Lucy's visit

Lucy spent the weekend with us too, the first time in a few months. She held her sisters, and comforted them, and spent time with us. Progress. She also taught me how to play Resident Evil 4, and worked on some Pokemon pictures to decorate my office.

Some semblance of order

We met with The Doctor yesterday.

She's actually a very nice woman who grew up in Quebec. For the purposes of our discussions these days, however, she is The Doctor.

First we had to deal with Luciana's intense wish to get out of the hospital. Having her family visiting is a crazy-making overstimulation, I can tell. Suddenly she is seized with the intense desire -- more a complete plan than a wish -- to get out of the hospital and go out to a restaurant in Everett so she can take her mother to see her two children singing together. This absolutely has to happen and there is no reason to think that it shouldn't happen.

Except, as I point out repeatedly, she might fall down or slip on some ice, we might get into a traffic accident, some drunken lout might fall onto her table at the restaurant, or any number of other completely unanticipatable events might occur leading to an injury to her and the babies at a critical and very vulnerable time.

She apparently doesn't see how vulnerable she appears to me. My negative reactions to her wish-plan runs along the vein of "why are you trying to harsh my mellow?"

Finally I simply said, "No, I won't cooperate, I won't drive you, I won't take you, I won't go anywhere near this." She says, "Why can't you listen to me and listen to my feelings?" "I've heard your feelings but I'm not going to help you."

The Doctor says, "Good, so I don't have to be the bad guy here."

Then we talked about "how long." "How much longer?"

Of course all the same considerations are in place as before. If any of the babies show signs of distress, or if Luciana's pre-eclampsia deepens, or if labor begins, then the team will deliver the babies. But if none of that happens, there is an end-point anyway. March 8th is 34 weeks. The Doctor says, If you get to 34 weeks then we will schedule a delivery. "We can schedule it right now if you want."

Then there is a very funny conversation.

Me: "The 8th is a Sunday. You can't schedule it for a Sunday."
TD: "And I don't work on Monday and I want to do the delivery. Which would make it Tuesday, the 10th."
L: "I don't want to wait until the 10th. Marina's birthday is on the 7th. I want to have the babies on the 5th so I can go to her birthday party."
Me: "We'll have a birthday party here on the unit. Anyway, if you deliver on Thursday you're not going out of the hospital to a birthday party two days later."
L: "Sure I am, why not?"
Me: "Because you just carried three babies for 34 weeks and had a cesarean section and you're fifty years old??"
TD: "It would be better to do it on the tenth than on the fifth."
L: "I can't wait that long." And then also says something very complicated about her family that I won't go into details about right now. But it was very complicated and even a Medieval doctor of Laws couldn't have followed the twisted reasoning. Still, it all seemed to make perfect sense to Luciana.

So I said, "We can't agree about this now, and it may never matter because things may force our hand later this week or early next week, so let's just postpone the decision until next week."
Which seemed to please The Doctor and Luciana both.

So we left the meeting with three very clear and different ideas about what is going to happen.

Luciana is sure we are agreeing to a delivery on the fifth.

The Doctor is scheduling a delivery on the tenth.

I am sure that we are going to get tangled up in all this again next week.

Luciana is really annoyed

After 45 minutes of this monitoring action, Luciana is really annoyed.

And this is the highpoint of her day.

Or will be, until her mother arrives from Brazil (later today).

Sing praises of Marina!

Marina has taken a term off from school to stay in Framingham and help Luciana and me get from where we are to where we are going, and we would be completely lost without her!
Yesterday I went to work, and Marina drove Luciana into Boston to Tufts Medical Center. Helped her pack, put her in the Jeep, and got her to the hospital, helped her in. Insisted that the staff get a wheelchair for Luciana so she wouldn't walk through the garage and down the hallways. She is thinking of so many things.
And -- she got the news Friday that she won another scholarship from Dartmouth. She is her second! "It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been selected to receive a second endowed scholarship this year, one of Dartmouth's Kenneth H. and Ruth K. Murray 1927 Scholarships... the late Mr. Murray, a noted alumnus of the Calss of 1927, established this fund. He received his law degree from Columbia University and spent six years practicing law in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil... This honor is bestowed only on Dartmouth's most outstanding students. Your personal and academic achievements demonstrate that you have the potential and promise to make a significant contribution at Dartmouth.... Congratualtions on this fine honor and recognition!"
Awesome!

Complicated families

The past couple of weeks I have been consumed with extended family reactions to TTN (the triplet news).

My 18 year old son, mild and suave as always, had the funniest reaction. "But dad, this means you're going to have to get a minivan." I hadn't thought of that until he brought it up.
Universal reaction to the necessity of mini-vans: bummer! L suggested we can look into a GMC Suburban or a Chevy Tahoe. My next door neighbor James, father of three, pointed out that his Honda Pilot seats 8.
But everywhere I go, I see pudgy guys with wire-rimmed glasses flogging down the road in their Honda Odessey or their Toyota Sienna and I think - Therrrrre I go!

My 12 year old daughter's reaction was more openly pathological. She cried, pouted, went into a sullen state off and off for the next couple of days, and was generally obnoxical. But with lots of tender love and some clear limit-setting, she pulled out of it.

I have launched an offensive of closeness with my two kids, which coincides both with the news of new familiation and with the autumnal onset of school (they both are opposed, on principal and in practice, to the idea of public education). I've been on the phone with them every evening asking about their classes, their teachers, their friends, their projects, their new locker, their homework.

Their mother has been good enough to stay off the phone when I call.
But I hear that she and my ex-in-laws all reacted to the news in the most affirmative way possible, by assuring my children that the news of triplets only confirms that I have given up on them, am abandoning them for a new family, and the future will only be a long slide into obscurity until I reach the point where I don't remember their names.
Thanks! That was super helpful.