this means that even as we are gaining a little sleep Nana is loosing a bunch, so now there are three semi zombies roaming the halls of the brogehousehold instead of two complete zombies. Today is Nana's birthday....it also happens to be Pop's. Alas, Pop has to work so he is still back in Charlotte. So the married couple is separated on their joint birthdays, all so the twins can be better taken care of. Thanks guys. We love you and really appreciate your help and sacrifice.

Due Date

Well, believe it or not…we made it!! Today is the girls due date. They made it to full term…course they spent a good portion of that time out of the womb. But here we are…newborns.

God Bless Swings

Parker trying to pop her eyes out of her head.

Emma Jane being cute and awake for three straight hours.

They LOVE their pacifiers.

One day they will have head control.

Hi everyone. Its Mary Jane again. Sleep being at an incredibly low minimum and since Jason is working again this week, I have ample time at night I "get" to be awake. Neither one of us are doing so well at forming words or sentences right now, but I said I would post tonight so Jason could get a few extra minutes of sleep and since my eyes have to be open anyway.

The girls went to the pediatrician for the first time this week. We have seen her plenty of times in the NICU but this was their first official visit. Emma Jane weighed 5 lbs. 10 oz. and was 18.5" long and Parker was 5 lbs. 11oz. and also 18.5" long. Just to review they were 1 lb. 12 oz. and 1 lb. 13 oz. at birth and were both 13" at birth so we have come along way. Emma Jane is doing great. She always eats at least her minimum requirement and then is happy. Her blood pressure is going down so we are headed in the right direction. Parker was the main topic of conversation at this visit. Any of you that have had the privilege of meeting the babies know they are about as different as night and day. Parker has a lot of... personality... jammed packed into a little body. She spends the majority of her day grunting and not really eating but also she is very funny and makes lots of crazy faces and stares at her hand like its the coolest thing in the world. She will undoubtedly be the first to crawl, walk, talk, throw a temper tantrum in public, etc. But since we have come home, her fussiness and refusal to eat a whole bottle has increased. After some discussion with the doctor, we think she might have a touch of reflux and are going to get her started on some medication to help with that. I am PRAYING that is the problem because I feel so bad for her. She is getting better and wants to eat which is a step in the right direction.

There are so many strange things about being at home after being in the NICU for so long. No wires, no monitors, no lights always on, no one else directing their care. Sometimes I feel like we have all been sent home on a trial basis and if we fail, they are going to take the girls away from us again. This of course puts undue pressure on myself, Jason, and the babies and makes me want Parker to eat even more. I pray that I will be able to relax and realize these babies are here to stay.

On a completely different note, I would like to thank whoever invented baby swings. They are the best invention. Thank you to Kelly who let us borrow one so we now have two.

So all in all we are surviving. My mom gets here on Thursday and its not a moment too soon. We need help and of course the girls miss their Nana.

burping

Happy Thanksgiving

“Give thanks to the LORD, He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever.” (Psalm 136)

These words leap to mind this Thanksgiving. Daily in life we have much to be thankful for. I am often annoyed with for how much I take God’s daily blessings for granted. I am surrounded by His blessings and mercies, and yet, often I only notice them when they go missing. And then it is all too easy to make the attitude one of, “how dare you let that be taken from me God” rather than a thankful attitude.
However, this Thanksgiving it is significantly easier to adopt a thankful attitude without having to work at it. In fact the thankfulness just seems to flow out. What I find particularly interesting is that the joy and thankfulness over the girls being home spreads out. It reminds me to be thankful for the “little” things as well.
Wouldn’t it be nice if these sorts of experiences lasted forever? If one didn’t become desensitized to the blessing, in this case of having his daughters at home, and have to continuously remind oneself to be thankful? But that’s not the way it works. Well, I’m still living on the high so who knows, maybe I’m wrong this time, but life has taught me that humans, by nature (myself included) easily forget to be thankful for the blessings their Creator/Savior/Sustainer has showered down upon them.

