Thursday 11 April 2013

Is knowledge always a good thing?

As we strode towards the Easter holidays, I decided to take a bit of a break from the blogging. Y'know, sometimes it's a good idea to actually talk to people rather than tell them what's happening through writing- it's a bit of a one sided conversation! So the Easter holidays came and I became so damn sick! Like proper hallucinating feverish sick and although I'm not exactly quiet in anything I do, I'm surprised we haven't had passive aggressive notes from the neighbours below complaining about me disturbing the peace!

Whilst the illness was raging, I was surprised at how the tears dried up- this sadly was a bit of a short term thing, obviously the tears weren't able to flow when all the liquid in my body was on my lungs! 

It's funny because obviously you can torture yourself pretty well over things for quite a while without needing to change the topic but just recently, the dark thoughts have started to stretch out to other things. With the recent deaths of Margaret Thatcher and Robert Edwards (IVF pioneer), it's hit me that they were all born in the same year-1925. That's the same year as my nanny, who will turn 88 in August. She seems to have suddenly become a lot older.This was also coupled with my mum saying that she doubted her elderly Bassett will make it to their holiday in Devon- I seem to be dwelling on morbidity a hell of a lot more than usual. I tend to have a pretty flippant attitude to death- the complete opposite to my best mate who has a true hatred of death (partially the reason she became a doctor?!) so this is a new development. This has extended to an almost flippant attitude to my own health. Even with the stinking chest infection, I still wanted to smoke. Just have no reason to look after myself- WHICH IS UTTERLY STUPID! Of course I do! We'll be trying again soon and my body needs to be healthy enough to hopefully not mess it up this time.

For the first time since number 3 and number 4 happened, I held a baby on Tuesday. It was a really good friend of mine's second child- I had been one of the first to cuddle number one, in fact, perhaps the first other than family! I was a bit of a state in the kitchen the night before, crying over P's fajitas- thinking about how I was going to deal with it. Thing is, when it comes to real babies- that seems so far off, I can't even imagine actually having a baby. When I spoke to another friend later the same day, she said her sister was exactly the same (she's two weeks off giving birth to twins) after having so many issues herself. When I first saw the baby and her big sister, there were absolutely no pangs of jealousy whatsoever- having children seems like a very abstract notion. It was so lovely to see a good friend and her family again. It hurt going back over all the crappiness of the past few months but she made a point which my step mother had made before. My brother and I have always been fully aware of what our future fertility would hold from both our parents and the medics involved.

Does it help though, knowing so much? Knowing the statistics? If you are told that you have a 30% chance of having a miscarriage, that makes the chance of having a baby 70% which doesn't seem too bad. However, if your pregnancies keep falling into that 30% statistic, is that 70% just an optimistic carrot on the end of a stick? I am really worried about trying again. The whole thing is incredibly stressful. Do I do the peeing on ovulation sticks? Do I leave it to happen completely naturally, like we did over the honeymoon? I guess tapping into the fatalistic attitude I have at the moment, it doesn't really matter what we do as there seems to be no issue with getting pregnant, just an issue with it getting past the first trimester and there is nothing I can do to stop anything from going wrong there. It'd be great if I could actually get my hands in there and sort out the DNA myself, but short of something worthy of a horror film, it's not down to me. 

The doctor's appointment is looming too. With the foetal test results from the D&C. Man, will I be totally freaked if it says it's anything other than genetic! I did everything right with the last one- everything, right down to taking the baby aspirin and folic acid on a daily basis, no smoking, no bad foods etc. After all the tests they've run and that have come back totally clear, for it to be anything other than genetic would be a big kicker.

So whilst unlike another blogger  Retro Chick, who I love to read, write about her grumpiness- mine isn't grumpiness but it is negativity. I've never been a negative person and I cannot allow the bad times to turn me into one. The flippant attitude needs to change. I need to stop smoking for me rather than because I have something growing inside of me and I need to stop having a fatalistic attitude. Things are not inevitable, just a bit rubbish sometimes.


No comments: