Roller Coaster

Tomorrow marks 5 weeks that the girls have been home and it has been quite a roller coaster! I know that I posted a few weeks ago about happy babies, but they have been anything but happy babies (except for the occasional good few hours maybe once a week) since they have been home...I just haven't had time to update about our saga lately because I am constantly trying to pacify one or two screaming babies:(

When the girls were in the hospital, they were on a great schedule and were rarely fussy.  I was there often enough and for long hours to know how my babies typically acted.  We brought them home from the hospital on a Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon, they had morphed into babies I didn't even recognize!  Phil and I kept saying, "They didn't do this in the hospital" or "They never acted like this in the hospital".  We were clueless as to what was going on and what we should do about it.

The other day, a woman came to the house that was following up on their developmental progress since leaving the NICU.  She asked me all sorts of questions about things that they are able to do, their sleep patterns (or lack thereof), eating patterns, etc.  It was going fine until she asked me, "If you hold a toy out in front of them, do they reach for it?"  I thought about her question and sadly realized that we had never held a toy in front of them.  They are never happy for more than a few minutes here or there and so we never really "play" with them.  After she left, I felt awful!  What kind of mother have I been to these babies?

We have been to the doctor several times over the past few weeks because we seemed to have reached the end of our rope on multiple occasions and were hoping for some sort of relief.  They have reflux and are now on Prevacid twice each day (they were only on it once per day for the first 4 weeks) and this seems to be helping a little bit.  Once we switched to reflux meds twice per day, we felt that they were still screaming and still seemed to be in pain (however this pain did not seem to be from the reflux).  After visiting our pediatrician again yesterday (he is really great and even called me today to see how they were doing), they are now on some gas drops that seem to be helping as well...at least today has been a good day.  He seems to think that they have a VERY bad case of colic on top of a bad case of reflux.  We have gotten our hopes up a few times after they have had a good day or a good morning or afternoon, only to have them crushed by several hours of incessant screaming.  We even drove around for an hour and a half last night so that we could enjoy some peace and quiet!

We are praying for us and for them (and we know so many others are praying too and we are so thankful!), but have often asked each other, "Why is God doing this?"  We don't know why God is doing this, but we do know that what He is doing through this is what is best for us even if we seem miserable and even if we have NO CLUE why anyone should have to endure such a thing.   When I am tempted to throw myself a pity party and ask God, "Why me?" I am reminded of not only how faithful He has been through our entire pregnancy and NICU experience, but also of the families that I know that are dealing with things with their children that are so much more difficult and heart-wrenching and more permanent than what we are dealing with.

My prayer is that the Lord will give us patience to endure the upcoming weeks until the girls grow out of this and that we would rest in Him and His peace.  He has blessed us with two beautiful and healthy little girls and I pray that I never lose sight of the fact that they are blessings...even when they are screaming!