Friday, May 29, 2009

How are babies made?

Obviously I know how a baby is made. But how is it possible for a perfect little baby to be born. Alive. With all it's limbs, fingers, toes, internal organs, etc. How is it possible for a baby to stay in the safe comforting womb for 9 months and then be born? Healthy? With no medical issues? It just blows my mind.

Ever since Benjamin was born I have spent some time on different grief support boards on the internet. It shocks and saddens me to read so many personal accounts of 'what should have been' turning into 'what should never happen'. There is so much sadness and so many young lives lost before they even truly began. It just doesn't make sense.

What amazes me more than the mind blowing number of losses is the fact that there are SO many healthy babies born. When I was pregnant with Benjamin I was a member on an expecting club on the internet. All these women were due in December too. On that board there were many women who left our group early in their pregnancies. You expect this. Any pregnant woman knows the rough estimates of early miscarriage. You know that almost a quarter of all known pregnancies will end in an early miscarriage. This knowledge does not make an early loss any less devastating and in fact it really increases the anxiety during the first critical couple weeks. On this particular board there were well over a hundred woman (I have no idea how many there really were, but it seemed like a ton!). By the beginning of January everyone had had their babies. Of all these women there was one baby that died very shortly after birth (Ruby), another that died three and a half days after birth (Bregan), and one stillborn (Benjamin). Way too many losses, but amazing to think that out of all these women there were *only* three babies that lost their lives too early. How the hell did so many babies make it?

There are so many things that can go wrong in a pregnancy. So many things that can go wrong during the labour and delivery. So many things that can go wrong in the days following birth. And then don't even get me started on the whole SIDS topic. It amazes me that Jackson has made it to 2 years (tomorrow!) with no lasting problems. How did we make it? Even though I know the odds are that a baby will be born healthy and living, it still feels like we defied the odds with him. Like we are lucky as all get-out that he is with us.

I had a doctor appointment the other day with a fill-in doctor and we got to talking about all my pregnancies. I told her about when Jackson was born and how he had severe jaundice and how the doctors thought it must have been a blood incompatibility issue for his bili levels to be that high. But then I had no antibodies, so it was rare that his levels got that high. Then with Benjamin dying from blood clots in his cord, with neither Brian nor I having blood clotting issues. So it was incredibly rare for that to have happened at all. Then with this baby having the cyst on it's brain. Not incredibly rare, but only 1-3% of all fetus' have them. You know, I'd really like a pregnancy that is normal. I'm not looking for rare cases and having 'special' pregnancies. Just a plain ole run of the mill pregnancy would suit me just fine thanks.

1 comment:

  1. I have always thought that too...with loss and stillbirth at the forefront of your mind, it's amazing that so many things go ok for so many people. Thinking of ya.

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