Reading is bad for your health.

So a good number of women in today's Age of Information know about the famed Babycenter.com site, where you can, the instant you discover you're pregnant - or even before, go and gorge yourself with information about the magical event of pregnancy and childbirth.... There really is a wealth of information on the site, and they'll send you, if you sign up, a weekly newsletter telling you that your baby (or babies in my case) is (are) the size of a lentil bean, then blueberry, then fig, then lime, so on. I'm convinced it's an attempt to coerce us into eating more produce, because all we really want to eat is brownies, crab Rangoon and Apple Jacks cereal. There is also a board that you can go on where you can talk to other pregnant chicks - a lot of innocent back and forth about everything and anything you can imagine pertaining to the topic of pregnancy and childbirth, (examples of topics: "how to deal with rude pregnancy comments," "cool cribs," "will you carry your baby around in a sling?" "have you been in the mood?" "My experience with hemorrhoids." Seriously, no stone goes unturned with these chicks. "TMI! TMI!" I find myself thinking. Although, there are a lot of times (otherwise I wouldn't visit at least once a day) where I learn something - especially from the moms who have other kids, and also especially, if not exclusively, from the March Multiples board. There are some great ladies on there who are all in the same boat as me, a lot of them pregnant for the first time, with twins. We all kind of keep an eye on each other and post belly pix and ultrasound pix (okay, I really only care about the pictures, let's face it) and talk about how we're feeling and how fat we're getting. I'm one of the thinner of the bunch, which is always encouraging - because I'm vein like that. Kidding. Not really. ---------- Although my experience with this board has been really positive - I really feel like I'm part of a little community within this group of women - sometimes it can turn into a train wreck. I bring this up because I just recovered a few minutes ago from an episode of uncontrollable sobbing due to the news posted by one of the ladies that her nuchal translucency scan (the "blah blah blah" scan that I referred to in my last post), came back extraordinarily high on one of her babies, like a 5.6 or something (they like for the number to be closer to 1). I can't tell you what that number means but I can tell you it's not good. It means that it is highly likely that that particular baby has Down's Syndrome, or worse, Trisomy 13 or 18, which in most cases results in death. Even worse (yes, it gets worse) is that that particular baby, Baby A, just may in fact die in utero, causing, of course, irreparable heartbreak to mom and dad, but also putting mom's and Baby B's health in jeopardy. ----------- I know things happen. I know that everyone has a plan. But situations like this make me want to question that - and enclose myself in bubble wrap and sit on the couch for the next 24 or so weeks. This woman's story breaks my own heart - I don' t know her, or her husband, or her son (which - again it gets worse - is a surviving twin from a previous multiple pregnancy that was reduced from triplets. Mom delivered tragically prematurely at 24 weeks, proving the demise of one of the twins and leaving the surviving son to struggle in the NICU for 115 days - he's now a healthy 5 year old). I don't think she's ever robbed the Shriner's Hospital trust fund, or ran over an old lady and drove off not reporting it.... She didn't mention any of that anyway. Just a regular woman, wanting so badly to have a child. Tragedies where children are lost are infuriating to me, although I understand that those cases are supposed to teach us humility, and that life is fragile. I find myself praying, a lot... more than I ever have before.... And I just hope it's enough to keep my children safe. That's about all we can do, right? There really is only so much a person can take, I feel, before their soul is damaged beyond repair. I'm not sure that you ever truly recover from burying a child - regardless of how old. Sorry if this brought on bouts of uncontrollable sobbing for anyone, back to puppies and roses on the next post, promise. Lesson: you can, in fact, read too much. I'm taking a break from Babycenter for a few days.