Many of you will remember that Audrey and Serena were born on Christmas eve last year. The events were recorded on this board more or less in real time as I often posted updates from my pda in the NICU. Threads are here:original thread &
follow up
Long story short, 1 year ago China Wife’s water broke and the twins came fast. In fact, too fast for the planned c-section. Audrey was born quickly and easily. Serena took 40 minutes to be born, and came out limp, blue and not breathing. Resuscitated quickly and then her heart stopped. Heart was restarted and after 25 minutes, was able to breath unaided. Then into the NICU for 18 days, and back to the foreign clinic for 18 more days before coming home.
Fast forward. Yesterday was the one year check up. Dr. Jenkins, who was the delivery room pediatrician, did the original resuscitation, and responsible for getting Serena out of NICU and back to the clinic, has been the pediatrician for the twins. He gave them both a thorough check up.
Audrey is doing great. About 95th percentile for height and weight. She’s a strong baby and is shaped like a little sumo. Audrey crawls all over the place and will be walking in weeks if not days. Happy and loud baby becoming a toddler.
Serena is also doing great. However, Serena lags her sister and is slow on some of the developmental milestones for 12 months. Pediatrician strongly suspects that there was some neurological damage sustained during the birth. This is manifested in some lack of trunk strength. Which means that Serena is not as strong nor stable for crawling or standing, etc. Serena has zero inclination for crawling, but is sure eager to walk. This means we start baby rehab to help strengthen the muscle groups to get her to the walking milestone as soon as possible. Dr. Jenkins is pretty confident Serena can walk by 18 months, if not sooner.
Other indicators such as attention, concentration, environment interaction, making noise, etc all seem to be both normal and roughly equivalent to twin Audrey. I’m sure Serena’s going to get there at her own pace.
Posting on the board really helped me through that difficult time with Serena in the NICU, and then desperately finding a way out of the NICU intermediate care for the treatment she needed elsewhere. Those nights trying to feed Serena with formula from a syringe so the feeding tube could come out to the relief when a co-worker found the “magic bottle” (Habermann Feeder) and in the morning simply said “what address - it will be there in 48 hours.” There were many dopers as well who emailed me with offers of help. Words can’t express how I feel about that even though I didn’t actually check that email account until several weeks later.
Anyway, I just wanted to give y’all a Christmas Eve update on the Chinettes. We’re all doing great and will be posting a link with photo’s in the next day or two. I’ve got to get things ready for the birthday party tonight. Already have two cakes 
