A Normal Evening

Sitting around the bridge table I inherited from Nana, playing cards: Mom, Dad, me and Bruno. We're cracking jokes and being silly, high on the adrenaline of competition, not to mention sugar from the ice-cream. Mom and I dip our spoons directly into the chocolate sauce. Mom has it all over her teeth and we all poke fun at her sloppy mouth.

I have a whisper of guilt, but just a whisper: we haven't mentioned the boys tonight. And I decide it's alright. Looking at my father's smiling face (he's losing, and he's not even being grouchy about it), looking at my husband's relaxed brow, my Mom's chocolatey smile, I decide it's alright to be normal for once. To have an evening where our grief isn't center stage, the main event. Where eggshells are abandoned, crunched on, even. My father tells a story and I start to laugh, really laugh, and I could almost cry with how nice it feels to catch a glimpse of our New Normal.

Free Floating Anxiety

Walking around this afternoon with the sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. A shakiness inside, as if I'm cold. Deep sighs that don't end in relief. My stomach is full with not much in it, but my mouth, my tongue want something they can't identify. Chocolate milk, usually a fail-safe, doesn't do the trick.

Waiting for the mail to arrive, the in-box to fill, the cell to buzz with messages. Dreading the phone to ring: direct contact, yikes! Picking up the phone to call: no answers anywhere. I don't leave messages.

Nervous like I've forgotten something. Nervous like there is something I was supposed to have done, supposed to be doing right now. Another sigh.

I'm supposed to be raising my boys. That's what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

Bawling all over the Neighbor

Yesterday, I was pulling out of the driveway to head to a yoga class, in a pretty foul mood. It seems that from around 4-6 each day, if I am not actively involved in something, my mood takes a pretty nasty dive. I was attempting to pull myself out by going to yoga, but as I am backing the car out of the driveway, my neighbor and her two kids on their Razor scooters appear and flag me down. Oy. I'm in such a bad mood, and she seems so nice. This isn't going to end well, I'm thinking. I roll down the window, and then decide that is downright rude, so I turn off the car and hop out. She tells me she has been meaning to stop by, she's sorry she's been so remiss. I mumble something about how we've been busy setting up the place. She comes closer and tells me if there is anything I need I should definitely come by, she'd be happy to help with whatever. Oft. Here it comes. I can feel it. She's being too nice to me. You can't be this nice to me when I only have a fingernail grip on propriety. And...I'm bawling. Bawling all over the neighbor. Bawling in front of her two kids. I manage to squeak out that we just lost our twin sons at six months into the pregnancy, and that I'm sorry for being such a public mess. And G-d bless her, without missing a beat, she steps toward me, gives me a hug and starts crying too. Wow. She says I must be so strong, and she's sorry this happened, and simultaneous to the move too. She invites me to come on a walk with her and her kids in the park. I tell her that apparently I really need this yoga class, but I'd love to take a raincheck. Then she invites me to come over later that evening: she and another neighbor always drink wine and watch Dancing with the Stars on Mondays. And I hear myself saying yes.

And I do go over. I leave Bruno enjoying the house to himself. I walk out our front door clutching a Trader Joe's Really Cool Wine Find, and, one door down, I approach a new front door. I meet the other neighbor. I ask questions about the show. I drink wine. I make jokes. I tell stories, and some of them make us laugh, and some of them make us somber. I ask questions and listen to their stories. I hear neighborhood gossip. Juicy gossip. I am relaxed. I am having fun. I am invited back for next week. I am walking through a new door.

-L

Mondays

Arrggh. Monday's are hard. My buddy goes back to work, and I'm left with all my feelings and only mundane "we've moved" tasks to occupy myself, like setting up new health insurance, new doctors, figuring out where the grocery stores are and how to DRIVE to them (I'm having a serious battle with this whole car culture thing. I am incredibly challenged in the "sense of direction" department. Like brain damaged challenged.) Bleah.

OK, feeling sorry for myself. Today I successfully set up Bruno's direct deposit, our new health insurance and FSA and all that jazz, arranged for old Dr's offices to fax things to new Dr's offices, got in a tax estimate to our accountant (we dropped out of the whole estimated taxes thing for a bit there: this could hurt now), planned meals for the week, went to Costco and TJ's (and only got lost once and didn't even cry and rant and rave in the car; instead I sent Bruno a whithering text about our AWOL GPS while stopped at a red light). It is all domestic garbage, but someone's got to do it, and atleast I'm getting some stuff done instead of sitting with my face in a tub of ice-cream like I'd like to (OK, I did take an ice-cream pig-out break, but I ate it with a spoon, and someone said full-fat milk products are good for fertility.)

Ok, this is better. I've made myself smile, and hopefully made anyone else reading this smile too. I'm off to a yoga class.

Peace,
Lisa

DD-Day: A Day of Miracles

What an amazing surprise. Today was a day full of miracles.

Last night was not a night full of miracles. Last night was a night of me behaving badly and Bruno being very patient, and then less patient, and then, thankfully, there was sleep.

But today.

We woke, and decided, yes, we would drive to Mendocino but, no, we weren't yet sure whether we would scatter the boys' ashes. We brought the beautiful green urn that currently holds them and our pictures of them, and headed up the coastal route.

We were met with a stunningly beautiful day, and that awe-inspiring California Pacific Coast scenery. We talked together, and were quiet together (and bickered together: whaddaya gonna do?) while the mountains and the redwoods and the cliffs and the waves and the blue sky rolled by. We talked about what the ashes meant to us, and where and how we currently experience the boys. I no longer think of them as infants; they feel like wise old souls to me. I don't think I believe in an after-life or reincarnation, and yet I see Pedro and Archer everywhere, including in the two squirrels who frolic daily in our backyard . It's a paradox I'm willing to live with. (The black squirrel is Pedro Squirrel and the gray one is Archer Squirrel: don't ask me why, but it just feels right)

We arrived at the botanical garden in Mendocino four and a half hours later having made no decisions. As we started down the garden path, Bruno turned to me and asked: are you scared? Yes. We walked straight through to the part we were aiming for: the place where the gardens become cliffs that end in the Pacific Ocean. It is a truly gorgeous vista: forest and garden behind you, cliffs, waves, rocks, spray and sun ahead. The noise of nature muffles everything else. We sat for a bit and thought some more, and then arrived at this decision: no, we weren't ready to part with everything we had physically left of our first children. And we also wanted to start to let go, not of them, but of this pain, this grief. To start to give them back to the Universe. So we scattered some of the ashes on this lovely spot and watched the wind return our boys to the air and the earth and the sea. And we will scatter some ashes in a different lovely spot each year to commemorate their brief existence in this world. And it felt right. It felt like an opening up, a loosening of grip, a sharing with the Universe.

We were walking back toward the garden exit, when into our sight swooped two dragonflies. They hovered for a second together, then flew off into a side section of the garden. I immediately burst into tears: we carry two dragonfly charms on our car keys to symbolize P+A. Bruno held me (and whispered gently into my ear that I should try to stop making a scene!) We followed the dragonflies, and ended up in a corner filled with hydrangeas, blue hydrangeas: our wedding flower. Miracles.

As we left the garden, we were seeing twos everywhere: two doves took off from in front of our feet, two birds separated from a pack winging overhead. We drove to the town center of Mendocino to have dinner, walked down to the waterfront and arrived at the exact moment the sun was slipping down behind the mighty Pacific. And we walked back up the street, a single hummingbird stopped and hovered right in front of our noses before heading on her way. A whisper of the future? Miracles.

After a lovely dinner and a cozy nap all the way home (thanks, B!) I am left with a surprising sense of gratitude, something I NEVER expected to feel on this day. I am grateful I got to carry Pedro and Archer and know them for the time that I did. I am grateful for my beloved husband, who is so full of integrity and honesty and compassion. I am grateful for every one of our fantastic family and friends who have helped us face this tragedy and give us daily the courage to keep walking through it. And I am grateful to the Universe for giving us a day of miracles today.

More soon, and love always,
Lisa

The Night Before DD-Day

DD-Day: due date day.

Tomorrow, Nov 15th, was our due date for Pedro and Archer. We've been out of the hospital for three months now. In addition to all our apprehension and grief about tomorrow, we are also blown away by how long pregnancy is. We feel like it was forever ago that we held Pedro and Archer in our hands, and yet only now are we reaching the date at which they would have been full term. Wow.

