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)