trying to grok

CAN I GET THESE ODDS IN VEGAS?

My husband and I should play the lottery.

• In general, with no past history of miscarriage, your odds of having one are about 12%.
• More than 90% of women who miscarry once will go on to have successful pregnancies.
• The American Pregnancy Association claims that 1% of all couples have multiple losses.

And remember this lovely statistic?

• A visible heartbeat could be seen and detectable by pulsed doppler ultrasound by about 6 weeks and is usually clearly depictable by 7 weeks. If this is observed, the probability of a continued pregnancy is better than 95 percent.

1% and 5%. I seriously need to go out and buy a jackpot ticket.

I feel sorry for my husband. He is all alone 6000 miles away, with no friends, no roommate, no one to distract him from his thoughts.

Though the loneliness strikes like an enemy shell
I pray for my home but still sit here in hell.

And I sent him his first Father's Day card, complete with the happy ultrasound picture. He got it yesterday. Maybe in the next package I could send him a razor blade, a lemon, and some salt.

Go to the grind it's all that I have
Work on and on with nothing to show
But a graying face in this dying place
That's a lock in my solitude

I went in yesterday because I saw the tiniest tinge of pinkish mucus. I felt foolish for wasting everyone's time. The only reason I even considered calling the advice nurse was because we had been sick. The resident I saw thought that the food poisoning and the mucus were unrelated and no harm to the baby. I practically stood up to leave, but he wanted to confer with the doctor. The doctor thought we might as well do an ultrasound.

Last December, when we sat in the emergency room for three hours, the only thing that kept me there was the thought that we would get to see our baby for the first time. Yesterday I had the same thought, that I'll never turn down a chance to see the little tiny baby again. If you want to do an ultrasound, who am I to say no? How exciting; he should look like a gummy bear by now, you say?

And then it was the same song and dance: no movement, no heartbeat, and a doctor in agony, asking again "how far along did you say you're supposed to be?"

The baby showed us a nice strong heartbeat two weeks ago, and then died a couple days later.

And since multiple D&C procedures can hinder your chances of getting pregnant in the future, we don't get to go the nice, tidy route this time. We get to go the horrific, painful, in-your-face route. Fantastic.

Yeah, life sucks.

But you know what else happened yesterday? My brother called my mother's cell phone, saying he had really bad news: his friend's wife, a girl I went to high school with died of cancer at 29. My mom replied that she also had bad news.

And you know what? My brother's news was worse.

So that is how I choose to deal with this. It can always be worse.

Posted by Sarah at June 13, 2008 12:12 PM | TrackBack