Our thought for how to spend tomorrow was to scatter the boys' ashes: to send them out into the world on the day they were due to enter it. In reality, I'm not sure we're ready. We've been trying to land on the right location; we both like the idea of a botanical garden in Mendocino that looks out over the Pacific Ocean. But it is a 3 hour drive, and it feels really far away if we want to "visit" the boys. And the finality of it: once those ashes are out there, there is no getting them back. We're not sure we're ready to commit to a place, ready to say another kind of goodbye. So we may spend the day in nature but keep they boys' ashes with us for a while longer. Forgive me if this is too much information. If it is, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Actually, maybe I will too.

I think the last time I wrote, Bruno and I were about the launch out of the family nest into a nest of our own. So much has happened since then. We camped out in our empty new house for about a week, and then our stuff arrived, tattered and torn and minus the legs to our dining room table, but let's call that water under the bridge at this point. (We received so many creative ideas about what to use in place of the missing legs that we were almost disappointed when they finally arrived) We are now unpacked and rattling around this big California house with our small NYC furniture, calling to each other from different wings of the house and smiling at each faint echoing. The tiki room is shaping up spectacularly, and was recently the host to a fire-lit, sweet and savoury pancake breakfast put on in honor of our friend Michelle's visit. Maybe some time I'll post the recipe!

Bruno and I both started working again: I have my first tutoring student, a lovely guy preparing to take the GMAT. Bruno did a phenomenal job with his job search and ultimately chose to work as the vice president for a start-up. He is really excited about the company and the people he'll be working with. I'm so proud of him: in addition to everything we are going through, this was a really scary time to be out of work, but he hung in there and found the next right thing for him. So far, we are both finding that being back at work now (three months later) feels right: it is helpful to have concrete things to focus on and prepare for.

We still attend HAND meetings, and they are still incredibly helpful. Since we started with the group, new couples have started attending, so we are now able both to learn from and take comfort from those further along the path than we, and give comfort and hope to couples just starting. It is amazing how sharing one's thoughts and feelings and hearing those of other people going through the same thing is so helpful. I guess that's why I get so much out of writing these updates. Thanks again for reading and, when you feel moved, for responding.

This is probably enough for a first post. We are beginning to find our "new normal". I still cry pretty much daily, but the feelings are much less violent. The near-constant rage, self-loathing, disgust, grief and despair of the early days has mellowed into individual moments of sadness, of profound loss, of missing my sweet boys, and of fear. Fear about whether I'll be able to achieve and hold on to another pregnancy, fear of infection in general, fear of infection specifically from the California menace: the ants that traipse across my kitchen counter and make me dream of toxoplasmosis (the previous owners had a cat that I'm sure pooped in the yard which the ants walk through...). I think one of the long lasting remnants of this tragedy for me will be an obsession with infection. Ah well. I'll find a way to make it funny and put it on the stage.

All love and more soon,
Lisa

Reentry Update (September 23rd)

(This is an e-mail I sent before I started this blog)

Hi folks,

I'm imagining this might be the last "update" in this sort of mass form: I think we're about ready to start answering your wonderful e-mails of support individually. Progress.

We are safely home from Croatia, where we had an emotional, but ultimately restful time. It was great to see Bruno's parents, although I found the language barrier particularly challenging this time. My brain just didn't have enough juice to find my Croatian. The island was beautiful as ever, and we spent our days swimming in the sea, working on the house and walking to and from town. At first, I think both of us were challenged by how lovely and lazy slow everything is there. Sort of a "how can beauty still exist in the world", combined with an "I don't like the thoughts that come in my head when I have time to think" sort of thing. But as we let that go, I think we did find our way into allowing ourselves to fall apart a bit and then be buoyed by the sea and bronzed by the sun and come back a bit more into both physical and emotional health. Certainly swimming every day and doing yoga on the porch did wonders for my feet, which I think I complained about in the last update.

We have been back now for two weeks, and are living with my parents, who moved from MD to CA while we were overseas. They have a fabulous house where we are totally underfoot and they are being very very gracious about it. Can you imagine housing two bereaved people who are basically walking emotional time bombs while you are in the middle of moving for the first time in 30-something years? Kudos to us all for still liking each other two weeks later.

Bruno has done something which I think is a miracle: he has re-started his job search. I can barely leave the house some days, and he is out there contacting people, going for meetings and interviews. And he had contacted many of these people before all of this fell out, so they ask how my pregnancy is going, and during the interview he has to explain our sad story, and then somehow help them to feel it is OK to continue: I don't know how he is doing it, and I am so proud of him I could burst (I didn't show him this part of the e-mail: he wouldn't have let me send it if he had seen it!)

