Death and Babies (Part Two)

"If you weren't so careful about your birth control technique, you would have never known about your multiple miscarriages."

One of our friends kept trying to get pregnant by monitoring her cycles with the precision of Natural Family Planning (NFP).  She showed her doctor the charted history of menstrual periods, body temperature and mucous consistency among other gross things.  The doctor was able to pinpoint several instances where she must have conceived, embedded and then flushed it out with what seemed to be just a heavy period.  They were finally able to stabilize a pregnancy with daily hormone injections and they now have two healthy sons.

Young punk kids in love get married and never hear about how much time they will spend

• trying to avoid getting pregnant,
• fighting about when they should try to get pregnant,
• then trying to get pregnant,
• then trying to figure out why they can't get pregnant or stay pregnant,
• then getting pregnant and dealing with babies and children and wondering why Anne Geddes never popularized crowning or that sleepless midnight mother's look or poop stains on carpet or cracked, bleeding nipples or toddlers with inorganic objects up their nose,
• then fighting about how many of these kids they really need,
• then trying to avoid getting pregnant again,
• and eventually trying to remember a time when sex wasn't a loaded gun waiting to shatter all our plans if not performed ever-so-carefully with cold, scientific charts and precision.

Dead Babies

"Want to see a picture of my dead daughter?" was the first thing my office-mate said to me one day.

I don't know what to say to a question like that.  I don't think I said anything.  He showed me the picture.

When my wife and I had our first child, a daughter, the doctor said, "You skipped the grave."  He explained:  Fifty years ago that's what our parents' and grandparents' generation called successful childbirth without the death of mother or child, "skipping the grave."  We are grateful we skipped the grave.

No one had ever told me how dangerous life, marriage and babies are.

March 26th, 2010:

My wife's best friend just lost her baby.  Most of the young couples we know have struggled with miscarriages.  Among our peers, about half of the recently married eager breeders have seen at least one early pregnancy dissolve.  Usually within the first trimester, sometimes in the second.

This recent tragedy, my wife's friend, lost her baby that was due to be born next month.  Nearly full term, nursery fully decorated, their first girl after two boys.  Lost.  One day she was nervous because she hadn't felt much movement.  She laid on a couch, took water and rested.  Still no motion.  The whole pregnancy she had felt only light and faint movements, like a butterfly.  Her mother babysat her boys while she and her husband went in to see if the hospital sonogram could reassure them about their butterfly baby.  It did not.  They delivered a lifeless child the next day.

March 8th, 2011:

Nearly one year later and my wife's friend is a nervous wreck.  She is with child again, in the third trimester and due around the first anniversary of her third child's still birth.