Comments

You are all amazing! Thank you for your very thought-provoking comments to my diatribe.

Holley ~ You are exactly right and I hope you don't mind if I adopt your words as my new motto...People never get smarter or stronger if they are given no information.

Sweetcoalminer ~ No worries. Your thoughts are honest and fair. I have a whole lot of thoughts about lawyers and the legal profession as it relates to wrongful death and medical malpractice, not the least of which is my absolute horror at the way justice is dealt away for a certain price. My lawyer may not be happy with me for saying this...but no amount of money will replace our Alex. I am pursuing a lawsuit simply because I want the doctors to KNOW that I know they screwed up. And I want to help protect the next innocent woman who walks into that practice. If ultimately there is no case or there is a case and we lose, I can handle that. But I won't be silenced. I won't ever let them think that they can continue to do what they do because people are too afraid to speak up against them. This is too important. And my dare was not directed at you...but is a general dare to anyone involved in my situation. Go ahead and say I didn't do what a normally prudent person would do. My defense...I did what the doctors told me to. I would love to see the legal spin put on that one.

In no way did you offend me. And I'm sorry I sounded defensive or as though you had upset me. It's difficult to express my emotions accurately sometimes.

My dear friend lauralu ~ I completely understand where you are coming from and I am sorry if I sound insensitive. I often get on my soapbox and can't see when my mouth may have hurt someone's feelings. Of course the naivete of pre-loss pregnancy is something you would long for. All the worry and the stress is not something to take lightly, by any means.

Please understand that my opinion is not purely from a sane, ration, objective level. My opinion comes from the knowledge that my son could very well be alive if only...

While you come from a place where all that preventative stuff was valiantly tried, and ultimately failed, I come from a place where I didn't even know. I didn't have the necessary information because everyone apparently thought it too rare an occurrence to share with me. In fact, I was distracted by the possibilities of gestational diabetes and other accusations based on my being a fat pregnant woman...when I didn't even have gestational diabetes. I tested negative three times for it. What a waste of time that was. What a completely useless exercise. And yet nobody thought to non-stress test my baby when I was so sick and complaining of symptoms. It simply boggles my mind...and pisses me off.

So while I understand the need to feel blissfully naive, I can't help but think that that naivete comes at the price of my son's life. I know it's not logical and it's not fair. But dammit, it's not fair that I had to bury my son because nobody told me what to look for.

And honestly...if someone had told you all the information during a previous "normal" pregnancy (and you didn't face any the problems you did)...don't you think you would still maintain some real level of naivete? I mean...you were told about Downs, and gestational diabetes, and all that without falling to pieces. I would venture to guess that your lack of naivete really stems from actually losing Hans, rather than talking about the possibility of losing him. But I could be wrong.

Jill ~ Two things that immediately sprung to my mind reading this post is that 20000 people in any segment of society is a massive number. It is ludicrous that so many deaths can be ignored and I feel certain that the deaths of 20000 women, or African Americans, or Jewish men (etc..) would be met with panic and massive financial and academic resources.

Absolutely! For some reason, this particular segment of the population is just supposed to suck it up and accept that this is an "acceptable risk." I don't understand it. And I don't understand the thought process that says we're too emotionally weak to handle the realities...the information.

mopsy ~ I totally agree. The "Joy" of pregnancy is a luxury, not a right. It wasn't until the latter half of the twentieth century when women became deluded into thinking pregnancy = guaranteed living Gerber baby.

You know, I hadn't even thought of that. I'm going to have to do more research. I wonder when it was we changed our approach and became so completely full of sunshine about pregnancy? When did we lose the natural fear and why? It really hasn't been that long, so it shouldn't be too hard to pinpoint. I wonder if it isn't directly related to doctors and medical professionals repeatedly telling us "not to worry." It's like we went from a realistic look at pregnancy and its risks to some sort of mass delusion that we had NO worries at all. Bizarre.

To everyone who can't see my blog in it's holiday format, what web browser are you using? (**never mind...just let me know if you can see it now**)

Now that I've beaten the horse to death...I need to come up with something original to blog about. hmmm...