I spend my days right now exercising like mad and cooking healthy food for everyone. I've regained a lot of my strength, if not my balance (physical and mental), and I've dropped 20 pounds in the 8 weeks its been since their births. 20 more to go. When not exercising, I like to throw myself into someone else's problems, like say, my parents' unpacking. Last week, I marched into their office/guestroom, opened each and every box and dumped their contents onto the floor, got rid of all the boxes and then called my parents into the room and told them to put all the stuff away. I don't know how my father didn't kill me.....

Oh, and I found us a place to live (how traditional of us: Bruno is taking care of work while I take care of the home). It is a sweet 3br/2ba house on a tree-lined street. It has a front and backyard filled with rosebushes and hydrangeas, an orange tree and a fig tree, a raised platform on which I plan to make a potted garden, and The Tiki Room, a three-quarter enclosed outdoor space with a brick fireplace, and walls lined with bamboo, hence our nickname. It is very tacky and very us. Inside, the place is lovely with a tiled entryway, an L shaped living room/dining room with hardwood floors, an entirely white, country kitchen with plenty of room and a pantry my niece Sophia is going to love to hide in (she's into hiding in dark closets just to be alone with her thoughts), a large master bedroom with a really grown up master bathroom (marble and dark wood and a fancy shower: they even hung a chandelier in there, which cracks us up), a guest room/future baby room, bathroom number two complete with 1950's pink and yellow tile, and then, the prize of the house: the third bedroom is separated from the rest of the house (built out of the garage), painted avocado green, with a beautiful round window: the sound-proof studio Bruno promised me when I agreed to move to California. I think we can find happiness here.

Thoughts like the one above are beginning to poke through, which is just great. Then other moments, each of us weep, overwhelmed by the reality of losing our children, our hopes and dreams for them. We have been attending HAND meetings (healing after neo-natal death) and they help. It is still a roller coaster, moment to moment (not even day to day yet). But we are keeping on, and grateful to each other and to our friends and families for the love and the belief that we can heal that they keep sending our way.

Love to you all, and please keep staying in touch. -Lisa and Bruno

Update from CA (August 19th)

(This is an e-mail I sent before I started this blog)

To our wonderful support team,

So it has been almost three weeks since the arrival and departure of Pedro and Archer, and we wanted to let everyone know how we are doing. First, thank you all for the messages of condolence and love and support. I can't tell you how it helps us to hear from our friends and family, to know you are thinking of us and the boys, to hear the stories you have personally or have collected from your support teams of people who lost their first children and went on to have other successful pregnancies, to have and nurture and love children they might otherwise never have met. Thank you.

And many of you have asked if there is anything you can do for us. At first, we couldn't conceive of an answer to this question, but lately we have realized that there is something we need: please continue to be in touch with us. We may not be able to pick up the phone, or write back in any kind of timely or coherent fashion, but logging on and finding messages, looking at the cellphones and seeing texts and hearing voicemails, all help us to feel like we haven't fallen out of the world, inspire us to slowly rejoin the flow, to find the way to incorporate our new grief into our old life and look into the future. So when you think of it, send a quick note or text, or leave a voicemail. And know you are helping immensely.

OK, I promised to let you know how we are. I've been sitting here staring at the blinking cursor for a while now trying to figure out how to continue from here. Which is actually a pretty good description of how we are doing. It changes by the hour. We packed up our beautiful, hopeful hospital room on the Fri after their birth, left Portland on Sat (after picking up the boys' cremains: we had them cremated together, and we'll scatter their ashes over the coast somewhere) and took two days to drive down to my brother's house. We've cried a lot, talked a lot, run over every detail of those three and a half weeks and especially those last 72 hours, sorting through it, memorizing it, pressing it into our consciousness. Looking for blame, realizing there is noone and nothing to blame, finally finally even ceasing to blame ourselves. We miss the boys profoundly: we see them in every twinning we see. In two tall pines on a hike, in a pair of hummingbirds who zip through Eric's backyard. We take walks and talk to them, tell them we love them and are thinking of them.

