Tired doesn't explain it

Drew spent the first month of his life in the hospital. Having his twin sister home along with Ella, was definitely an exhausting task. I have to admit that it was a nice transition into having twins. While exhausting to drive back and forth to the hospital, we had NO IDEA how tired we'd be once we had him home.

Drew had a surgery which resulted in an ostomy. Basically, his bowel, rather than being inside of his body and disposing of waste in a diaper, sticks out of his belly and empties into a bag. GROSS-O, you're not the only one thinking it! Well, to complicate things even more, this bag leaks, daily, hourly sometimes, and every leak earns him a bath, and a half hour on the "ostomy changing station" that we set up in our bedroom. It takes two people about a half an hour to peel this bag, filled with poo, off of his tiny belly while he screams and cries, not usually because it hurts, but because we need to restrain him. The only thing worse than having baby poop all over your hands is having a baby with baby poop all over his hands. It really is miserable and most annoyingly time consuming. We're hoping that that will be reversed soon so that we just have diapers to deal with.

Drew has a very special diet that he needs to follow. Its a special (and very expensive) formula that I'm sure most of you have never heard of (Elecare). You can't get it in stores, special order only. Normal formula or breastmilk is 20 calories per ounce, but Drew needs 30 calorie per ounce, so we have recipes that we follow for beefing up the calorie count. There is a mixing session every evening that lasts about an hour. Additionally, he needs to eat this every 3 hours (Oh sleep, how I miss you). Our chunky monkey Lily eats every 4 hours. And different formula than Drew. When shes not nursing. So we run shifts throughout the day and night of who feeds who what and when and how much. And sleep, well, you get the picture. Furthermore, he gets a spoonful of applesauce and enzymes everytime he eats so that his pancreas can break down the food and help him to retain the fat. Oh, and all of this needs to be charted for the Dietician at the sixty-five roses clinic. Our kitchen looks like a chemistry classroom.

The important thing is that Drew is doing well. He weighed 7lbs at his appointment last week. (3.2 kilograms actually. We've become proficient in the metric system. We had to if we wanted to know what all the doctors and nurses were talking about. He east 75ml every 3 hours with the goal of gaining 28.3 grams per day).