Welcoming Fall

Michaelmas: Beware the Blackberry Bushes

I love when the seasons change.  It is hard to ignore the beauty of nature as she exchanges her flowery, green gown for one of cascading yellows, oranges, and reds; a palate that warms your soul, which is convenient since you can no longer rely on feeling warmth from the sun.  You have to find it huddled around a bonfire,  in a mug of hot apple cider, or in that worn out, oh so comfortable sweater that you've been waiting to resurface.

The pre-frost harvest of the co-op garden we share with our next door neighbors has brought in the last of the tomatoes and peppers, perfect for chili.

We took the boys to the big wooden playground where they discovered their new favorite thing: fallen leaves.  They gathered and held on to every leaf we came across, and you'd be surprised at how many they could fit in their little hands.  I cannot wait until there are enough leaves to rake up into a pile fit for playing. 

With our autumn spirits in full swing, we celebrated Michaelmas on September 29th.  Michaelmas is one of the Quarter Days.   These are the four days of the year, roughly three months apart, which coincide with religious holidays AND the two equinoxes and two solstices. You can celebrate Michaelmas on quite a wide spectrum, focusing on archangels or dragons or both.  Michaelmas is the Feast of Saint Michael, the archangel who is credited with casting Satan out of heaven (and right into a blackberry bush).  Along with this story, running along parallel themes of courage and bravery, is the tale of Saint George who defeated the dragon of Silene.  Both of these narratives fit neatly into the good versus evil archetypes, but they also encourage self refection of the "evils" in our own lives, internal and external.  Now, as days grow shorter, colder, and darker, is an ideal time to acknowledge and dispel these forces so that we may fill our homes with warmth and light. 

Our celebration was simple and fine tuned to be enjoyable for our boys.  (Although I stockpiled some ideas for when they are a little older and better able to wield swords.)  Since the boys are still working on scribbling, I decided that I would do the Michaelmas crafting this year.  After some late night brainstorming, we decided to make a simple felt tree wall hanging with colorful leaves for the boys to collect and rearrange.

I had some large pieces of felt left over from making their stump playhouse and using the grout lines of our kitchen floor as a guide, cut a large piece of light brown felt.  I folded over the top edge and hot glued a seam, leaving enough room for a dowel rod.  I cut out a dark brown tree, no pattern, just kind of went for it, and hot glued that onto the large piece of felt.  I sketched some leaf patterns and assigned my husband the task of leaf production while I made the bird and owl.  After tying a ribbon onto either side of the dowel rod, we planted our tree on the wall in the boys' corner of the living room.

Our hybrid tree was a big hit!

I also made a Michaelmas pie.  I found the recipe here.  The ingredients come from combining the apple harvest with the tradition of not eating blackberries after Michaelmas because the Devil fell/spit/cursed/and did who knows what else to them after Saint Michael gave him the boot. I used Honeycrisp apples because A. I had some left over from our visit to Soergel Orchards because B. If they are in season, they are the only kind of apples I buy.  It was a simple recipe that produced a simply delicious pie, the sweetness of the fruit was the perfect complement to the brown spices which filled our home with the smell of fall.  Next time - after having a conversation with my pie baking expert mother which probably should have taken place BEFORE I made the pie - I am going to add a little more flour to the filling to thicken it a bit and brush some milk on the top crust to give it a golden brown color.

Now that we have properly welcomed the season, there is a lot of autumn knitting, crafting, and baking to be done before nature changes her dress once again, bringing a fresh set of ingredients, aromas, and traditions.

Our Battlehymn - Surviving TTTS

Over a year later, and I still have trouble thinking about it for too long.  Like if I relive too much, the ending will change.  I think of the other babies and mothers fighting through this devastating disease, and I go numb.  But what can I do? In the grand scheme of things, relatively little.  But I can share our story in the hopes that it reaches someone who needs it. 

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This story has a happy ending.  I say this now because it gets a little dodgy in the middle, and if you are anything like me, someone who has only seen the ending of West Side Story once out of one hundred viewings, you avoid the tragic. 