Physically, we are mostly recovered: I've been to the Dr. for my two week check-up and the infection is gone and I've been cleared for all activities. I am having trouble with my heels, arches and ankles (from being in bed for nearly a month partnered with the induction medicine, the antibiotic course, and the epidural), but Bruno takes me for walks every morning and yesterday we even went to the gym, so bit by bit I'm recovering my mobility and balance. Won't even talk about the extra 30 pounds I'm sporting. And we are both managing to sleep, although we dream incessantly: first nightmares reliving the water breaking and the birth, now less literal dreams about death, betrayal, visitors. We're writing them all down.

Emotionally, this is gonna take a while, but we are taking baby step after baby step. We have our first group grief meeting tomorrow (HAND: Healing After Neo-Natal Death). And living with Eric and Dani and their three wonderful children has been a blessing. The kids keep us honest and keep us loving and even laughing; they are such glorious clowns, how could we not. As we add each new element (seeing a friend, cooking a meal, looking at a place to live, braving the Trader Joe's where we run into a gizillion pregnant women, and get asked when we are due) we feel any range of things from sorrow to anger to pain, and then we keep going. And so it goes.

We are off to Croatia on Fri to see Bruno's parents, and will be back on Sept 4th, when we'll move in with my parents for a bit. We'll have e-mail access the whole time, so if you find a moment, stay in touch. We love you all and are so grateful for all your support and help. -Lisa and Bruno

The Saddest Update (July 30th)

Loved ones,

It is with tremendous grief that we let you know that Pedro Emmanuel was delivered this morning at 4:46am, stillborn, shortly followed by Archer at 4:48am. Archer lived with us for two wonderful hours. We talked to them both, sang to them, felt Archer grip our hands. Bruno read them a poem from his childhood, sent just the day before by a friend. We bathed them and put clothes on them and wrapped them in their baby blankets (Pedro looks wonderful in blue, and yellow is definitely Archer's color). They looked very individual: Pedro had a small sweet mouth, with his tongue sticking out at us; Archer had my mother's lips. Both had perfect little button noses and enormous feet. We don't know where those came from. And they both had dark heads of hair. They were just beautiful.

We feel completely graced to have spent six months knowing these wonderful little souls. We are completely in love, and they will be with us always: our first children.

We can't thank all of you enough for all your energy and messages over the last three and a half weeks. You kept us buoyed in positiveness and hope, and you give us the strength to weather this tragedy: we will be grieving hard for a long time, but we also know that our boys wouldn't want us to let this destroy us, or scare us away from having a family or enjoying the beautiful families of others.

In the end, all decisions were made for us: yesterday morning my blood culture revealed that my white blood cell count had doubled since I arrived at the hospital, a definitive sign of infection, mandating that we induce labor and deliver both boys. The infection is what caused my contractions and my water breaking; there was no longer hope of keeping either boy in until viability; to try to do so would yielded the same result and would have put me at risk of becoming septic. As devastating as this all has been, there was a small comfort in understanding what was happening and knowing that we had no other path of action to take. My labor started on it's own at 6am Tuesday, July 29th, we added inducing medication to move the process along at 2:30pm, I finally opted for an epidural at 4:30pm, and it was a mind/body/soul numbing 12 more hours before I was finally delivered at 4:46am, Wednesday, July 30th.

We love you all. -Lisa and Bruno

Week 3 Overnight Update from hospital (July 28th)

Dear lovely friends and family,

We wanted to update you on our status. After the magnesium treatment, my contractions were still coming pretty strong and the doctor decided to put me on another drug called indocin. These two drugs together did slow the contractions down but in the middle of the night i woke up to a contraction and then felt Pedro's water break. this morning we discovered he was back in his original position, this time with his hand not his foot sticking out (new nickname Manuel?)

This puts us in a whole different picture. They expect me to deliver Pedro in the next 3 days. There is a 10% chance that this won't happen and I could hold on longer. Then there is the question of what my body does with Archer whose membrane is still intact. It could hold on after pedro's delivery or it could go on and deliver him as well. Again, they are giving us a 10% chance that we could hold on to Archer through viability. We are struggling to get on top of our new situation and prepare ourselves to whatever is to come. We appreciate the huge outpouring of love that you have given us through this whole process and we know that you will continue keeping us in your thoughts.

We will definitely keep you appraised of whatever happens next.

Love,

Lisa, Bruno, Pedro, Archer, plus Cedric and Ursula

Week 3 Update from hospital (July 27th)

Dear lovely friends and family,

Well, as of this afternoon we had the same boring wonderful news to report. Saturday we turned 24 weeks and today marks 3 weeks of bed rest.

