I love these girls

so, I don’t make many guest appearances on the blog, but steph asked me to write a post regarding some of our observations on the twinkies.  many readers may be surprised to learn that telling identical twin neonates apart isn’t an easy task.  despite asking each of them to raise a hand when called by name, all I’ve gotten is the occasional grunt/poop – and even then – I’m not sure that the movement came from the girl I was addressing.

 

we’re therefore left to our own powers of discernment when it comes to distinguishing ellie from claire.  although it’s helpful to know that, when bedded, ellie is ALWAYS on the left and claire is ALWAYS on the right, I’d prefer to know my daughters better than that.  steph and I delight in studying each girl closely.  here are some of the features that make claire claire and eleanore eleanore.

 

CLAIRE…

1.  likes to crawl.  I put her on my stomach while kangarooing the other day and she crawled herself up my chest until her head was tucked against my neck.  she then started stroking my chin with her tiny fingers – it was the sweetest thing ever.  and to show that it wasn’t an isolated event, she was fussing last night and wouldn’t calm down until I snuggled her into the same position.  (granted, she started re-fussing after a few minutes and then desatted into the mid 80s for 10 minutes, but I’ll take what I can get!)

2.  has a little extra blubber.  2 ounces may not seem like a lot, but to a micro-preemie, it’s like the difference between walking the runway during parisian fashion week and sporting a merona plus-size skort on page 8 of the sears sunday newspaper insert.  now, let me qualify that a little bit.  my girls are both gorgeous.  if modeling is what they want to do, I’m sure both will end up as supermodel astrophysicists.  claire, however, did benefit from the generous birthweight of 4 lbs 11 oz (when compared to ellie’s trim 4 lbs 9 oz).  she had no problem maintaining her temperature and came out of the isolette quickly.  in fact, claire had enough heat to keep her sister warm as well.  when it looked like ellie wasn’t going to maintain her temperatures out of the isolette, we decided to swaddle her skin-to-skin with claire and she has been over 36.6 C (lower limit of normal) ever since.

 

ELLIE…

1.  got her dad’s narcolepsy.  just like me (and my dad too), ellie has a hard time keeping her eyes open.  when she gets tired and her lids get heavy, she’ll fight tooth and nail to keep her eyes open.  never does she succeed, though, and ends up sporting the same eyebrows-up-wrinkled-forehead-eyes-closed look that I get when I’m “awake” at 2 am reading up on the operation I have scheduled for the following morning.

2.  isn’t bothered by borborygmi.  from about 25 weeks (the time that the hearing apparatus completes development) onward, ellie was vertex and claire was breech.  consequently, ellie’s head was in steph’s pelvis and her little ears were privy to ALL of steph’s bowel movements.  I’m not saying that my wife farts (or even poops, for that matter), but she does have bowels and they do move occasionally.  alternatively, claire’s head was positioned right under steph’s liver/diaphragm and probably didn’t have the same exposure to those rumblings.  because voice resonates in the chest, though, she heard lots of steph’s ramblings.  and believe me, I’m not delusional enough to think that my wife doesn’t talk – she talks a lot… and fast.  anyway, the girls have spent considerable time since birth on our chests (being “kangarooed”) and can hear both growling stomachs and quiet conversation.  while claire isn’t fazed by talking, she jumps whenever my stomach growls.  and ellie startles at even a whisper, but could care less if I rip a loud one.

 

with that, I’ll sign off.  we’ll see if steph lets me blog more in the future.