how to deal
i got up an hour early and went to the hospital to have more blood drawn. now i have to wait until this afternoon to call the ob for the results. please let the tadpole be percolating. and not ectopic.
we've been talking about what happens if i miscarry. we need to be prepared - just from my age alone there's a 1 in 3 chance, never mind other risk factors. there's no way i can know how i would deal with it, but i'm pretty sure i could survive it. i might be sad, or angry, or things i can't even imagine, but if the tadpole can't make it, i'd rather miscarry now than carry it to term again. that was one of the things i was very angry about at one point after i lost hans - if he couldn't live, then why didn't i miscarry? why did i have to carry him to term and get so attached? plus, if i had miscarried, i could have been well on my way with another pregnancy by now!
but now, it's just more of a question in my mind than it is inspiration for anger, i think because i've chosen to embrace the joy i knew as hans's mom. he gave me so much of it.
so if i did miscarry, i think all i've experienced with hans would leave me better equipped to deal with it, and i could try to get pregnant again a lot sooner than with a late loss. and i'm reassured by our ability to conceive immediately, not once, but twice. and maybe three times.
in february of 2001, we had been together a little less than a year. i had been stomping around scotland and was on my way home. justin was leaving for belize early the next morning. so i flew into houston instead of newark, and justin met me in houston, and we had that one night together before he flew on to belize city the next morning and i went on to jacksonville.
i can't remember why i was off the pill then, but i was, so we were using stupid baggie condoms, and we discovered - too late - that one had ripped. at that point in my life, it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. i was 31, and i knew i wanted to have children with justin. but it was too early in our relationship. justin was still so young, and he hadn't yet figured out that he wanted to grow old with me, and it just wasn't right.
i remember running a hot bath in the hotel bathroom and sitting in it for a long time and crying. i don't have any science to back it up (other than to look back now and say, clearly, either i'm alarmingly, 16-yr-old in the back of a car fertile or justin has olympic-calibre swimmers, or both, and every time we get together without birth control, conception happens), but i just had a feeling that something was happening. hey, a mother knows. :)
justin climbed in the tub with me eventually, and we cried together, and then we figured out our plans. we flew out the next morning, and i called my then-doctor from the airport and asked for her to prescribe the morning-after treatment for me. i picked up the prescription on the way home, and the next day i took a double dose of b/c in the morning and another double dose in the evening. i threw up that night, but that was the end of it.
it was the right thing for me, then, and i rarely think about it. but after hans died, it came back and hit me like a ton of bricks. i was 0 for 2.
i know that if i did conceive than and i had had that child, we probably wouldn't have had hans. it's not that i would trade one child for the other, but hans was the right child at the right time. the child we wanted, more than anything. if we had had that maybe-first child, who knows what would have happened, but we might not be together now.
but we are together, and now we have the tadpole. we can handle whatever comes next.
we've been talking about what happens if i miscarry. we need to be prepared - just from my age alone there's a 1 in 3 chance, never mind other risk factors. there's no way i can know how i would deal with it, but i'm pretty sure i could survive it. i might be sad, or angry, or things i can't even imagine, but if the tadpole can't make it, i'd rather miscarry now than carry it to term again. that was one of the things i was very angry about at one point after i lost hans - if he couldn't live, then why didn't i miscarry? why did i have to carry him to term and get so attached? plus, if i had miscarried, i could have been well on my way with another pregnancy by now!
but now, it's just more of a question in my mind than it is inspiration for anger, i think because i've chosen to embrace the joy i knew as hans's mom. he gave me so much of it.
so if i did miscarry, i think all i've experienced with hans would leave me better equipped to deal with it, and i could try to get pregnant again a lot sooner than with a late loss. and i'm reassured by our ability to conceive immediately, not once, but twice. and maybe three times.
in february of 2001, we had been together a little less than a year. i had been stomping around scotland and was on my way home. justin was leaving for belize early the next morning. so i flew into houston instead of newark, and justin met me in houston, and we had that one night together before he flew on to belize city the next morning and i went on to jacksonville.
