Newsweek Stillbirth article

http://www.newsweek.com/id/182572

It's kinda weird that they mention northern VA & Ann Arbor- my two homes!

It's nice to see some media attention on the topic; as I said in my last post, losing your baby before she's born is such an awful experience and I don't think people are really aware of it, or how common it is, even in the U.S. I've talked with so many moms online who have all had top-notch medical care, like me, and they lost their babies with no warning and are left with no explanation. Imagine being told that your newborn or toddler died suddenly and no on can tell you why. It's not really that different. Once you've seen your baby squirm around on the monitor, heard her heartbeat, and felt her little movements, you can't just shrug off losing her.

On the plus side, I have a wedding in the works (although you can put that in the negative column as well, since we've been running into so many problems), I'm almost done with law school, and I'm overall pretty satisfied with life- oh, and I started going to daily Mass- let's hope that sticks.

On the minus side, I have not recovered from my miscarriage (emotionally) nearly as well as I thought I would. Every time I find out a friend is pregnant (which is about every 2 weeks) I feel a stabbing pain that just won't go away. And my doctor did all the testing he could and I got my last lab results back and there's no evidence of autoimmune or clotting problems. There's no evidence of ANY problems. I lost a baby in the second trimester- it happens in less than 1% of pregnancies- and no one can tell me why. If I were a saint, I wouldn't need closure. I try to just accept it as God's will and look ahead to the future, but it's kind of a bummer that any pregnancy I ever have for the rest of my life will be classified "high risk." I wanted (and still do!!!) a dozen children- maybe more! But as I watch everyone around me have healthy pregnancies and probably take for granted the common belief that once you get past your 1st trimester you're out of the woods (I'm never falling for THAT one again), it dawns on me anew, like a sickly fever, that maybe I have been singled out to lose children before I can even hold them. That might be my lot in life and I can't imagine a lot I'm less suited for. I can't help but wonder, when se new moms around me, why does God want HER to have a baby and not me? It would be one thing if I never got pregnant in the first place, but if He gave me a baby, why take her away so soon? Why do those babies get to live and not mine? I had a strong, strong fear, during the 4 months I carried that baby (and the fifth month, when I carried her lifeless body) that something would go wrong....
Well I'm just rambling now, but let this be a lesson to you, because I didn't know till it happened to me: miscarriage is not something you "get over." So if you know someone who's had one, don't ever think she's stopped grieving. The mothers on my miscarriage support board voice a constant theme- people assume that just because your baby wasn't born alive that your grief should cease soon after, and so many mothers end up having to grieve alone, which makes it so much worse.
I'm luckier than many, since I have at least a couple people who still ask me how I'm doing and have some inkling of how isolating it is to constantly see successful pregnancies. But I still need some sort of outlet where I can say whatever I want about my baby and my fears and hopes for the next ones. So maybe that's what my blog will become.

Click below to read a very funny story about a man who tried (very hard) to pay his utility bill with a drawing of a spider.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=665847

Friday nights and Silk cuts
Spilled espresso grounds
Echoes from the mountains
Stillness all around

Santa Anas, smoke rings
Distant piano keys
And on any given bench you’ll find
A dog-eared Thucydides

Brogues and bohrans both
Out only once a week
Stand closer to the fire
I want to watch you speak

Et in Arcadia ego
Et in Arcadia tu
You might have guessed it all would end
But I’m glad I never knew.

Lip My Stocking!

So I've been looking at cheap wedding dress sites, and i found one called light in the box, and I realized that everything's from China and then I read a customer testimonial. It was from a guy named "ray," apparently from the U.S., since there was a little American flag next to his name. This is what he had to say about this wholesale merchandise website.

"i received this phone about 1 week ago. and i showed it to many friends of me. when they look at it, they thought it's a pack of cigarettes, but then i let them know it actually is a phone, they laughed a lot . it has kind of feeling like that shoe phone in that movie GET SMART. so as a funny thing i think i like it."

But wait- there's more!

Diana Aguirre from Tennessee apparently said: "So fast shipping and excellent service.”

Darren Ennis from the UK says: “Excellent value for money & very fast delivery considering it came from china - very recommended.”

Someone from Canada said: “great oparator it help me a lot on thinks that I wanted to know”

Hmmmm..... I think I'll go back to combing through ebay's selections now....

It Figures....

... that the class I'm doing the best in is the one I had opted to do pass/fail.

Heat

Ok, call me a nutjob, but when I heard this on the radio (I have no CD player, much less MP3) on Sunday, driving in the sweltering heat w/o A/C in my car, I really really liked it-the whole broadcast. It's the one entitled "Heat." I've never heard the pangs of summer put so well before..... maybe I'll listen again when it starts snowing up here in a few weeks....

http://hearingvoices.com/stories.php

PS I still think NPR is ridiculous, but for some reason, I loved this one.

My administrative law professor just said, I think seriously, that Truman is his favorite president. Oh, brother.