Due Date

Today was my original due date. We can now refer to Bennett & Kendyll's "adjusted" or "corrected" age; because they are preemies, they are technically allowed a 7 week grace period developmentally because they were about 7 weeks early. What this means is that they may develop according to their "actual" age (based on their birthday) or they may develop according to their "adjusted" age (based on their due date) or they may develop somewhere in-between. Preemie parents often refer to their children this way -- Bennett & Kendyll are 7 weeks actual age, 0 weeks adjusted age. We're hopeful we won't really have to worry about this much (and honestly I find it very confusing, so I'm probably just going to refer to their actual age), but I thought I'd share this info for future reference. Most preemie babies catch up by age 2. As one other twin mommy shared with me (her twins were born 5 weeks early) -- "I didn't know any different, so when they started walking at 16 months it didn't phase me".

One of the things we do on a daily basis (OK, we TRY to do on a daily basis) is Tummy Time. They don't really care for it much and only last a few minutes, but this is supposed to help strengthen their necks and upper body. I try to fit it in when they are both happy to begin with and we rarely do it with both babies at the same time . . . they usually have a meltdown after a while (which is funny to me because they used to sleep on their bellies in the NICU isolettes).