Monday - Reflections

The nanny helped us wash clothes for the bambini and all kinds of other chores while Barbara attempted to to perform business email triage.

We have everything we need for most of the day to day events, now we are trying to catch up with our lives between feedings.

The bambini are obviously experiencing the expansion of their digestive system as they drink a lot more and have pronounced hiccups followed by facial expressions that you or i would have if we swallowed a chicken whole.

It takes me about 30 Min's after a feeding to get them sleeping. If things go well, they are staggered so that you can focus on one while the other is sleeping. This had been working well for me so far, but today Barbara got into a synchronized feeding frenzy.

When I got home from the store, she had both Bambini in car seats, bottles in both hands and a look on her face that said "I need another pair of hands" I have a plan for this eventuality. I believe you can buy "doggy downers" at the pet store that have a very sedative effect on children. (just my dark humor in case family members are concerned)

I did however find what I thought was the perfect "push present" at the store today. Barbara has had sciatic nerve pain since the back contractions of labor. I occasionally get lower back pain when I exert myself to much so I thought a back massager would a good idea.

I found one that is like a chair, but not a full chair. I think it can be put on the sofa or a platform. Anyway It doesn't matter because it never made it past the unwrapping stage, let alone reading the manual.

Furniture decisions in this house are a complex mix of random mood, fen shui color co-ordination and about 25 other mysterious factors that can neither be codified or understood by any man. Moving furniture is a tortuous process that consists of me slowly trying every conceivable position and then finally settling on the first choice with much face scrunching and labored breathing in between.

This process is about as much fun as a root canal and if i make a suggestion, the response is equivalent to what I would expect if I had suggested we set fire to kittens after dinner. Judging by the time I have spent in several of my motorcycle buddies man caves over the years as a result of similar offenses they have committed, this is not a unique phenomena! To add to the disaster, she announces that she knows what she wants for a push present!!

I can only assume this is one of those situations where us men are supposed to guess what you women want (even though you already know, but refuse to tell us) and thus run all over the map failing pathetically for a suitable period of time before you do tell us. This particular type of torture is akin to pulling the legs out of a spider for us.

Needless to say, I was not happy, especially since i had to unpack the massage chair in the parking lot in the rain because the box would not fit in the car. I had to collapse all the packing materials in case it did work and we needed to return it.

So the good news is I can return the chair (after I have had a few good massages) and the bad news is i still have no idea exactly what I am supposed to buy. While this new development in our communication is a change from nine months of "pregnancy brain" it is certainly not what I hoped for.


I probably shouldn't complain. This process has been very demanding on Barbara's body, let alone the huge hormonal changes and physical trauma she has endured. It all began with a process called IVF - Invitro Fertilization. We elected to use this technology after many months of trying because it was becoming no fun trying.

Getting pregnant is a process that can become complicated with disappointment and expectation very easily. After years of taking every precaution not to become pregnant, the assumption is that as soon as you stop, you will succeed in becoming pregnant. This is not necessarily so.

We did quite a bit of healing work to help with the emotions that come up for Barbara during this difficult time. More than once Barbara said she was convinced her body was not going to co-operate. She worked through a meditation course and many healings to release all these pictures of impossibility and open to the possibility that it could happen.

After a while, little by little, the process became a little less serious and intense. After a year, she picked a date to begin the IVF process so that she would not be traveling or stressed with work.

It begins by stimulating the generation of egg follicles followed by the extraction of eggs laproscopically. These eggs can be frozen and used at any time, but for the first attempt, you evaluate which ones are most likely to accept fertilization.

We had then had to decide how many to implant. If you only use one egg, the probability of failure is higher. If you use two or three, you risk a multiple pregnancy. We elected to use three to ensure we got at least one pregnancy, and if we got three, we would have to consider a reduction so as not to risk Barbara's health.

The second part of the IVF procedure is to fertilize the eggs and implant them. To help this succeed, the hormone level is supplemented by injection. This meant that every day for a couple of months, before and after the implant, I had to inject her (in the butt) with hormones.

Luckily I don't have a big problem with this, but for Barbara, injections are filled with terror. Just getting blood drawn is difficult from her, and the few times I have been present when she had it done, I realized how tough it was for her. All sense of fun goes out of the window when a needle is pulled out.

Despite this, she stepped up to the challenge of daily injections. I made it as fun as I could and after many weeks, the associated terror began to subside a little, even if the discomfort did not. After the fertilization, there were a few weeks where we just had to wait and see.

On a trip in Peru I noticed a small sweater in a street vendors store. It was Bambino size. I had been looking for one for Barbara, but this just caught my attention.

I remembered that she had bought a passport holder for me when my US Citizenship had fallen between the cracks of some bureaucrat's desk for years. I remembered how certain she was that it was going to resolve itself and I would get a passport to fill that holder. She let me know a couple of times that she had something for when I got my passport, and the certainly she expressed through that simple act was enormous.

I decided in that small village in Peru, that I would return the favor. I bought that sweater thinking we would end up with one baby, and I held it until the day the Doctor confirmed she was pregnant. At first we didn't know it was twins.

When I pulled it out, her eyes filled with tears and we had a very quite moment that celebrated the culmination of the long and difficult journey to pregnancy.

Today, she pulled out that sweater. I have no idea how she kept track of it through all the chaos of the move and so forth, but she held it up as proud as any mother who has conquered her fears and endured what must be endured to realize this dream.