Eye exams and weight check

The babies both had their first eye exam today, and so far so good! They now both weigh a little over 2.5 pounds and are a month and a half old! They've both nearly doubled their birth weight at this point and probably will within the next 1-2 weeks. Their original due date was supposed to be March 23, so the little rascals have done pretty well considering they should still be in the tummy for two more months. Their eye exams both went pretty well. With premies, doctors worry about ROP, which is a problem with blood vessels growing in the place where the retina should form. In a premie, the retina is still growing at birth, and starts from the back of the eye and moves to the front until it forms a complete circle around the center of the eye. The problem is that sometimes blood vessels formed by the presence of oxygen block the retina from finishing it's growth, which causes permanent blindness. If caught early enough, the doctors laser-surgery the blood vessels to help the retina form, which helps a baby to see. Right now, Connor and Mckenna are both free of ROP, or the presence of those blood vessels, but the retina is only approximately 30% developed in Mckenna and 40% in Connor. Basically, it's so far, so good.. the blood vessels can still develop because the doctor said it's really too early to tell much, but he did tell us that he didn't see any problems yet. The problem can occur until the retina is 100% developed, so he plans to come and check again in two weeks. We're excited that so far we have cleared the first eye hurdle, and hope that the next exams will produce the same results. Mckenna is doing a little better today, and she's being weaned down on her oxygen needs. She's back to about 54% right now, which is high but much better than she's been the last two days. She is a little bit bloated in the abdominal area, which may have been one of the reasons that she had her little crash two days ago. Connor has remained around 25% O2, which is great, and for a few minutes today the nurse took him off the cpap completely and he was breathing perfectly with no help from a ventilator or anything, which is extremely encouraging to see! He has a little bit of a toaster head from laying on his right and left side, because he hates lying on his back. We're forcing him to try the back occasionally though because we don't want him going through life with an abnormally thin head, which sometimes can happen to nicu babies. Anyway, that's about all the news today... thanks for the prayers!!