Wednesday, April 20, 2011

More odds & ends

  • It's dh's cousin's son's birthday today. His 13th birthday. He is 7 months older than Katie would have been, had she been born as scheduled in mid-November 1998. (Another cousin's son was born the following April. At every family gathering, I look from one boy to the other, trying to imagine Katie right in between.) I went to his mom's baby shower just days after announcing my pregnancy with Katie, & everyone fussed over me almost as much as the guest of honour. The tables were set with pink & blue plates, & I remember SIL insisting that I eat from a pink plate, because she wanted a niece. : ) 13 years. A teenager. YIKES.

  • Maybe it's just the age I'm at, being over the hump of (gulp) 50 now, but suddenly I am seeing books & articles about women over 50 everywhere. The latest is a collection of essays by Canadian women aged 50 & up, edited by Shari Graydon, called "I Feel Great About My Hands" (in a nod to Nora Ephron's book from a few years back, "I Feel Bad About My Neck"). The Toronto Star ran an interview with Graydon in the Saturday paper, along with an excerpt from the book, written by Mary Walsh. If you're not Canadian, you may not know who Mary Walsh is; those of us north of the border know her well from This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and particularly as her most famous character, Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior. I can hear her voice in my head as I read. Priceless.

  • Stillbirth is in the news: the respected medical journal The Lancet has published a series of articles on the subject. I haven't read them all yet, but I know about them, thanks to a page 3 article in last Thursday's Globe and Mail (followed by one on Friday in The Toronto Star. (Warning: even on a topic as sad as stillbirth, some of the comments are truly reprehensible.) My one quibble about the articles is that they tend to focus on the high rate of stillbirth among Aboriginal and developing world women. I don't want it to sound like I think that it's only worth writing about if it happens to white middle class North American women. It's important to reduce the number of stillbirths everywhere, & the rates are, sadly, much higher in these particular populations. But too many people think stillbirth is something that, if it happens at all these days (& many people are surprised that it does), it happens in developing countries. Newsflash: It happens. To all of us. Being a white, middle class North American may be a privileged position in many, many respects, but it's absolutely no guarantee that you're "safe" when it comes to stillbirth. A lesson that many of us have learned from bitter experience. :(

7 comments:

  1. I'm amused you are seeing books and articles about women over 50 everywhere you look. I remember after my first ectopics, I saw pregnant women everywhere. When I learned I wouldn't have kids, suddenly all these articles about "don't leave it too late" sprouted. And I've heard people with cancer suddenly say that the world seems full of articles and news about cancer. I guess it's what we notice. (I'll be with you on the 50 thing soon though. Gulp indeed).

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  2. Sending a hug to you. I too compare when I see children who would be my daughters age now.

    love Diana x

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  3. :( is right.

    Missing Katie with you tonite. Sometimes when I see Serenity's 'shadow' (born one week after her, and also half asian; and I see her most days out in the front yard) it just pangs. Pangs. I don't know how you can do it with family. big hugs.

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  4. Hi there, I just wanted to stop by and give you a long overdue thank you for your congratulatory remarks on my blog way back in February. I appreciated it very much!

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  5. Hi,
    It's the first time I see your blog and I really want to thank you for writing it! I live in Spain, and I can't find any blog there that explains this reality that some of us have to face. We decided to stop treatments and not adopt quite recently. I'm 36. I look for people all over the world that have decided something similar and want to share the experience. In Spain there's no group or association that talks about it. Nothing like Resolve, for example. Everything is focused on trying new treatments, because fertility industry is very powerful here and "reproductive tourism" to Spain is common. I have many questions and thoughts I would like to share with others. Would it be possible to exchange some emails? I give you mine, gnew2011@gmail.com, and I look forward to hearing from you soon...
    Kind regards, Gina

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  6. I seem to be hearing more stillbirth stories... Earlier this week, someone from my hometown -- who is friends with SIL #2 -- had a stillborn baby boy; the girl twin survived. This after losing a newborn (possibly to SIDS) last year. So tragic. SIL #1 assisted a multiple delivery here that same night, in which one twin died. : ( SIL #1 said, "It happens more than you want to think." Emphasis on "want to."

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