biological cruelty
Did you know that when you're over 45, you have less than a 1% chance of conceiving naturally? I didn't. Not until I recently (and rather unexpectedly) found myself as one of the less than 1%. Yep, I got pregnant. It was a shock to say the least, but it's amazing how fast I embraced the idea of having a baby even at my ripe old age. The man seemed excited too.
My doctor was less enthusiastic, practically calling the pregnancy unviable from the moment my blood test came back positive. Her reasons were statistical-miscarriage rates are extremely high for women over 45. I already knew that because in between the time of my 3 positive home pregnancy tests and the blood test results, I'd filled my days obsessively reading everything on the internet about "advanced maternal age" pregnancies. So I tried hard to keep my emotions in check and expect that this pregnancy was unlikely to go anywhere. I wasn't very successful, though.
When I had my first ultrasound a week or so later, they measured the "fetal pole" to be 6 weeks 1 day and no heartbeat was found. With that news, my doctor declared it unviable. There was another ultrasound scheduled for the following week, as well as more blood tests to confirm everything and now that I'm on the other side of all that, it's a done deal that this little sliver of a life never made it beyond 6 weeks. And I'm so sad about this. I'm like crazy sad.
What makes it all worse is that I didn't get pregnant and miscarry, I got pregnant and it died and I didn't miscarry. What kind of mother nature fuckery is that? As I sit here writing this, I've got a teeny tiny dead fetus in my womb that for whatever reason won't come out. "Missed miscarriage", they call it. Fucked up, I call it.
Now I've got 3 options: wait to miscarry naturally (my doctor put a two week limit on that idea because of the risk of infection if it stays in there too long), take some pills to induce a miscarriage (I've read nothing but horrible accounts from women who took that route), or schedule a D&C to have my uterus scraped out. Eep. What I'd like is a 4th option that includes a backwards time jump so I can abstain from sex and prevent all of this from ever happening. But since I can't have that, I've settled on waiting another week to see if I'll miscarry and then schedule a D&C if I don't.
This sucks.