A difficult subject

I'm going to do something a little different from my usual posts here, so if you are looking for something lighthearted, or about gaming, blogging, or any of my usual stuff then have a look through the archives because. . . . . .

Well. . . . . .

This is going to be difficult for me to write, and probably more difficult for you to read, so consider yourself warned.

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Still with me?

Ok.

Deep breath.

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The year was 1999. At that point my wife and I had not long moved into our new mortgate commitment and were trying to start a family. When I say trying, it is more accurate to say that we'd been trying for a couple of years without any success, so when she finally became pregnant it was the biggest thrill of our lives.

We couldn't wait to tell everyone the news, and spent the time leading up to the twelve week scan on cloud nine. We chose names, started looking at baby clothes, and were looking at a future with a new child, maybe even twins. Who knows?

Life, however, doesn't always go the way you want it to.

"I'm sorry, but we can't find a heart beat."

It only took a single sentence to destroy our world entirely.

What happened next is pretty much a blur. I told the nurse that she was wrong. She had to be wrong. She couldn't be right. It wasn't fair. Our baby couldn't be dead.

I know that I cried.

We were taken to a side room where a midwife explained what was to be done next. I can't remember exactly what she said, but the upshot of it was that we had to let nature take its course, but if it hadn't within the next couple of weeks then they would perform an evacuation to remove what would have been our first child.

I do remember that she tried to console us. She said words to the effect that these things happen, especially early in pregnancy. That there had probably been something wrong with the foetus. That things just weren't meant to be this time. It would be easier to fall pregnant again after, especially in the first few months after the miscarriage.

It didn't really help.

We returned home together and spent the next couple of days in the deepest, darkest despair that we've ever experienced in our lives.

This part of the story does have a happy ending though. A couple of months later my wife did fall pregnant again, and although the pregnancy didn't exactly go smoothly, our first child was born in April of 2000.

A couple of years later, after another not-exactly-easy pregnancy, our second child was born.

We weren't planning on having any more children. And then, last week, we found that she was pregnant again. We took the test twice, positive both times. No doubt about it.

This took a bit of getting used to, but I found that I was actually quite excited about it. We both were.

Then yesterday she had "a bleed". Not a heavy one, as it turned out. Just a few spots. Certainly enough to scare the life out of us both, and have us thinking the worst.

Now this did happen on previous occasions too, so we are both still looking on the positive site that things are probably still ok. A small bleed at this time could just be the embryo embedding itself in the wall of the womb, we won't know for a while whether things are progressing well, or. . . . .

I'm not a particularly religious man, but I'm praying to whoever may be listening that things go smoothly this time.