When I was planning our wedding I used this website called theknot.com. Through it’s community message boards I found out about the best wedding venues in our area, scored some amazing deals on our vendors and in the process got to know a group of women with a common interest – wedding planning. Through our long diatribes over the perfect dress and the errant bridesmaid we became friends. Some of those friendships have since spilled over into my “real life”.
The Knot, sensed how wildly popular it’s message boards were becoming and expanded their franchise to include a new website called thenest.com. The idea was that after marriage most people buy a house and combine finances and even cook for the first time. So where would those people go? To The Nest. To talk to other newlyweds who could feel their pain, lend their advice and trade some recipes. The nest also had a board called “Babies on the Brain” for those obsessed with having babies. That board expanded at such a rate that they again capitalized on their franchise by creating thebump.com. Here you can go to chat about everything about charting your ovulation to breast pumps to what to do if your mother in law wants to be in the delivery room.
I made the normal progression from The Knot to The Nest, when we starting planning for a family I turned to The Bump. So why am I telling you all this?
Yesterday afternoon, a fellow “bumpie” who I didn’t know personally, but saw on The Bump and followed through her blog – a woman who according to her husband suffered:
• A year of failed pregnancy attempts
• Three failed IUIs
• Two failed IVFs
• A chemical pregnancy
• Two ER trips for bleeding
• Emergency surgery to remove an ovary and a fallopian tube
• A shortened cervix and a doctor who would do nothing about it
• Implantation of a cerclage
• Bedrest for two months
• C-Diff
• Water breaking at only 24 weeks
lost one of her precious triplets, whom she concieved through IVF, at barely 8 weeks. And suddenly what we’re about to embark on is very, very real. The idea of having multiples and the risk to their health. The risk to my own health trying to concieve this baby (or these babies) and the risks of carrying them.
I’m sad for this poor woman and her husband and the two little gorgeous babies that are still fighting to gain weight and stay healthy every day. And I’m sad for Joe and I that this is the path that we have to walk to start our family.
Life should be easier than this.