We need benchmarks. We need things in our life to remind us of those blessings.
A friend of mine talks about never realizing how great it is to be full until right after being very hungry. He actually likes being ridiculously, extremely hungry because “the food tastes better.” And let’s face it, he’s more appreciative.
I am sure that it is easier to be thankful in the midst of Parker’s long scream/cry/fuss periods because the girls didn’t come home with us, and because we worried we would never get to this point. That said, I really wouldn’t recommend having your children be born 14 weeks early just to teach yourself to be a more thankful person ;)
But as I was saying, we need benchmarks in life. Things we come back to that remind us to be thankful. Things that remind us to “Give thanks to the LORD, He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever.” I think we need to go out of our way to set up these benchmarks. They can be big things or little. I know for me, my wedding ring is a big one. It has always been a conscious reminder to me to remember to be thankful for my wife, to not take her for granted, nor the incredible blessing she is to me. However this experience has added meaning to my ring. Ever since I put it on Emma Jane’s arm it has become a reminder of where we started, and consequently, how far we have come. How merciful God has been to us during this whole experience.

I could go on and on but I fear I may be getting rambly quick. It has been a looong time since I last slept. This isn’t just because of the girls. We had an impromptu stop at the Emergency room last night. Not for the twins…for Mary Jane! She had a kidney stone. She has gotten them a few times over the years but this one was by far the biggest one she’s ever had, and of course with that fact comes the truth that this was by far the most painful one, and interestingly enough I think it was the quickest as well. Thankfully, she is doing well. Actually, Mary Jane and I were talking about it and we have a lot to be thankful about concerning the kidney stone. The last one she got was right before Mary Jane got pregnant. When they did their tests the doctors discovered she had a bunch just sitting in her kidney hanging out, one day to emerge and create their own particular brand of trouble. We were very concerned this might happen during the pregnancy which could have been very bad, but it didn’t. And while neither of us wanted the ER to be a part of our Thanksgiving we must admit it would be hard to find a better time for this to have happened. Nana and Pop are in town for Thanksgiving (Mary Jane’s mom and stepdad). Nana was able to take Mary Jane to the ER enabling me to be with the girls and make sure they were properly fed and everything that is currently going on with that. Then there was the concern about Church this morning (I was supposed to preach and once again my supervising pastor was out of town so there really wasn’t anyone around to take my place—if you know nothing about my vicarage other than this blog than you probably get the impression my supervising pastor is always out of town. Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth. The guy never leaves town. He has tried to leave twice in any type of recent history. Both times things looked fine and secure and both times the Broge family decided to have a medical emergency. Go figure.) but then Mary Jane passed the kidney stone pretty quickly and got home in cheerful spirits just in time for me to get changed and over to the Church.
“Give thanks to the LORD, He is good; for his steadfast love endures forever”

We pray all of you have had a relaxing holiday. Know that all of you are on are list of things we are thankful for. Very high on the list in fact. Your prayers, comments on the blog, e-mails have meant the world to us. We are sorry that we haven’t been able to write back as much as we would like, but know that just jotting that quick e-mail, or writing that quick blog post, or stopping and saying that quick prayer, means the world to us.

Hmm…this got really long.
Well, maybe that makes up for missing a couple of days?

Blessings
The Broges

Sleep...where we're going we don't need sleep

nuff said

Squirmy

Have you ever tried to use a blood pressure cuff on a preemie to get their blood pressure? Me either, but I've watched Mary Jane do it a bunch of times and let me tell you...just as hard as you'd think. They get all squirmy and anxious about it, which, of course, raises their blood pressure, giving you a false reading and making the whole process mute. Luckily...I have a PNP (Pediatric Nurse Practitioner) in the house, so I really don't have to worry about it too much.

Tomorrow (Monday) we head back to the hospital. The girls get their next eye exam. Prayers that would go well, and that the girls would eat!!

In Christ,
the broges

Chapter Two: Home, home on the Nagel

...are often the beginnings of something else
Someone commented yesterday about the longest, scariest, slowest drive of their life being the one where they took their son home (paraphrased...not an exact quote). Well, yes and no. It wasn't the scariest. But it sure did seem to take forever. I just wanted to be at home with my girls (all three of them). After 12 weeks in the NICU every car on the road, every red light seemed to be a personal affront. The idea that we could get in a car accident never occurred to me. Perhaps I was just in too giddy and naive to think about the possibility, but while irony is a cruel cruel mistress which strikes at the worst moments it seemed too cruel even for irony.

By the time we got there the girls were zonked. Too much excitement for one day. Who can blame them?
So we put them to bed. Their bed.

