For Those Who Don't Know

I had a miscarriage yesterday, at 8 1/2 weeks. Some of you didn't even know I was pregnant yet, because we were waiting on a heartbeat. We never got one. The baby never developed, so yesterday I had a surgery to remove the pregnancy, since the sac kept growing and growing and making me pregnant and sick, but with no baby inside.

So many of my friends have gone through this, and often I didn't know until much later in their lives. I've decided to actively tell people instead. That way, if someone else goes through it in the future, they will know that I understand and they can come to me to talk.

Physically, the recovery is much easier than any recovery from surgery I've ever had. Emotionally, this is probably the hardest thing I've ever gone through. I've known since Monday that the pregnancy was in trouble, so it's not like yesterday was a shock. But I'm not sure I'll ever get used to this.

A huge downfall of actually believing the life begins at conception means that I believe that even if no cells ever divided (the scientific reality is that a few cells probably divided, and then they stopped because of a chromosonal problem), there was a new life inside of me. On one hand, I thought my belief of life at conception was basically a religious teaching that I had accepted, but I realize now that I have absolute, 100% belief in life at conception.

I'm still pro-choice. I'm actually more pro-choice now, because I know better now that conception issues are so sticky that I believe the mom, dad, religious advisors, and medical professions need to make the decisions. For example, my doctor was able to assure me that he was 100% certain that there was no live or viable baby, nor was there a possibility of one. My sac was easy to see and rather large, so it was clear that it was empty. My numbers were extremely low. That made a D&C (the surgery that removes the pregnancy) much easier to accept.

But for a rare minority of women, their is a minute chance of viability, and what do they do? It's easy for me. If the baby isn't clearly dead already, I would not have a D&C. But what if you believe the baby is dead, but maybe won't ever get proof, because your pregnancy sac is hard to see. How long do you wait? What if you start to get an infection? Should a woman be forced to miscarry into a toilet, just because science isn't advanced enough yet to decide if the never-happened-before miracle will happen today? I just don't want to government making those decisions. Let the woman, and her husband, and the doctors, and the Church, and her heart, make those decisions. The government cannot mandate life. Life has to come from the soul.

Also, I've noticed a lot of people telling Alan to go support his wife. He is supporting me. He is amazing. But what about him? Why do so many well-meaning people forget that Daddy lost a baby, too? It's not fair the way we treat men in society. It's not fair that we minimize the role of Daddy. We don't minimize it in my household, and I hope that is an example to the rest of the world. But what I've seen, especially when people find out that Alan does the childcare or is upset over the miscarriage, is that men are just expected to be in a support role for parenting, and that is not fair.

Etcetera.