The first few days

Sunday morning arrived and I was able to get up and have a shower. I was moving painfully slow and had to sit to shower but it was great. After eating Chris wheeled me down to the nursery to see the girls and I finally got to hold Kate.

Over the course of the day we had a few visitors, mostly family but also Shannon, Meridith and Geno. As the day passed we spent time with the girls and got as many updates from the nurses and Dr's as we could regarding thier health. By the end of the day we found out that they had heart murmers that would be looked at more the next day. Apparently it's common for many people and I discovered that I also had one at birth!

On Monday they did a echo cardiogram on Lucy to check out her heart, apparently they were more concerned about her. We heard nothing that day except that they could not come upstairs yet.
Over the course of these days I attempted to learn breastfeed and learned to pump milk. Time passed.

Tuesday we got word that the Dr's were going to speak to us about Lucy and were double checking Kate. We found out that Lucy has an 'aortic stenosis'. In the early afternoon we got to sit down with the cardiologist and find out just what aortic stenosis meant besides narrowing of an artery.

An aortic stenosis is an narrowing of the artery leading FROM the heart to the rest of the body. So blood moves in just fine but encounters trouble getting into the rest of the body. It's hard to explain without diagrams but it essentially means that unlike many heart defects this one will get worse as she gets older. The first step in caring for this condition is doing a balloon angioplasty in which a tube is passed through a vein in the thigh and through that defective artery where the balloon expands allowing easier blood flow. This is done once or twice, but not more often as it can create leakage. The next step in managing this condition is an open heart surgery called a Ross Procedure. When this is done they replace the defective artery with the 'other' artery that pumps blood into the heart as this artery grows well with the heart and then replacing the 'other' artery with a donor artery or a artery made out of a cows jugular. This will ensure that it will grow with Lucy. As she gets older this artery will need to be replaced but hopefully not until the final surgery which is done once she is an adult and not growing anymore. They then replace it with one made of plastic or I think metal. This situation is slightly more complicated because she is a girl as if she wants to have children she cannot have this final surgery until after she has children as she would have to be on blood thinners. The donor or jugular artery cannot be permenant because the body eventually rejects them, depositing calcium on them until they can no longer function.
There is a resource family in Vancouver who will talk to people whose children who will be going through this who also have twins. Thier daughter (the one twin) had it a bit worse than Lucy and has already had 3 surgeries by the time she was 6...so that gave us a bit of a time line.
We will have a whole team of Doctors, some of whom are the leading Doctors in Canada in this area and will be followed closely by the girls pediatrician who is also one of the best around.

We dealt well with the news I think, mainly feeling sorry and sad that Lucy will have to go through this, but are glad she will have such good care. Kate is fine, with the same kind of heart murmer I had, I can't remember the name...transitory or something. Lucy should still have good quality of life, and be quite normal except tiring and such nearing the times she will need surgery. The procedures have a very high success rate and those who have the congenital heart defect such as Lucy's will usually lead perfectly normal lives.

Anyway, the good news was that Kate got to come up to our room on Tuesday as well. It was hard to seperate them but it was nice to have Kate. On Wednesday they decided that Kate needed phototherapy for Jaundice (which seemed apparent to me) and so was put in an incubator again under lights but still stayed in our room. Lucy was also allowed to come up to our room on Wednesday. Then by late night (around 11:30pm!) they decided Lucy also needed phototherapy and so they brought in another incubator and lights. SO, we spent some time moving the room around to fit everything in and thus a weird blue glow was cast over our room all night. :) Thursday Kate was taken off of phototherapy and Lucy spent one more night under her lights. Since the kids were born I'd not got much sleep but I still think it was a wake up for me and even more for Chris (who'd been sleeping at night because he didn't have nurses checking him all the time) to have the girls in the room. We put them on an every three hour feeding schedule which means we get 1 1/2 to 2 hours sleep in between feedings. Friday evening we were given the go ahead to leave. YAY! So, one week after being induced the girls came home.

Our first night at home was great. I actually fell asleep right away when I went to bed, unlike the 1/2 an hour to an hour it would take me EVERY time in the hospital. I got a good bit of sleep as did Chris, thanks to mom's help for a couple of feedings. We haven't done much today, just relaxed and visited with Chris' family who came over. We all went for a walk to Trout Lake today. I'm walking pretty slowly (didn't realize how little I was walking when in the hospital!!) but it was nice to get out.