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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Father Interrupted (Prenatal Hell, Pt. 1)

I have an interview tomorrow. I am fully anticipating the interview standard, "What do you see yourself doing in five years?"

Five years ago, I had two children, resided in Fairfield, Ohio, had a good job with a solid wage. My five-year answer at that point in time would not have come close to being close to describing where I am now and the path that got me here.

I started this blog a few years ago not really knowing what I wanted to blog about, and you can see that it has been several years since I last posted, so I believe that I got it partly right when I titled the blog Blogger Interrupted, but I should have titled it Father Interrupted. There's a lot of detail to make up, but the triplet pregnancy did not go well. Early on in the pregnancy it was apparent that one of the triplets was not developing according to schedule. Well, none of the triplets was developing according to schedule, but Baby A was even more so than the other two. Babies A and B were identical boys, and C was a singleton girl. We picked out the names Ethan, Devon, and Reagan respectively.

I just realized there is so much to say that bringing everything up to speed in one post could be construed as intolerable cruelty to humans, so I will try to tell our story in several posts.

The remainder of this post will be on prenatal care, or as I have come to know it: prenatal hell. It is my opinion that those who specialize in high risk prenatal care can only reduce their liability by eliminating the risk factors. So as an expecting parent, the cycle is as follows. You love your unborn child, you care for your unborn child (which in the paternal sense means to meet every need of the expectant mother, both physical and emotional), you look forward to prenatal visits with excitement, during the prenatal visits you endure the explainations of how your children are at risk for the assortment of birth defects, you listen to your options as the specialists slant the conversation toward reducing those risks, you leave shattered, you second guess what the right thing to do is, then you embrace each other and pray. You go home with resolve that your decision is the right thing. You love your child, you care for your child, you look forward to the next visit with excitement and anticipation.

Ultimately, we are not in control of the events that shape our lives. However, we are in control of our responses. We can choose to live in fear, or be filled with joy.

Well my 6 month old (yeah, there is a LOT to catch up on) is crying so I had better wrap things up.

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