Valentines

Happy Valentine’s Day!

As I write this, I have a dessert treat in the oven for this evening and E and L are sharing a Valentine’s Day tea in London. We are happy that they have a chance to spend Valentine’s Day together in this year of being separated by an ocean most of the time.

It is also the birthday of one of my cousins. His mom, one of my dad’s sisters, always wanted a son born on Valentine’s Day and she got her wish.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t have another child because she was Rh negative and her son was Rh positive. Because she was now sensitized to Rh factors, her antibodies would have attacked the blood of another Rh positive child. If the baby survived, it would have needed an immediate total blood transfusion. Most couples in those circumstances chose not to risk a second pregnancy.

Like my aunt, I am Rh negative, but I was fortunate to be pregnant after the development of RhoGAM. I had one shot during pregnancy and a second after I gave birth to E, who is Rh positive, so that I would not develop antibodies to Rh factors. This enabled me to later have daughter T without risk to her blood.

Valentine’s Day is another day to be thankful for family and for good medical care.

There Will be Nothing Funny About This Whatsoever, Unfortunately

I was not aware of TTTS but want to help build awareness by sharing this post from Meg of Fisticuffs and Shenanigans.

Fisticuffs and Shenanigans

This post is a clear departure from my usual nonsense, but it’s important to me for reasons that will be terribly clear.  My story ends happily.  It ends with the last 12 years of laughter and dirty, loud chaos that only boys can bring, but I came horribly close to an outcome too terrible to consider.

After finding out that I was carrying identical twins in my 18th week, it wasn’t long after, at 22 weeks, during a routine ultrasound, that a significant problem was discovered. Because, most of the time, identical twins share a placenta, a large number of problems can arise, and in the case of my sons, they were not sharing it equally, and had an “Asymetric Placental Share” or “Discordant Growth”. They were 18 days apart in size, and we were told there was nothing to do, but go home and wait two weeks for another…

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