How you can help

Here’s the letter I sent out to everyone this morning regarding our situation. Many of you have asked how you can help.

Hi all,

I wanted to let you all know whatís happening in our lives. As most of you are aware, Ellen has been pregnant with twin girls. The twins have developed a mild case of TTTS stage 1, which is a very life threatening situation.

Ellen has successfully finished a surgical procedure today to prevent the twins from forcing labor. There is another surgical procedure we can have done to mitigate the TTTS symptoms, but we are currently playing it safe and waiting to see if this situation corrects itself.

I donít want to go into too much detail here. We have a TON of information on my blog , which we will be updating as the situation develops. We also have been keeping photos about our situation on flickr .

We want to thank you all for the outpouring of support. Ellen will now be on bed rest at home for the next 4.5 months to help mitigate the stress on the twins and her body. Many of you have asked what you can do to help us outÖ the answer is quite simple. 4.5 months is a damn long time to be stuck at home, please just stop by the house to visit Ellen, send her a message, or chat with her via IM/Facebook. She will be going bonkers staying at home like thatÖand I apparently have a finite entertainment value.
Iíve already set her up with the amazingly great book series ìThe Intel x86 Instruction Setî and ìDeveloping your first Ruby web siteî, but I got a feeling that wonít quite cut it.

Your thoughts and positive energy will help us get thru this, and at the end of this trying time, we will have 2 amazingly awesome little girls named Ella and Emma.

Thanks again for all your support. Feel free to forward this mail to anyone.

-Matt and Ellen (and Ella and Emma)