I sent her a picture of the ultrasound picture as the first real communication since the awkward one about aborting my baby. Her reply wasn't even close to upbeat, so I knew she was still feeling weird about the whole situation. We talked shortly after and she kept saying that she wanted to be the one person who was giving me the straight facts, like my OBGYN, since it seemed like everyone else was sugar coating things. I told her that no matter what negative thing she says to me, I have read it online, and I have told myself that same thing a hundred times just today. It was baffling to me how my upbeat and positive friend was being so pessimistic and trying to urge me to consider an abortion. I was shocked to say the least.
Eventually she told me that her main concern is for my life. She was under the impression that if something goes wrong with the pregnancy I am going to die. I said to myself, "WTF? Is this the 1800s? Maybe my friend did not do as much reading on this subject as she says she did." That's when I laid out the risks as they were laid out to me. Aside from the risk of sepsis from infection, all of the risks lay with the baby. And I will be under the constant care of my OBGYN because of the rarity of my pregnancy. If I start to feel sick, I'm fairly certain that the first thing they will check is for infection. She even asked if Dave and I talked about what to do if it came down to choosing my life over the baby's life. I already know, not because of a recent discussion, but because of that stupid movie with Demi Moore. He would choose to save my life. As he says, 'We can always make more babies, but our children need a mother.'
After our conversation, I realized what it is all about. She is as scared of losing the baby as I am. She doesn't want to have to go to a funeral for a stillborn baby. Obviously, no one wants to. I can understand that if she were in my shoes she would probably have a very difficult time deciding to keep or abort. For me, the decision is easy. When it's someone else's baby, even mine, she would support the decision to have a little pain now rather than enormous pain later. Also, she kind of did think it was the 1800s and a late-term miscarriage could mean the loss of the mother too. I cleared that up for her too. At least I hope I did.
Today, she has been a lot more upbeat with exclamations in her emails about the baby. She told me that she now wants to tell everyone about my pregnancy because of how happy it is to be having another baby. I know she will respect my wishes to wait if that's what I'm going to do.
I'm glad that her and I were able to talk about it in a mature way. I know too many people who wouldn't be able to do that sort of thing, which makes me appreciate her that much more. I just wish that I didn't have to worry about her feelings and reactions about this. But it's probably something I'm going to have to get used to. It's kind of a mixed bag of emotions for anyone involved. As it is, my husband's mother hasn't called to say anything even though he told his father. But I have to be sensitive to the fact that she lost a child to SIDS and is probably having a hard time sorting out her own feelings. At least she isn't projecting her feelings on to me. Which is why I haven't told my insensitive borderline personality disorder step-mother.
My friend is coming by tonight for dinner. Hopefully she makes it up to me by ordering us all Chinese food. Joking! Or am I?
No comments:
Post a Comment