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About Us
Play naked and see what happens...
Et voilà! Two babies, two at once!
After traveling the world, being rich, being poor, in sickness and in health, what else is there to do?! Translate
May
18
Manu & Max are doing better every day. We dare say it’s the first day they’re simply doing good. They breath well. They both rolled into their favorite position and slept all day. We don’t feel like holding them by fear of waking them up. Just a little handshake then…
Tags: happy
May
17
D+2
By Pierre | Filed under Family, Français, Little People | Leave a comment
For posterity, here is the announcement we sent today.
Update (months later): We wanted to wait a few more days before sending the announcement, just to make sure the kiddos were ok, but since the word leaked out, we had to do it. We did not feel comfortable enough yet making it public because in spite of what the doctors were saying, we were really not sure about how well the kids were doing: brain hemorrhage for Manu, heart murmur for Max, surfactant in the lungs for both, blood transfusion for Max, jaundice, weight loss, etc… etc…
The problem for us was that families usually expect to see a picture of the proud parents and their newborns shortly after birth, but all the pictures we had of the kids were kinda sad and scary with their goggles and their wires under the bright lights (note: the blogs you see from that period were posted several weeks later, after the kids were out of the hospital). So how could we send an announcement with a smiley picture and not show the kids? Looking around in the room, we spotted the 2 coupons the nurses gave us - just a souvenir that parents usually stick into the Baby Book - and we turned it to some kind of a joke. Voilà!
May
16
D+1
By Pierre | Filed under Family, Français, Little People | Leave a comment
The kiddos lose weight, they have the jaundice and a murmur in the heart, but it’s all normal. They received injections of surfactant in the lungs yesterday, and they’re breathing better today. Manu doesn’t have a big tube in the mouth anymore, just two little hoses in the nostrils. They’re both wearing googles and stay all day under UV lights to fight the jaundice.
They seem weak and distressed. They miss the permanent contact that they had in the womb. When they cry, we block them in our hands and they immediately calm down.
Tags: scary
May
15
Oh happy day!
By Pierre | Filed under Little People, Us in America | Leave a comment
Bad night, not a lot of sleep. Yesterday night, for the first time Merritt was having some really strong and worrisome contractions and I wake up with a lousy feeling. She calls me a few minutes later but I press the wrong button and her call gets forwarded to the voicemail. Here is the message she left me. If you have never heard a pregnant woman scared shitless of losing her kids, that’s what it sounds like.
I arrive at the hospital too late. Merritt is still in the Operation Room; I wait for her in Recovery. When she comes on the gurney, her whole body is shaking because of the drugs. The room is hot and stuffy. There is a heat wave today with temperatures not seen in 40 years; records are falling all around the Bay Area. I don’t understand why a hospital doesn’t have a better air-con system. I don’t understand why the doctor is blabbing so much about the anesthesia but nobody gives details about the kids. Merritt is still stiff and shaking. No sleep, no food, no air, no kids and my girlfriend straight from The Exorcist… My head spins, I need to sit down.
20 minutes later, a nurse takes me to see the kiddos. We cross two doors with access codes and enter the Intensive Care Unit. It’s a long room full of medical gear and computer screens, lined on both sides with sci-fi pods - the incubators. As soon as we step in, I see about 20 feet away a dark mauve fetus lying completely still in an open incubator. The thing seems to be about the size of the puppets that anti-abortion demonstrators love to exhibit on TV, and as life-less. Lights are off, nobody’s around. A few feet behind, a group of doctors, all masked and in surgical gowns, fuss over another pod under bright spotligths. The nurse hesitates: “Er… stay here, I’ll go check.” She talks five seconds to the doctors, comes back, grabs me by the arm and leads me back out, explaining vaguely: “They’re not done yet, we’ll come back later”. From all I see, one’s dead, the other’s a guess, but if the nurse doesn’t feel like telling, I certainly don’t feel like asking. She tries to put up a smile; it’s a bit futile but I’m grateful.
Back to Merritt. She’s still got the shakes. Her lower body is numb, she can hardly move her feet, but her upper body is shaking as if she’d just had 20 espressos. I feed her ice cubes, apply wet clothes on her neck and fan her with a cardboard sheet to keep her temperature down. Half an hour later, the docs come in: “Everything’s fine, they’re both hooked up now”. Wow! Phew!
Back to the pod room, I finally get to take a peek up-close. The nurse claims they’re fine I ‘m not sure I believe her: two small fetuses strapped to the bed with velcro bracelets, struggling to breathe with pipes, wires and tubes coming out of their mouth, plugged into their umbilical cords or attached to the arms and feet. I don’t want to give them names yet. They’re not finished. Baby “A” cries weakly. Baby “B” looks like he’s not going to see the end of the day.
Two hours later, Merritt is feeling better, she can leave the Recovery Room. Of course, we are not going to take her directly to her bedroom. The nurse and I push her bed through across the hallways to the pod room and she finally gets the see the babies. “I can’t believe how tiny are these things!” I tell her. She replies sternly: “They’re not things anymore, they’re little people!” And she’s right, they’re not “A”, not “B”, not “things” anymore… Welcome Max & Manu.
I stop by the house in the afternoon. A quick check on the web shows me that the kiddos’ numbers are in fact perfectly normal, their condition is fine. 29 1/2 weeks, 1300 grams: It’s almost a no-brainer nowadays. So much relief. A bit later, Merritt calls with more good news. It’s starting to sink in now, the joy of being a dad. I check my phone at a red light on the way back to the hospital. It opens on the Yahoo News page with a big rainbow flag: “Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban”. “Yes!!!”, I scream. I immediately turn left to go through the Castro, the gay district of San Francisco. Everybody’s out celebrating, laughing, smiling, kissing. What a symbol to have our kids born in an America where people are finally free to marry whomever they love, an America where the President might soon be a wise, thoughtful, competent, articulated and brilliant young black man. I feel waves of joy and I am immensely proud.
Tags: happy | prego | scary
May
9
Flushed with Pride
By Pierre | Filed under Français, Us in America | Leave a comment
I am so proud to be American today! An association lead by “Chicken John”, one of Merritt’s good friends and a former San Francisco mayoral candidate, decided to honor our President’s legacy in the most appropriate way. If all goes well, a ballot initiative will rename the city’s wastewater treatment plant the “George W. Bush Sewage Plant”. The new name will take effect, with no doubt amid colorful local celebrations, on the same day he leaves office.