This week in Parenthesis, Heather Spohr fields questions about hyperemesis gravidarum, Jim of Sweet Juniper explains why his photo-sharing philosophy is changing and Rebecca Woolf takes a closer look at her baby twins’ relationship. From the headlinesIn the wake of Kate Middleton's pregnancy news, bloggers were simultaneously excited about a royal baby, sorry to hear that the Duchess had been hospitalized for hyperemesis gravidarum and -- when it came to those who had experienced hyperemesis themselves -- also hopeful that such a prominent sufferer might draw attention to the violent reality of acute morning sickness. On The Spohrs Are Multiplying, Heather Spohr, who currently has hyperemesis, answered common questions about her own experience with the condition; in a separate post on Babble, she also offered Kate an honest plea: "Someday, when you’re no longer pregnant, please talk about HG."
Photo finishAfter a recent hard drive failure, Jim Griffioen of Sweet Juniper feared he had been left with “folders full of PDF instructions for boil-hardening leather ... but none of the thousands of pictures I've taken over the years.”
Thankfully, he managed to recover almost all the photos he thought he'd lost. And in the end, he writes, sorting and saving those images “was like a second chance to choose which memories were worth keeping," not to mention an opportunity to examine his editorial priorities as a blogger. His biggest discovery -- about the beauty of imperfect family photos (exactly the kind many bloggers don't post online) -- has changed his perspective. “It wasn't the posed and cropped blog-destined shots I thought I'd lost that have fascinated me over the last few weeks," he explains; "it was the mess of our apartment in the background of photos I don't even remember taking.” Twin timeOn Girl’s Gone Child, Rebecca Woolf describes a chance encounter with a fellow shopper in Trader Joe’s that has stayed in her mind ever since she was pregnant with her twin daughters. The other shopper, a twin herself, had described the closeness of her relationship with her sister: "We fight all the time. We are sisters. But … [w]e're something else, too. You'll see.”
The woman’s comments, while cryptic, led Woolf to expect her own twins would be “soul mates” -- “an inseparable duo” -- and when this didn't seem to be immediately true ("they barely acknowledged each other the first six months"), she thought perhaps her daughters would never have the sort of intimate sibling friendship her fellow shopper had described. Recently, however, Woolf says she's witnessed the blossoming of a special relationship. "They are sisters in a way I will never understand," she writes, "which I think is what the girl at Trader Joe's was referencing."