Last night we watched Swimming Upstream, a documentary that shows a year in the life of a lesbian couple who plan and have a baby together. It's a good documentary, although the theme music is kinda lesbian.
There's a lot of drama that leads up to the birth (breech presentation, C-section) and you think that's the end of it. But then their baby has a health problem. One that is potentially very serious. One minute they're sighing in relief at being done with pregnancy and the C-section and the next minute the second Mom is weeping on a friend's shoulder while the birth Mom is still fuzzy from the drugs and coming to grips that their baby is about to be whisked off to the ICU.
Looking at their shocked faces, it suddenly occurred to me that despite all the tests, all the monitoring and all our modern technological wonders...THERE'S STILL A CHANCE YOUR BABY COULD HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS THAT YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT UNTIL IT'S BORN.
I managed to gasp this out to the Spousal Unit. Who looked at me kindly and gently said, "Well yes. It can happen."
I know I'm acting like an idiot. But considering pregnancy is causing the selective memory to kick in and when it stops being selective and I'm reminded of all that can go wrong, I take a deep sickened breath. How do people stand this for nine months?
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