HA,
I am following your cycle this month and want to encourage you. It takes only one egg and one sperm, which is hard to remember after all the struggles you been through. You have two good eggs! The most important thing is the monitoring and timing and it sounds like they are doing a good job of that this month. I am praying for you to have a successful IUI. Don't worry if you feel cynical. All the BnB girls will maintain lots of PMA for you!
AFM,
We've pretty much told everyone now at work, church, family & friends that we are expecting and I am feeling very vulnerable right now because if something happens to the babies, it's completely out in the open. We have another OB appt tomorrow afternoon and these doctor's visits scare me because I am always worried that there will be bad news. I am really hoping our babies are hanging in there.
Thanks, Lava. I need and appreciate that.
As for worrying about bad news, that’s one area I know way too much about and can (hopefully) help you with.
A -it is completely normal to worry, and
B - you have absolutely no reason to worry. Nor do you have any reason to fear anything bad happening to your babies. You know lots of women on here who’ve had a loss (or losses), and that tends to skew your perception of the odds of having a loss yourself. But we are not a random sampling of pregnancies - we do not represent the norm. We all came here seeking support. Even women who came to BnB seeking ttc support do not represent the norm - how many ttc’ers on here do you see who test crazy early and then suffer a loss at 4 weeks, before the avg woman would even know she’s pregnant? The fact of the matter is that once you’ve seen a heartbeat, the odds of losing your baby are less than 3% - so right now, you, Lavalux, have a 97% chance of meeting your babies. After a normal ultrasound at 16 weeks, the odds of loss drop to 1%. You are healthy, your babies are healthy, you are getting great prenatal care, and you have every reason in the world to celebrate and enjoy your pregnancy and free yourself from the fear of something going wrong. Lay that one down and enjoy every day. Every day you worry about it is a day of joy you're missing out on.
And C - and this goes for everyone -
IF something horrible happens, the pain and the grief is the same no matter whether the whole world knows or only you and your husband know. Keeping a pregnancy a secret does not protect you from loss or from pain, it only forces you to suffer in silence if the worst happens, reinforces the societal taboo that pregnancy loss mustn‘t be talked about, and leaves the next grieving mother feeling all alone and like no one in the world knows how this feels. With ANY other death, friends and family and loved ones respond with caring concern, a desire to take care of you and help you through your grief. Yet for some reason our culture still doesn’t talk about pregnancy loss, and parents are forced to suffer alone, with no social support to help them through, leaving them to feel like no one else cares, no one else has ever suffered a pregnancy loss, no one else thinks their baby was real or their pain is real, and that the grief they feel isn't normal. But it is. So I say tell the world. And IF the worst happens, tell the world - you will need their help. Lots of people keep it to themselves out of fear that someone will say something well-intentioned but horrible to them. I say those are opportunities to tell them how their comment made you feel. Educate them. They mean well but they truly don’t know and can’t understand. But if you take the opportunity to educate them, then maybe they will never make the same mistake with the next woman who’s brave enough to speak openly about her loss. If you snap at them, they will forgive you. And if not, they’re not worth your time anyway. If your response makes them uncomfortable, too bad - their comment made you uncomfortable and they need to know that is not an ok thing to say.
AFM, out of the hundreds and hundreds who knew about our babies and knew about our losses, only one person said something horrible. We were flooded with cards, flowers, meals, help and love, just how you'd expect people to support you if your parent died or your husband died. People want to help, but if they don't know they can't help. So I say tell the world.
Alright, off my soapbox. This is not a loss forum and I don't want to bring everyone down, so back to ttc talk.
And my sincere apologies for my verbal diarrhea.
G'night girls.