Struggles

Sorry for the silence. JT and I went through some very hard stuff this week.

For the few of you who don't know, I was around five weeks pregnant...up until about last Monday. I'm not going to go into details about what happened, just know that the way in which we found out was traumatic and we're going to the birthing center ASAP next time around.

JT is devastated. He's wanted to be a dad for as long as he can remember and I've been the one holding us back on having kids (though I'm lucky enough to have a guy who realizes that there was no way we were ready for a kid until now...so I guess holding back isn't exactly the right words...hesitant? Yes, hesitant). He was praying for this child night and day, excited to come home and talk about the baby. Just before we went in for ultrasound his brother called and he was telling him how we might be able to hear the heartbeat and when we would find out whether it was a boy or a girl.

That, more than anything, has broken my heart over this situation. How much JT was already in love with the baby, when so few guys these days feel that deep a connection so soon.

You know what bothers me? How few people talk about miscarriage. How it's a common misconception that if you miscarried you did something wrong, when the majority of the time what happened was that the chromosomes weren't right and the baby wouldn't have been able to survive outside the womb had it carried into full term. I KNOW I did nothing wrong. If anything, given the kind of person I am, I was being super cautious about every little thing I did. Prenatal vitamins the same time every day, no extraneous exercise, drank a ton of water, ate the right foods (give or take some chocolate here and there). I rarely ever drink, haven't had one in months and I've never smoked in my life. Nothing I did caused this.

And yet do you realize how many people somehow think that there's no other way this could've happened except if you did something wrong?

We were trying to keep this mostly in the family, with a few very close friends in on the dealio but once we found out there might be complications we let all of our church friends know - here and at home - what was going on and asking for prayers. And you know what's frustrating? Some of the people who knew are now treating me like God sees me as filth. Granted, these aren't people that were necessarily close friends so much as women that just happened to be at bible study or just happened to hear through the grapevine that I was pregnant. Clearly they wouldn't be friends anyway. But how can anyone think such horrible things after seeing how broken we are over this?

Why are healthy young women who are entering into their first pregnancies miscarrying? A good friend of mine from home miscarried her first pregnancy, too. No rhyme or reason, it just happened. She's been trying for a few months to conceive again and is struggling. Why don't doctors have the answer for this? Did you know anywhere from 30-45% of pregnancies end in miscarriage? Why is that? Obviously, some of the contributions are from older mothers who are fighting against the natural order of things but they're definitely not the only ones.

If reading this made you uncomfortable, GOOD! Maybe if more people became uncomfortable not knowing the answers researchers would start taking this seriously and figuring out what's gone so horribly wrong. How is it possible that in a day and age where we're able to vaccinate against certain kind of cancers and find cures for diseases that wiped out thousands of people years ago we're incapable of understanding better what happens during a pregnancy and what causes complications? It's literally a matter of life and death and yet did you know that there are very few conclusive studies about sperm fertility and how a man's health affects a pregnancy? Or that 15-25% of couples trying to conceive have no explainable reason given to them as to why they are infertile? That seems like a lot of infertile couples without answers.

Anyway, JT and I will be trying again soon. We will always remember this and unfortunately I think it'll hover in the back of our minds each time we find out we're expecting. But at least we have a major support group of friends and family who love us. And now maybe there are a few more people pissed off about how little information there is about miscarriage (which effects ALL of us) that a wave will begin to start to ask doctors to start researching the important things instead of studying whether or not rats are racist or if they can fly.