This is the birth story of the our identical twin boys and the disease that plagued us along the way, Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome.   At six weeks, we were thrilled to find out through an emergency ultra sound and the technician’s use of the word “they” that we were having twins.   At sixteen weeks, we received the devastating news that we suffered from Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome. 

If you don’t know what TTTS is, you are in the majority.  Twin to Twin Transfusion can happen when identical twins share the same placenta.  Eighty-five percent of the time, the single placenta acts like two separate placentas, keeping the blood flow and nutrients of each baby separate from the other.  In the other fifteen percent, connections happen within the placenta that result in the unequal sharing of blood and nutrients between the twins.  One twin becomes the donor and the other becomes the recipient; both in a life threatening position.  If left untreated, the chance of survival for both babies is nearly zero percent.  

Picture courtesy of http://www.tttsfoundation.org

This was all being explained to me as I sat alone and panicking in the ultrasound room after being diagnosed with this terrifying disease.  There are several options at this point.  Do nothing, abort one of the babies, amniocentesis to remove excess fluid around the recipient baby, and finally a laser surgery to seal off the connections in the placenta, helping it to function more properly.   The last option came with a seventy-five percent survival rate for both babies, so I immediately scheduled my surgery.  I left the hospital and called my husband, no answer; I called my mother, my middle sister, my little sister, nobody answered.  I finally reached my best friend.  She could barely understand what I was saying in my hysteria.  When my husband came home I sat wrapped in his arms with my hand on my belly, crying, weeping, sobbing and praying that I would get to see my babies alive. 

But then, over the course of a sleepless night, I realized that I could not continue carrying on like an emotional wreck. This was going to be an extremely difficult road, and the last thing the babies needed was an unstable mother.  I wanted them to be able to draw strength from me, and since treating this disease was entirely out of my hands, I felt like this was the one thing I could do for them.  I needed to do this; I needed to at least try. So we charged ahead. 

In the longer version of this story I would explain the details of my surgery, which happened around Mother's Day, that our case had the most placenta connections our doctor had ever seen.  I would have you imagine our excitement in finding out that it had worked and our devastation in finding out that it had come back a few weeks later.  I would explain the details of my second surgery, which fell a couple of days before Father's Day, comparing the anxieties between not knowing and knowing what to expect this second time around.  I would express our cautious  acknowledgement that the second surgery was successful.  (Although if you really want to know you can read about it here.)

                  I will summarize by saying this: every day was potentially the last day I had with the little ones I was trying to keep safe.  Forget living day-to-day, I was living hour- to-hour.  I had to dig deep to try to balance this anxiety with my resolve to remain strong.  But at times, it was all just too much.  Luckily, I had a support system that could keep a house up in a tornado.

            My hypersensitivity compelled me to make an impromptu hospital trip when I felt like something wasn’t quite right.  I was dilated one centimeter and they kept me for observation.  This was at 27 weeks, that is 13 weeks too early for those keeping track at home.  The next morning my water broke and I was told I would be taking up residence in the hospital until the babies arrived, which everyone hoped would not be for another couple of weeks. After one week of hospital food and blood pressure readings every six hours, on August first, which happens to be our two-year wedding anniversary, the boys decided it was time.  

            Sawyer and Greyson were delivered by cesarean section at 2:38 and 2:39 in the afternoon, weighing in at 3 pounds 1 ounce and 3 pounds 4 ounces.  They were tiny, but perfect.  We gave them each a kiss before they were taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a place that would become a second home for us for the following two months, but that is a story for a different day. 

            The day that we brought them home, oxygen tank, heart monitor, and all, our TTTS saga was finally coming to an end and the real work of raising twins began.  All of the work, all of the heartache, all of the anxiety, all of the hope had brought our two little ones into this world and home safely, and I would do it all over again – every single time.  

            This story has a bit of a moral; maybe it is more of a message.  This is a rare disease, and we were lucky to be at a a hospital with a leading expert in the treatment of Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome.  Other women and babies are not so fortunate.  The way to fight this killer is to catch it early and monitor it closely.  After reading this story, you are now in the know.  If you told one other person, and that person told another, and so on, this information may end up reaching a person who may really need it.  You may help save a life, or two.  And don't mistake that last sentence for a trivial, sentimental way to wrap up this story. It is simply the truth.