All in all it was pretty near a perfect day. We ended it ...well..really late...or really early, depending on how you want to look at it...but happy.

"Give thanks the LORD, for He is good; His love endures forever"

End Chapter One

So as those of you who read the last post now know...this was a busy day.
We've known it was going to be today for a little while now but have purposely been quiet about it. Mostly because it was never 100%. There were a million little things which could have kept us there. Chief, of late, was/is Emma Jane's whole hypertension issue. So we kept the day quiet so as to not have to turn around and say...oh yeah, it didn't happen.
We got to the hospital early this morning and were quite giddy. We fed them and then changed their clothes. Parker got her NG tube taken out, but not permanently. Mary Jane just really wanted some going home pictures where we could see their faces, and it was time to change it anyway, so Mary Jane figured, might as well go ahead and take it out. Mary Jane had purchased special out fits for the girls, so after we got them cleaned up we changed their clothes (in the process taking off all their wires!!! I have wire free babies!!! That old Pinocchio song "I've got no strings...has been running through my head non stop)


You can't see it in the picture, but the shirts say 2 petite pears. Which they are. After that it was mostly a matter of waiting for the discharge papers. We had a lot of visitors from other nurses as we were getting our stuff together. We've been their quite a while and the girls have managed to make some friends in the staff. The girls are ecstatic to being going home, but they are going to miss their excellent nurses.

Next it was time to get them into their car seats, along with their special going home in cold weather hat.
Funny thing about those hats. Cute as all get out, but way too big. We could probably comfortably fit them into hat if we tried putting them in feet first. Mary Jane found them on line and ordered the "preemie" size, but the designers of the hats must have had some giants as preemies. Cause I bet we could easily fit those hats onto a 20 pound baby, let alone a 5 pound one. YES that's right...I said 5 pounds!!! I have said it before...but I can never say it enough...mercy upon mercy

Then we put them into a wagon to wheel on out.

Course....there was time for a quick family photo

But not much...by this time Mary Jane and I were going out of our mind a bit. We were ready to take our kids home.

We left vowing never to return!

At least not until Monday when we have an appoint scheduled with the eye doctor. And then the next Monday when we see our pediatrician, and then we have an appointment with doctors to discuss Emma Jane's hypertension coming up, and then the regular preemie check up and...well...we'll be seeing a bunch of the hospital

But the key is we left. It took a long time to get here and there was a lot of prayer, support , and care that went into it from all of you. Thank you. We couldn't possibly say it enough. All the love you have shown us has meant a lot.

End Chapter One...

....course the funny thing about endings is...

Some last minute decorating

So we've had a last little bit of decorating that we wanted to do. Here you see part of a thing a friend made for us. It's fun and inviting for the girls.Here you see a sign which was made by someone in our small group and was used at their shower a couple weeks back. We thought it would be fun and inviting.

And then, as you can see, we had just a couple of other things which needed to be done.

The changes in this last picture might be a little subtle. I encourage you to look closely. Let's just say I will be blogging again tonight when I have a little more time.

Blessings.

A serious moment of a science

One of the basic distinguishing characteristics of mammals it that the females of the species produce milk.




Only humans freeze it.

"eye" 'm all stressed out

Mary Jane is censoring me on this one. I want to talk about how their eyes might pop out of their head at any moment. If they did, they would likely shoot out like tiny rockets across the room. She thinks I am being extreme. So I won't say that. Instead I will just tell you that the girls had another eye exam on Monday. We thought this would be the last one, cause they have done well on the others, however this one ended with more of a hmmmm then a looks good. When asked to explain that we were told they would really like to see their eyes again next Monday, because they are not developing quite as well as might be hoped. What does that mean? Heck if I know. Probably nothing. Cute coke bottle glasses are not guaranteed to be in their future because of this. (but dad is sure their eyeballs are set to go flying across the NICU.)

Meanwhile...the doctors are still trying to get a handle on Emma Jane's high blood pressure. They have her on a more long term drug now and have upped the frequency of the doses (though I think she is getting a smaller dose each time). This is something we want them to narrow in on sooner rather than later. They will not let the "h" word happen until it does.

On a completely different note. The girls room is finally ready. There is one other thing Mary Jane would like to get hung on the walls, but other than that...here it is

Should be a fun for them.

Blessings