This afternoon, however, I started feeling painful contractions that become more and more frequent. After a very exciting projectile vomiting episode the doctor came and decided that these contractions must be stopped (duh!). And we all decided that magnesium was the right course of action. Magnesium goes through an IV drip so I now have a very impressive looking machine by my bed-side. (By the way don't worry, I'm lying quietly dictating to Bruno). They started with a blitz of the medicine to get it to the right level in my bloodstream. This was rumored to induce flu-like symptoms but truly it isn't too bad (certainly not as bad a vomit inducing pains of the contractions.) It is sort of a combination of a hot-flash and a heavy falling asleep interrupted by the gentle beeps of the machine letting me know that my oxygen level is getting too low. We finished the blitz stage and the contractions have started getting a little less intense. The hope is that through the night they'll grow further apart and that Ursula will settle down. The good news is that so far Cedric is holding strong and I haven't dilated any further.

IT IS VERY POSSIBLE that this is just a minor setback and that we will quickly become blissfully boring again. If everybody could imagine, wish, hope, pray, believe that for us, that would be fabulous.

Thanks again for all your energy, we're looking forward to sending out a happier update soon.

With all the love in the world,

Lisa, Bruno, Pedro, Archer plus Cedric and Ursula

Week 2 Update from Hospital (July 20th)

Greetings from hospital room 305 in Portland!

We are proud to announce that we have survived two weeks of strict hospital bed rest! The doctors (GD Dr. and Dr. Cuddly) have said i am critical but stable, meaning my cervix is still open so gravity is not currently my friend and i am at much greater risk for infection, but i am not having increased contractions or further dilation, and my membranes are still intact, both of which are good things. Dr. C remains cautiously optimistic and GD Dr. says, "well, you've defied the odds so far..." Again, we are going with Dr. C!

We have three more weeks till we make it to viability (for those of you keeping score at home, Sat is our turn day, so today, Sun July 20th, we are 23 weeks and 1 day). that is the first goal, and we plan to make it way beyond that. And, along those lines, we cant thank you all enough for all the messages of concern, prayers, well wishes, positive inspiration, jokes, stories from your daily life, pictures, stories of other bed rest successes, cards, and good vibes. You guys are keeping these babies healthy just as much as us with all your support. Please know how grateful Bruno and I are from the bottom of our beings.

A bunch of you have asked me what exactly "strict bed rest" means. Let me explain: it means lying flat in bed all the time, with the exception of my bedside commode privileges, for which i may sit up, briefly. I dream of the day i can pee behind a closed door again! How do I eat?, you may ask: lying down! First two culinary lessons for surviving bed rest: 1) stop ordering soup from the hospital menu (disastrous!) and 2) a long bendy straw is your best friend! Lesson three involves strategically placed towels.

"But surely you can sit up to read, or prop yourself up on pillows to watch TV, and how are you writing this now?", I hear you cry! Nope, no sitting, no propping, and here is the visual of me right now: I'm lying on my right side, pillows supporting my head, arm and gigantor belly. The computer is slid into me on an ingenious TV tray bruno purchased from bed bath and beyond, and I'm pecking stuff out with my left hand until my arm runs out of blood, at which point i roll onto my back, shake out my arm and dream of voice activated software. (we are currently investigating those possibilities)

Now let me describe our room: Bruno is nesting, and has so far added to our room (birth suite #5): a drain rack (filled with various dishes borrowed from the hospital plus a wine glass and coffee mug for Bruno; try the imagine my coffee snob of a husband's dismay at the fact that i now sip my morning coffee through a straw out of a plastic hospital cup with a lid!), a coffee grinder, a coffee maker, a toaster, two TV trays (one to hold his laptop, one to hold mine), a hand held blender stick (hence the flax smoothies), a small printer (i'm not kidding, folks) a pantry full of health food, ranging from omega three rich walnuts (omega three's build baby brains!) to the dreaded flax seed and wheat germ to a bar of dark chocolate i know he's got stashed in there somewhere. For decoration, we've been hanging all the cards and poems you glorious people are sending (mounted of course on colorful paper: thanks mom!), fruit basket on top of the TV cabinet, flowers in the windows, balloons on the push pin board, obama '08 bumper sticker taped to the dry wipe board where we record our daily progress (23 and 1/7; whoo!) and one of the last pictures of me upright (which we titled "Belly on ice" ) hanging by the bed. I've attached the picture for your amusement.

