The Story of Diane

This week I went back to work and was thinking about how fast the time has gone. As part of my job I do visit hospitals and pediatricians and it got me thinking about one of the nurses we had while the kids were in the NICU. I have to say I've learned a lot about myself and what I need through life. When it comes to caregivers, doctors, dentists, etc I really require someone with a good bedside manner. The thing with doctors is that some are super smart and have no social skills. So I strive to find caregivers in my life that I can handle. But when you have a baby in a hospital all this goes out the window and you get an array of unsavory people. I only had to come correct on one nurse while I was there, but most of them were great.

The biggest issue of the NICU is that there are about forty nurses who work in day and night shifts and thus there is no consistency of who you get. I think a lot of this had to do with the fact that our children were not seriously ill, so they didn't get a regular nurse. Becuase of my job I personally knew about four nurses and two managers that work in the NICU. Again, these nurses were aware that I was there and took very good care of us. But basically every day we walked in to visit there was someone different caring for our children. While nurses are some of the best caregivers out there, some leave little to be desired. Some nurses are very controlling, some are too frazzled to pay any attention to you and some just treat you like you're in the way. But not Diane.

We got very lucky in the first week the twins were born. We had this nurse for about for about six days straight which is very unusual. She was just wonderful and I cried all over her when her shift ended and I knew she wouldn't be back on again for awhile. She was very personable, taught Matt and I everything patiently and was almost like a family member. When we came in she would let us do everything, tell us how they were doing and she assured us the twins would be home before New Year's-even starting some of their discharge papers for us!

So here's the kicker-one afternoon my mom and I were visiting to feed the kids and it was a relaxed day and Diane had mentioned doing something for her church. I asked her where it was and she just said it was a small church. That made me figure she lived somewhere remote-like Amelia or somewhere in the country. So I asked her if she lived far away. She kind of looked at me like she didn't want to tell me and kind of hesitated. Here goes the exchange:

Me: "So you must live far from here?"
Diane: Funny look on face
Me: "Where do you live?"
Diane: "Morehead City"
Me: (with an open mouth) "You mean NORTH CAROLINA?"
Diane: Yes
Me: "How long does it take you to get here?"
Diane: "Five hours"
Me: "You drive five hours to work here?"
Diane: "Yes, that's why I work long shifts-usually four days or more."
Me: "Do you stay in a hotel?"
Diane: "No, I stay with my mother. I used to live in Richmond and my husband retired and we moved to NC. I didn't want to quit, so I decided to work one week every month and drive up here. And that was 11 years ago."
Me: Unable to speak

Seriously, I can't make this stuff up. I just remember looking at my mom in disbelief. This lady drives five hours just to keep working in the NICU-she's been driving there for ELEVEN YEARS. Amazing. And she was the one caring for our children. We are truly blessed.

Nursery Pics!

FINALLY!

A Very Merry Un-Birthday!

This post is WAYYYY late seeing as their "official" birthday was January 31st. Since we've had snow and a revolving door of recent help, I haven't been good with my blogging. I seriously thought being at home all day would make me a better blogger, but I was wrong. I guess it's like my journal writing habits. You start strong and then realize like six months later you haven't written anything in your pink pony glitter journal with the lock on the front.

So my children are officially to their due date. I mean, yeah they are really eight weeks old, but all the books I've been reading say to treat their due date as their true developmental age. I will boastfully claim my children are a little of both. They sleep and eat like newborns, but they are doing everything an eight week old would do. This gets a little confusing for mommy because she wants to put them on a schedule like an eight week old, but that is proving to be very difficult. We are getting better at the bedtime routine, but since they still wake up every three hours to be fed, it really doesn't matter where I put them to sleep! I am doing it mainly to make their brains correlate that crib=sleepy time.

So here are the squirts:

Miss Alaina is 6 lbs 13 oz (although probably more by now) And yes, she is looking so hard she is cross eyed-isn't it precious??

By the way, she has made it into her newborn clothes, so we are officially newborn size!












Here's Mr Throw Up. He has the newborn up-chuck syndrome. He keeps about half his bottle and shares the rest with everyone else. He is 6 lbs 11oz and was already in his newborn clothes like two weeks ago. Mainly because he has monkey arms and legs like daddy.



In other news I've finished the nursery and will be posting pics of that later. I finally got around to painting their names and putting up some stickers. We are staying in our jammies this weekend as the snow comes around again! Unfortunately I don't have any desire to put the kids out in the snow, so we may have to save snow bunny pics for next year.