Ponderings About The Girls

I often dream about the girls. Most of the time I am telling someone their story, or sometimes I am frantic because I know that I have a baby laying somewhere in the house and I have forgotten to feed it for hours and hours. Last night they were both there, but like it was when Rhea was born her sister had already passed away so I was panicking because no one had fed Rhea for the whole day. She was still alive. Caleb woke me up shortly after that dream... to feed him. Sometimes, like another dream I had last night I dream about others who have twins or triplets and I envy them.

But then, I wake up. And the emotions that are displayed in my dreams are no longer apparent. Except over the 4th of July weekend. The Sunday before the holiday there was a story shared in Relief Society about a little girl who had beat the odds in the NICU and even though the doctors told her parents she would have severe brain damage. She survived and had no signs of her early struggles. Of course not long after that someone told me another story very similar to this one. And I began to wonder . . . What if we would have held out just a little bit longer for Rhea?

I finally talked to Leif about it. He is always a light for me in dark times. He reminded me of the facts about Rheas health. She was showing signs of seizures. Her kidneys had failed. She would not have made it. And that is what the Lord told us. He reminded me that we got our answer. We knew what we had to do then. We should never question an answer from the Lord. Though we might not ever really like the answer, we must accept it to find true peace!

September 21, 2006: In the hospital...in Seattle

September 21, 2006
good morning everyone! i appologize now for the lack on caps in this letter. i'm wrting one handed on my back. this can't be too long cuz the comps giving me a headache. but the news is dramatic but true.
leif and i are at a hospital in seattle washington. its called the evergreen hospital in kirkland for those who care. we spent tha last two weeks in utah and are excited to congratulate leif on becoming a licensed real estate agent! while in utah my stomache grew an enormous amount. and we made a trip to the ER cuz i was contracting. but i suffered thru that until tuesday when we arrived in SG and met with our perinatologist. he immidiately identified the problem through the ultrasound. our baby girls are struggling with a level two case of twin to twin syndrome. that is where since the girls share a placenta unfortunatly they have also ended up shareing blood vessels within that placenta. because of this, one baby receives the majority of the blood and nutrients and produces all of the amniotic fluid in her sac and the other baby doesnt get hardly anything and produces no fluid as a result. Soo, this was and is an emergancy. as of yesterday the babies were still hangin in there. the newest procedure is to destroy the blood vessels that the babies are sharing through a lazor surgery. but only five clinics in th US do the procedure. So we found out at 3:00 tuesday and we were on a flight to seattle by 9:00pm. The flight was a nightmare because my abdomen was so full of fluid. we landed and got to the hotel by midnight. i went potty and found that i had lost my mucus plug. not good at all!! called the dr. he said to rest and come in the morning. by 6:30 in the morning i was leaking fluid. after lots of exams and looking at the babies. we all determined that the surgery was not an option at the moment. the baby had produced up to 16 cm of fluid which is about double it needs and my membranes were going to burst in the next six hours if they hadn't already. we couldn't tell because it could have just been a tiny hole leeking fluid. anyway, they immidiately began an amniotic fluid reduction through a tiny needle. they took out three liters and could have taken more.but naturally due to the utero irritation i was contracting steadily. it took several hours of fabulous doctoring and nursing and meds, but we have now calmed everything down and as far as we can tell i'm not leeking anything as of this morning. this is a very good thing. it means that the uterous may have healed from ant tiny ruptures and we'll see what we can do to help the babies later today. i'm on absolute bed rest. no sitting up and of course no standing. we have been blessed. this is a very hard thing. but the people here are amazing!!!!!! our nurse yesterday went home and called her friend whos a member of the church and her friend called us immidiately to tell us that she had already put our names on the temple prayer roll and wanted to come and help us as soon as we let her. we truly stand all amazed! we have a long journey ahead. but we are blessed. jakob is with grandma and grandpa. we miss him terribly but thank mark and faylynn for their love. i have to go. if you want get in touch email us or email and ask for our number and we'll tell you where we are. love you all!

Lena and Leif