Pumpkin time

This is about how I've been feeling lately.  Just exhausted, drained (or draining, as the case may be), a bit googly-eyed, and hoping that all three of the boys will be able to make it through one night without one of them waking from a bad dream that involves being eaten by some animal - wild or domestic - sometime soon.  It's been a while since that's happened.

Then I remembered that trick-or-treating is tomorrow night, and that I haven't carved our pumpkins yet.  The thought of doing that tonight made me feel, well...

I mean, don't get me wrong.  I love carving a pumpkin.  I love thinking about a design and carrying it out.  I love putting the candle in and watching it glow in a darkened room and then outside at night. I don't even mind gutting a pumpkin, because then I can roast the yummy seeds and munch on them over the next day or two. Anyone who knows me can attest to this.

But it's the combination of multiple pumpkins and multiple little ones that I don't like.  Because we all know what happens when we sit down with three little kids to carve pumpkins.  They start out excited and interested, and then you give them a spoon and ask them to start scraping out the insides and soon they're throwing pumpkin guts everywhere and then they're off and playing with something else (and covering it with pumpkin guts) because that got boring really fast.  And while they love to tell you what face to make on theirs and to watch it glow once it's done, we all know who's doing all the work.  We are.

And I'm pooped.

So riddle me this:  

Who has two thumbs, speaks limited French, and totally cheated on the pumpkins this year?

This moi!

A few years ago, I'd have thought this was sacrilege.  

Who doesn't take the time to actually carve their pumpkins? 

What'd that take, like two minutes?
Come on, where is the challenge in that?  Where's the skill?

This year, I'd like to find the person - probably a mom - who invented these
and give her a big hug.

Octsnowber

Fun times today in an unexpected October snowfall.

To Honor Fiona and Brigid

Our local newspaper published an article yesterday about TTTS and an event that we have coming up to raise funds for the TTTS Foundation.  It was online and also had a huge section devoted to it in the paper copy with a large photo of the family, and the headline...  Oh, the headline: 

"To Honor Fiona and Brigid"

It was bittersweet.  The editor emailed me to ask if it was okay with me to use their names like that.

I started sobbing.

Um...yes.  That, for me, is the point, really.  Thank you so very much for getting it.

Their names don't feel real to me.  They're sort of abstract, like they're not my children.  But to see them in print like that was so amazing.

I love the photo of our family because it shows that we're all still having fun together.

You can read the article here.  Please feel free to share it with others.  The goal is to make as many people aware of the cause and treatment of  TTTS as possible.  Sometimes, they might have to make their doctors aware.  I know when I asked my OBs specifically about TTTS - because I'd read about it online as soon as I learned we were having monochorionic twins (twins who shared a placenta) - and if I might be able to be seen by a perinatologist earlier for monitoring, they pooh-poohed my concerns.  Both of them (I switched after the first one dismissed my request) felt it was too rare to warrant "extraneous" ultrasounds.  I wouldn't need one before the usual 20 weeks, they said.  I even called the perinatologist to ask if I might be able to come in on my own, without an OB's referral.  They said no.

And yet, when we finally did get that ultrasound, at 19 weeks and 5 days, it was much too late.  The disease had progressed significantly and was in the late stages.

In hindsight, I wish I'd demanded it.  What would it have cost them to have me checked out early?  A form?  Probably not even that.  A computer click or two?  Women who are having multiples who share a placenta need not to feel like they are being pushy or silly for being concerned about this very real threat to their babies.  The doctors and midwives at my OBs' offices are not losing any sleep over dismissing my concerns right now.  They remain completely unfazed by it.

Yet here we are with two dead babies.

I guess this is the anger stage of my grief.  I'm not angry at God.  I'm not wondering why he did this to me or why did this have to happen to me.  I'm angry, though, that my physicians were ignorant, and that, even when I was the one who did the research and brought this disease to their attention at appointments asking to be monitored for it, they did not think it was important.  That is terribly frustrating.  And while I don't know that it would have made a difference in our outcome, it would at least have meant that everything that could have been done to stop it was done.

So now all I can do is warn others.  Be concerned.  Be pushy.  Demand.  No one loves your unborn babies like you do, and you are the only advocate they have.

New Post

I wonder when I'll feel like writing a blog post again.

I'm writing this one now, but not because I feel like it. I come on here to update and talk about some fun things we've been doing and then I get caught up in reading the previous posts.  Then I start crying.  I read those posts and think, "How did I write that?  How did we live that?  How did I say we're doing okay when we're not doing okay?"  I mean, I guess we're okay inasmuch as we're not curled up in the fetal position sucking our thumbs somewhere, but there was some numbness to those posts.  Now, the numbness has worn off and we're aching.  A dull ache that we know isn't going to go away for a long time.  I feel like I can't quite move on from the heaviness of those posts to things like Jack's first day of preschool or our family's new puppy.  Or that the other upsetting things that have happened in our lives could even compare to losing Brigid.  Some of them come close, but I don't want to write about those either. Of course, it's having these three little boys to take care of and those other things going on in our lives that help us to keep going.  But sometimes they don't let us have the time to grieve.

So for those of you who have come here and seen no changes and thought that maybe I've gone private with the new posts, I haven't.  I just haven't had it in me.   Not for lack of material, but for lack of emotional fortitude, I think.  But I think maybe changing the look of things and writing a few posts with happy themes will not make me so sad to log on here.  They can put some space between those painful ones down there and the fun times that lie ahead for our family.

Maybe.

So, in addition to Jack's starting preschool (again)

and our new goldendoodle puppy, Blarney,

we have been having some good times together as a family over the last few months.  Here's proof:

This free scrapbooking design personalized with Smilebox