Staying pregnant

As I was saying before, getting pregnant and staying pregnant are two different things.


I never worried about that before, but I noticed friend after friend with multiple children, never had a problem, hitting 40 and, suddenly, they miscarry.  It seemed that most of the time, you never heard of them being pregnant again.  I have since come to the conclusion, from my own experience, that it's not that they didn't get pregnant again, but that the baby died so soon that they didn't have a chance to share it with anyone.  That was my experience.  


At 42, I got pregnant, right on schedule, and three days before my 43rd birthday, I miscarried.  We saw it coming.  There was no heartbeat, I had stopped gaining weight (which I'm very good at, by the way), and the morning sickness had stopped sooner than normal.  There was no baby.  It was a blighted ovum, a baby that has started but not continued past the point where there is much more than a umbilical stem.  However, I had continued to grow.  I was filled with blood clots and lost almost a third of my blood volume  in two hours.  I was one hematocrit point away from needing a blood transfusion.  Three months later, I miscarried again.  Just one contraction, and a small, gelatinous puddle of blood about the size of a silver dollar with that same little stem, and the pregnancy was over.  


What we discovered is that many women over the age of 40 have enough estrogen to get pregnant, but not enough progesterone to grow the baby until the placenta takes over progesterone production at 14 weeks.  Just before Noah (3) was started, we found out about the Magic Bullet.


The Magic Bullet, as it is fondly known, is a progesterone suppository.  They have tried pills and shots, but the direct approach, targeting the source, has been found to be the most effective.  It is inserted directly in the vagina as close to the cervix as it can get.  Two different chemicals are compounded with a light wax that melts at skin temperature, 94.4 degrees, according to my friendly neighborhood pharmacist.  It is in the shape of a little torpedo and can only be prepared by a compounding pharmacy. Wal-mart won't cut it.  Walgreens, CVS, or, in our case, a small private pharmacy with compounding facilities is the only way to get it.  The chemicals can be overnighted, so we got them as soon as we needed them; it was finding the pharmacist that was the challenge!  Abri  and I were heading out on her 13-yr-old trip to Mammoth Cave on a Friday and Steve called it in to a local pharmacist in Kentucky.  He had the chemicals that day and when we showed up on Saturday, he mixed them up and we had a nice talk with him while the wax set.   When we needed it renewed, he shipped it to us in Wisconsin with a cold pack, since it needs to be kept where it won't melt prematurely.   I have gotten it in pill bottles, boxes with tiny compartments, (looking very much like a box of ammo), and encased individually in plastic. It has become the go-to solution for any age woman who is having a dangerous looking first trimester.


Which has put us in an interested moral dilemma.  Steve loves all our children and gets excited about every time we have a baby.  But for me, this time was different.  I had come to the conclusion that I was done having children; the likelihood of getting pregnant was too great, I was too old, etc., etc.  It wasn't easy, recognizing that I was in a different life stage.  It was very much an identity crisis.  All of the moms in our homeschool group have small children, and, while many of them have decided not to have any more children, the possibility still remains.  I figured, for me, that it didn't.  It was like looking wide-eyed into an abyss.  What was I going to be in that next stage?  But I came to terms with it.  I gave away my brand new maternity clothes that I had actually gone out and bought - no more hand-me-downs from people who are not shaped like me!  I had taken down the crib for the first time in 18 years.  I was giving away baby clothes.  And I turn up pregnant!  


And I debated telling Steve.  At all.  I was getting used to the idea of a new life stage.  I could just not say anything and quietly miscarry in a week or two (he's still not convinced that second miscarriage was even a pregnancy - he's prudent about major things like that) and life would go on.  


And therein is the moral dilemma.  It is the same dilemma that occurs in late-life medical decisions.  If you know of a procedure that could save a person's life, but you choose not to use it, is it tantamount to murder?  On the other hand, if the person can't live without that procedure, was their life meant to continue?  Some people may say that the life of an old person who is in the last weeks of life, who has lived a full life is different from an unborn child, who can't even be identified visually as a child yet.  I look at it from a purely selfish standpoint, off in the future and I think, "The next time I would be having a baby I would be 50.  Fifty!  5!0!  At what point does this become ridiculous?"  But just because it is not the norm to be having a baby at that age does not mean it is ridiculous. Technically, progesterone is infertility medication, but it is relatively inexpensive.  I need two fills of the prescription ranging in price from $60 to $120. I pay more for a blood panel.  It is not a hardship to our family, nor is it placing a burden on people paying insurance, having their costs go up because I want an expensive treatment to get pregnant.  Every single one of the patriarchal wives in the Bible were barren and had babies in their thirties and beyond; in Sarah's case, she was 90!  My children are still excited about us having a baby, so there is no emotional drama over the pregnancy.  Abri and I hiked 20 miles in 3 days above and below ground at Mammoth Cave when I was 6 weeks pregnant, so there are no health issues.    Our midwife pointed out that having had no Downs' babies in my previous post-35 babies, my chances of having one now are not high.  Steve's excited.  We already have all the baby gear, so there's no increase of expense there.  I would be fine not having anymore children, so I have no psychological mess of needing to have a baby to make me feel loved, or whatever psychobabble you want to throw at it.   So, why would I think it ridiculous to be having a baby at 50, as long as God sees fit to make me pregnant?  Only the views of modern society that say that women are supposed to have their children and then live their lives.  I mentioned that I was pregnant at knitting group and was met with dead silence.  Later, a lady did congratulate me, but I'd never been confronted with the dead silence before.  Fortunately, at 46, I could handle it.  You don't learn how to boss 9 kids around without learning to be confident in yourself to some extent.  But, that is the only reason I can think of to be appalled at the thought of being pregnant at 50, perhaps.  The ancient Jews would call me blessed!   So, there it is: I'm blessed!