Ok, enough for now. we love you all dearly and appreciate your continued good vibes, support and contact. See ya next week!

love, lisa bruno, pedro and archer, + cedric and ursula
ps: my sister-in-law suggested i name my cervix and uterus and talk to them, sort of cheer them on. So it's Cedric the cervix and Ursula Uterus.

belly-on-snow.jpg 42K View Download

Week 1 update from hospital (July 13th)

Dear all you lovely thought senders,

First things first, an update: I've just made it through my first week in the hospital and things have not gotten any worse than when arrived here, in fact, they are a little bit better. After two days upside down and after Pedro moved his foot, the doctors took me out of Trendelenburg position and decided the risk of bladder or kidney infection was greater than the risk of my rupturing my membranes, and they took me off the catheter. Never knew that peeing sitting up could make me so happy!

So, where we are now is that the cervix is still open and the membrane is still in the cervix, but it doesn't seem to be getting any worse than that. If you talk to my pessimistic doctor - we'll call him Dr GD (gloom and doom) - I'm still extremely high risk and can't count on making it past tomorrow. If you talk to my optimist doctor - we'll call him Dr Cuddly - it hasn't gotten worse in a week, so there's a good chance we can hang out just like this until these babies become deliverable. I'm going with Dr Cuddly's projection.

Business aside, thank you each and every one for your fabulous good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, poems, jokes, ecards, stories and tales of your lives in the outside world. They are the fuel my soul is running on, so feel free to write anytime you feel so moved.

I want to share one comment that had me had me laughing so hard my belly monitor went beserk: "Tell Pedro and Archer, 'You boys settle down or I'll turn this uterus right around!"

Bruno has decided that the one thing he can control here is my nutrition and he's created an Excel spreadsheet to track various foods across my pregnancy nutrition needs. I swear he'll be a registered dietitian before this is done. Each day, the list of foods grows longer and the spreadsheet more complicated. I find all this charming, except when being force-fed flax seed smoothies and arugula.

I'll save telling you more for future updates, but highlights will include a description of our hospital room, which is larger than an NYC studio apt, and a recounting of my visit from a Chabad of Oregon rabbi - I know, I know. an oxymoron.

Let me sign off by sharing a poem that was sent to me, but I never fully understood it until now.

Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

And surest in the gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash that little bird
That keeps so many warm

I have heard it in the strangest land
And on the chillest sea
Yet never, in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

My deepest love and gratitude to everyone, Lisa
p.s. A lot of people asked why Archer is nicknamed Archer. Every time we see him on ultrasound he is arching his back and constantly moving and squirming around. I think he'll be a yoga instructor. Bruno disagrees.

First E-mail From Hospital (July 9th)

Hi Everyone,

I am currently in a hospital in Portland, Oregon on strict bed rest. The babies are fine but my cervix opened when Bruno and I were 3 days from reaching San Francisco. By the grace of God we recognized the signs of pre-term labor and we went to the hospital in a small town of Seaside, Oregon. There they evaluated us and sent me by ambulance to the best Perinatal unit in Oregon. They did an ultrasound and found that my cervix was dilated 1cm but was still long and I wasn't having contractions - both of which are good. But, one of the twins had placed his foot into the cervix - which is bad. They put me on strict hospital bed rest, not even getting up to use the bathroom and put me in a bed tilted backwards to take the pressure off the cervix and try to convince the boy to take his foot out of there (by the way, to keep ourselves in good humor and in honor of the twin with the rogue foot we nicknamed him "PEDro RETRACTovich"). I spent the night trying to sleep and mentally imaging him changing his position. The ultrasound in the morning showed that Pedro had in fact moved his foot - he RetractovichED! The goal now is to get his water sack to move out of the cervix so I remain lying with all the blood rushing towards my head. The general thought is that I will be in Portland hospital on bed rest until I deliver these babies and we're trying to keep them in me as long as possible.

There are some truly scary possibilities for how this could end but I remain utterly hopeful. Babies are viable for survival at 26 weeks and I'm currently at 21.5. So I would love and deeply appreciate all positive thoughts, prayers, and good energy for a competent cervix and as long of a term of gestation for these boys as possible. I miss you and thank you for all your positive energy and I'd love to hear what's happening in your worlds.

Love,

Lisa (and Bruno and Pedro and Archer)