The Long Way Round

I got the results back from my karyotyping and recurrent loss shenanigans, and … there was nothing. While the fetus showed chromosomal abnormalities (a thought I found strangely comforting), they were/are mostly anomalous and not likely the result of a carrier issue. Thrombotic panel? Negative. Fifteen (15!) other blood tests? All normal.

What we appear to have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a case of crappy luck.

My feelings on this are understandably mixed. On the one hand, I mean, HOORAY! There’s nothing wrong with us, and all signs point to us being able to have a healthy pregnancy down the road. When I balked about my age (35), the nurse actually laughed and said, “You’re 35, not 45, Jonna. Most women we see at your age are trying for their FIRST baby.” Which, you know, comforting, and also true. The east coast is not known for its young mothers.

On the other hand, I really wanted it to be something we could fix easily. Which, haaaa, easily, as if such a thing exists even if there’s an issue. But I really wanted it to be MTHFR or Factor V Leiden or hell, I was even hoping for lupus antibodies at this point. But you know, instead it was probably a bum egg or an issue with all that dividing and multiplying and busy work that embryos have to do, and that is … frustrating and terribly normal. And scary, because, you know, it could happen again. It MIGHT happen again. I’m 35, and my eggs are what they are, and it’s … oh, blergh.

I know, right? Two miscarriages, so what? People go through worse. But it sucks, it sucks, to think about having to go through it again, assuming that the chances are exactly the same as they always were — which is to say that statistically, my chances of having a miscarriage the third time are not much higher than a first-time pregnancy. You’d think this would be comforting, but instead, it just means that I’m unprotected, as illogical as that sounds. Having two miscarriages does not statistically protect me from a third. My body doesn’t care whether it’s my first or my third, it just goes on as though everything is fresh. Statistically, each pregnancy is its own entity, and statistically — most of the time, anyway — they can’t find a reason for it, it just is.

Well, it means I just have to buck up, grow some balls and keep at it, is what it means. After all, is that not the quintessential lesson of parenthood, in all forms? I don’t know why all ovulation kits don’t bear a surgeon general’s warning that this shit is not for the weak, that once you start down this path, you are essentially fucked, in every possible meaning of the word.

We went to playgroup today and Sam wore a helmet for a rather significant portion of the morning. She picked up her friend Molly’s bike helmet, insisted on putting it on to ride the motorcycle, then kept it on for pool time, swing time, water table time. She wore that stupid helmet and she looked ridiculous, and my heart sort of shattered for her then, because God, there’s my kid, wearing an absurd-looking helmet, but she doesn’t know how silly she looks, she just wants to wear the helmet because she thinks it’s cool. She’s doesn’t know it’s not cool, and if she did, she doesn’t care, because at two, she’s not self-conscious about anything. She sings along to Elmo’s World in the most off-key voice you’ve ever heard, and when she sees a bunny, no matter how many times you tell her to be quiet, she immediately screams, “MOMMY, ITSA BUNNY! LOOK! LOOK!” and goes excitedly lumbering towards it.

I just … you know, I’d do anything for her. Anything. I’d have the guts to do anything if it meant she could have a better life. And if I apply the same logic (however flimsy the application may be) to my future children, well, I guess I can at least muster the guts to keep trying for them to be born, I figure. (FLIMSY CONNECTION, RIGHT? I KNOW.)

It’s going to take a little time, though, I think.

Happy Thursday!

*Badly Drawn Boy

109 comments July 13th, 2011