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