If you're having a good day, you probably shouldn't bother reading this.
How is it after all my personal experience and reading, I can still fall into the pit of "it won't happen to them." I have been feeling like everyone who gets pregnant is going to have a living child except me, even those in blogland who I know have suffered already. How wrong I have been.
I haven't yet read all of the blogs on my blogroll today but after Msfitzita's awful news last week, I found Samantha's awful news and that Catherine's friend's baby has died, then read about Laura's scare which thankfully turned out to have an non-dying baby explanation but could just as easily not have and which contributes massively to the fear we people already associate with pregnancy.
Then I clicked on Artblog's link and found good news - the first step in a long journey but one that has to be made in one way or another for the journey to be completed. All babies start with someone getting pregnant, whether it's you or someone else. Whether we like it or not. For me pregnancy is a time of danger for the child and for the mother. I think no-one who hasn't lost a child can understand this point of view.
I had a happy, perfect pregnancy with no complications with V. We were so naive that we filmed the 3 month ultrasound! 3 months people! I have now lost children at 40 weeks and 16 weeks. I've never had a miscarriage. Although having anti-thyroid antibodies puts me at a higher risk of having an early miscarriage (the danger comes not from the antibodies themselves but the fact that it's an auto-immune disease). Maybe that's what's next. I've done the shocking full term unexplained stillbirth and the wrenching medical termin.ation choice. Miscarriage is something I haven't done yet.
I also have a friend whose friend died in childbirth. She was in France, I don't know what happened exactly (it was a few years ago) but she was surrounded by doctors in a hospital and she died. Her baby is fine. Her husband isn't. Her baby shares her birthday with her mother's death day. Her older child said goodbye to mummy who was going to hospital to have his brother or sister but didn't mention that she wouldn't be coming back herself.
How hard it it is to hope once your innocence is gone. The hope must still be there though, since I was thinking that everyone else would be okay and I still manage to be shocked by the randomness of life when it isn't, even when this is what I was doing exactly one year ago.
6 years ago
7 comments:
Sorry to anyone who saw my bitter diatribe. It's five months today and I'm feeling really sad and angry.
You're so right, there's always a whiff of mortality around birth that only the disillusioned recognize. It just FEELS like everyone but me gets a baby...
I have described pregnancy using the exact same words, rosepetal. "A time of danger for the baby and mother"
I too, was so naive when pregnant with M. We told everyone right away, we skipped off happily to each doctor's appt. excited that we would hear the heartbeat again. Now, I have bad dreams all night the night before I have to go in, and spent the morning wanting to vomit of fear, making plans in my head for what I will do if the bad news comes...those innocent mothers have no idea...
I swing between two points of view -- both equally irrational. The bitter one is that, of course, everyone else's pregnancy is going to be perfect; it's just mine that was such a failure. The paranoid one is that everyone else's baby is going to die, just like mine did.
I completely identified with this post.
Randomness of life, perfectly said.
Good news is sometimes only good for a short space of time then, well, you know. And although I have LaLa I feel exactly the same as you do most of the time, happy for others but sorry for myself because I cant see it happening for me. And BFP don't really mean much any more, because as you say, we know what can go wrong.
I hope the best for all of us.
Love and hugs
Hugs, Rosepetal. I am been out of touch most of this week and wanted to to tell you that I thought about you this past weekend. {{{Hugs}}}
I hold my breath (it feels like anyway) when someone I know is pregnant and in the third trimester - or overdue (then I nearly have panic attacks). Because I think it CAN happen to anyone. Of course, since it happened to me it HASN'T happened to anyone I know, so perhaps it IS just me. ;o)
I could also identify with this post. I go back and forth between two extremes whenever I see pregnant women. One is, "you will have the most mundane birth experience and nothing bad will happen and for that reason I hate you". The other is that I'm paralyzed with fear whenever a pregnant woman says she hasn't felt her baby move or I see a pregnant woman lifting something too heavy. I didn't breathe while my co-worker was pregnant because I was so worried for every little thing she did. About hope... I really do think that a little hope is enough to pull people through bad times, but the real problem is that fear can seem larger than hope.
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