Brave women get rewarded

It is something that I think I read on a blog, or in a book, a long time ago, which said that "brave women get rewarded".  As far as I remember, they are the words of a high risk obstetrician, and they have given me strength many times throughout this past year, which was by far the hardest year of my life.  I have thought long and hard about whether what he said is true or not.  The cynical part of my mind likes to reject anything that looks too much like a hopeful communist slogan, along the lines of "hard work makes anything possible".  I am no longer a child.  I know that some things may never be mine, no matter how hard I work.  But the other side of the coin is that without being brave and trying again, women like me will not get rewarded.  Only brave women have a chance at reward in the end.  If you want to have a child after a miscarriage, a stillbirth, or an infant death, bravery becomes necessary.

I spent the whole day in bed, resting, and towards the evening I got up to cook a simple meal of onions, mushroom, garlic, corn, tomatoes and basil.  I just threw it in as it came to mind, and it turned out very good, fresh and simple, with the corn right off the cob popping sweetly amidst the soft filling mushrooms.  I did not notice any bleeding today, which goes to show that being still is a good thing in my situation.  I will probably spend tomorrow in semi-bedrest as well, just to make sure that the blood vessel that probably popped is healing.

I had a moment of self-pity last night, when I asked MrH just before I fell asleep:  why am I so bad at this pregnancy thing?  I mean really, I am only five weeks pregnant, and I am already dealing with threatened miscarriage.  He said that I am not bad at it, I just don't have any choice in the matter.  "You can't be bad at something that you cannot control" he said.  That is definitely a wise thing to ponder, and will give me comfort one day should I choose to stop my self-critical tendencies... I must say however that I am much better at dealing with the threatened miscarriage this time.

Last september, when I had the threatened miscarriage with Adrian, due to a subchorionic hemorrhage, I became pretty hysterical.  We had no obstetrician in town at that time, and I drove 70 km to the nearest obstetrician, who did a transvaginal scan and told me that there was no heartbeat, and that he would have expected to see one at that beta HCG level.  He looked grim, and I went back home preparing to miscarry at any time.  I didn't know what to expect, so I had large absorbable pads in my purse at all times, in case some kind of floods happen.  A week later, I went for my repeat ultrasound, and they could see a heartbeat.  I bled for a few days more, and then I stopped.  But the driving, the ultrasound, the crying, the hysterical feeling of being out of control and of losing something that I had worked for so hard, all of that made me bleed even more.  This time I am older and wiser, and I am simply staying in bed.  No ultrasounds, no driving, no crying.  Just calmly expecting for the bleeding to stop, or for the other shoe to drop, whichever might come first.  I know now that not me, not my obstetrician, not any human being can predict the outcome.  Only God can, and He won't tell me yet :)

"It's gonna be a long 9 months" my obstetrician said to me yesterday with a sigh, after I phoned him for the fifth time this week... I think he was thinking about himself, but hey, I hope he is right!  Nine months sounds like the perfect amount of time to me.