Hope and Sadness
Cyrus saying goodbye to daddy after snuggles.
Now 7 weeks since birth for Cyrus, 2 weeks since losing Arthur. Oakley and Edee are going to join me for most of the week camping in Eastern Washington while Laura stays home with Cyrus and continues a demanding schedule of movie watching to prepare the programming for the film festival.
The girls spending some time at home with cousins.
The girls have both expressed some grief over Arthur. Edee got very concerned when an animal died in our nature documentary and kept saying “he died”. We paused and talked about Arthur a little bit and had to assure Edee that Cyrus was still ok. Oakley told us she feels sad for no reason sometimes, and she’s made sure to remind Edee at appropriate intervals that we only have one baby now because the other one died and went to be with Jesus and Gaby. Laura and I are doing a lot better than last week and are continuing to move on with life while giving time for grief as it comes up.
Cyrus is doing great! He’s almost at the lowest pressure setting on the CPAP and holding his oxygen levels well, for the most part. He still forgets to breathe sometimes and so will have to keep the CPAP longer than we were hoping. Even with that he’s probably less than two weeks from being able to sleep in an open crib, have longer periods with no CPAP, wear baby clothes, and hopefully breastfeed. He’s been opening his eyes a lot more already, which has been very cute and fun for Laura and me.
Please continue to pray for us. It’s still hard to process how much of ourselves we put into helping Arthur survive. Cyrus didn’t get to make the choice, but he’s sacrificed more than anyone. He could have been carried to term, but had to be delivered early to give his brother the best chance of survival. We wouldn’t change anything we did, but we’re really hoping and praying that Cyrus doesn’t have any long term consequences from this. Losing his twin is hard enough without a lifelong reminder of the ordeal.
Pray most of all that whatever happens to Cyrus, Laura and I will continue to have faith in God’s goodness.
