When courage wins over common sense
This is news we’re not 100% sure how to feel about yet… we’re pregnant again (and no, it wasn’t an accident!).
There will be no instacool announcement. I just feel weird about announcing pregnancies now. Because the reality for us is very different to most couples.
There’s this 15 week waiting game hoping for a positive outcome. About 50 percent chance of the baby being healthy and living – 50% chance of it dying either by miscarriage or just being incompatible with life, like Nina.
And that means holding yourself back from feeling anything emotional about being pregnant (even though this is the very thing I’ve longed for, for more than a year).
The 25% chance of miscarriage has pretty much passed now, as I’m 13 weeks pregnant. And after having a Chorionic Villus Sampling test a week ago, we’re now in the real waiting game for results.
I’ve felt a heck of a lot more nervous other times. This time round, I mean really, what can we do. All you can do is wait… so you may as well not panic.
Except that this time around a few other possible issues have been thrown in the mix. Issues with nuchal translucency were flagged during the scan, and that can indicate possible Downs Syndrome, major heart conditions or other chromosomal abnormalities. And so we wait.
Over the last couple of months my thoughts have swung between a slight happiness that this has even been allowed to happen, to quickly contemplating, ‘What the heck have we done? – What if this all goes wrong again?’ It’s not some small thing.
Physically Nina took up 9 months of our lives, and I’d say emotionally, the real weight of it took up another 9 months, till I was feeling regularly back to the old me.
So it’s no minor decision to put yourself up for that reality again.
The thing I feared most about falling pregnant with #4 and having another ‘Nina’ was, what are people going to think? ‘Honestly, why on earth would she do this to herself again?’ ‘What a silly choice’.
And while that was one of my biggest thinking points, I have to say, it doesn’t really worry me any more. We stepped into this knowing exactly what we were doing, and we were willing to take that risk. That’s that.
I tried very hard to buy into the notion of only having our two kids. And perhaps I’ll have to be a bit more realistic once we see the outcome of this pregnancy. But honestly, I just couldn’t shake the longing for another baby. And perhaps I never will.
Time after time people fell easily pregnant with third babies and got to keep them, and that was the thing that wore me down.
After saying I couldn’t go through this again and have another baby naturally, with those risks, I changed my mind.
Russell’s took a lot longer to change (in fact I’m not sure I’ve actually changed it!). But two third baby announcements in a week sent me pretty low. And I realised it was always going to be like this without another try at least.
Russell saw how much I was hurting and conceded. And no, he’s not 100% about it yet. He’s waiting on the verdict. And all the emotion that may come with that.
Love is worth a risk. A big risk. And even with a disappointing outcome, it’s still worth the journey.
I was willing to take a chance and a very big chance at that. 50/50 is rather pathetic odds.
To many it may seem a silly choice.
But courage seems to move me far more than common sense at the moment.
So courage it is for the next few weeks at least, as we wait for answers.
And prayers of course, if you’ve got them.
