How to implement a verbose REGEX in Python

I am trying to use a verbose regular expression in Python (2.7). If it matters I am just trying to make it easier to go back and more clearly understand the expression sometime in the future. Because I am new I first created a compact expression to make sure I was getting what I wanted.

Here is the compact expression:

test_verbose_item_pattern = re.compile('\n{1}\b?I[tT][eE][mM]\s+\d{1,2}\.?\(?[a-e]?\)?.*[^0-9]\n{1}')

It works as expected

Here is the Verbose expression

verbose_item_pattern = re.compile("""
\n{1}       #begin with a new line allow only one new line character
\b?       #allow for a word boundary the ? allows 0 or 1 word boundaries \nITEM or \n  ITEM
I        # the first word on the line must begin with a capital I
[tT][eE][mM]  #then we need one character from each of the three sets this allows for unknown case
\s+       # one or more white spaces this does allow for another \n not sure if I should change it
\d{1,2}    # require one or two digits
\.?        # there could be 0 or 1 periods after the digits 1. or 1
\(?        # there might be 0 or 1 instance of an open paren
[a-e]?      # there could be 0 or 1 instance of a letter in the range a-e
\)?         # there could be 0 or 1 instance of a closing paren
.*          #any number of unknown characters so we can have words and punctuation
[^0-9]     # by its placement I am hoping that I am stating that I do not want to allow strings that end with a number and then \n
\n{1}     #I want to cut it off at the next newline character
""",re.VERBOSE)

The problem is that when I run the verbose pattern I get an exception

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:/Users/Dropbox/directEDGAR-Code-Examples/NewItemIdentifier.py", line 17, in <module>
 """,re.VERBOSE)
 File "C:\Python27\lib\re.py", line 190, in compile
  return _compile(pattern, flags)
 File "C:\Python27\lib\re.py", line 242, in _compile