i can't remember why i was off the pill then, but i was, so we were using stupid baggie condoms, and we discovered - too late - that one had ripped. at that point in my life, it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. i was 31, and i knew i wanted to have children with justin. but it was too early in our relationship. justin was still so young, and he hadn't yet figured out that he wanted to grow old with me, and it just wasn't right.
i remember running a hot bath in the hotel bathroom and sitting in it for a long time and crying. i don't have any science to back it up (other than to look back now and say, clearly, either i'm alarmingly, 16-yr-old in the back of a car fertile or justin has olympic-calibre swimmers, or both, and every time we get together without birth control, conception happens), but i just had a feeling that something was happening. hey, a mother knows. :)
justin climbed in the tub with me eventually, and we cried together, and then we figured out our plans. we flew out the next morning, and i called my then-doctor from the airport and asked for her to prescribe the morning-after treatment for me. i picked up the prescription on the way home, and the next day i took a double dose of b/c in the morning and another double dose in the evening. i threw up that night, but that was the end of it.
it was the right thing for me, then, and i rarely think about it. but after hans died, it came back and hit me like a ton of bricks. i was 0 for 2.
i know that if i did conceive than and i had had that child, we probably wouldn't have had hans. it's not that i would trade one child for the other, but hans was the right child at the right time. the child we wanted, more than anything. if we had had that maybe-first child, who knows what would have happened, but we might not be together now.
but we are together, and now we have the tadpole. we can handle whatever comes next.
posted by laura at 8:44 AM
4 Comments:
You DON'T know how you'll deal. You can't prepare for it.
But when you speak of it, whisper. You don't know what Supreme Creator and Dasher of Dreams might be listening.
my mother had an abortion when i was 5...i didn't find out until years later. it was her 3rd pregnancy (she who wasn't supposed to be able to conceive at all seems to be incredibly fertile) and both my brother and i were very premature and i was on the verge of death every day for the first 8 months of my life (i was only 3 lbs 4 oz when i was born, and this was in iran where the medical facilities just weren't all that great). the doctor told her that this baby would definitely not survive and that she would most likely die as well if she acrried this child to term. the doctor said she could die for a child who would never ever survive or live for her 2 existing children...i can't even imagine...anyway, she had the abortion and then 22 years later her firstborn killed himself. i remember thinking wow, she's been pregnant 3 times and only has one kinda screwed up child to show for it. i know she thought that too (minus the screwed up part of it), and after my brother died she brought up the abortion a lot...i think it hit her like a ton of bricks too. reading your post made me appreciate her strength in seeing what she HAS as well as what she lost, which it sounds like you are doing too. It may sounds weird coming from a virtual stranger, but I'm proud of you for that, its not easy to remember to see what is there; the holes are much more evident and glaring at times.
Le Synge Bleu - thank you so much for sharing what is certainly a very personal event in your (mothers) life .. I appreciate reading that.
I've never really spoke much about this, infact, It's insane to me that I'm typing this, but it's recently reentered my thoughts, the reasons for which seem quite obvious now: I've been through one more pregnancy than Laura has.
10 years ago now. Wow. It was with my first partner - a relationship of which had many ugly emotional power dynamics (on both sides). We were both so incredibly naive, and well, as it went, both so so depressed. When we turned up pregnant, 19 years old, and without much thought, we did the only thing that made sense and terminated the pregnancy.
It wasn't a difficult decision - it was the right thing to do.
I really didn't think much about it until Laura and I lost Johannes... then it hit me like a ton of bricks and continues to do so today.
All things said, our little tadpole's test results turned up magnified by three times this morning, to which I am ecstatic about! This could very well be my forth pregnancy, something that I myself never envisioned - and I'm am so incredibly excited...
I have come to the conclusion that trauma causes calouses. You have had a major trauma and therefore a fairly decent sized calous. So I am saying that previous pain can sometimes protect us from future pain.
In any case, Tadpole will be fine. I feel certain Hans has already had a word with him/her and Tadpole knows what is expected:)
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