Why?

I don't usually take the time to explain myself, but before I tell you anything I'm going to tell you why I chose to start a blog on this topic. I mean, why would I do that, right, why would I share something so personal?

I don't believe that these balanced translocations are a rare occurence, I think they happen a lot. My evidence? Every woman on my mother's side of the family has it. My grandmother, my mother, my aunt, and myself, we all have balanced translocations. I always knew that my aunt and my grandmother had some sort of chromosomal abnormality (which we found out recently, but that's a different story for a different day) but what it was I didn't know. And my mother asserted that she had no such thing, it was something just the two of them shared.

If I would have understood then what I understand now I wouldn't have avoided the two miscarriages I've had. I don't pretend that things would have gone much differently. But I would have known why it went wrong, and for me, knowing gives me comfort.

My miscarriages tore me up in ways I can't explain, and every single day I asked myself what I could have done differently, how I could have prevented them. I didn't know then that the miscarriages were a blessing, my body doing what it was supposed to do, recognizing that there was something wrong with my embryos and letting them go. It's a blessing, I know it. Had my body not done that I could be dealing with a child that is severely handicapped, much more than my cousin is. Of course, I would have loved any baby that I was given, but I also don't hold any illusions about what's going on.

I know I sound callous, it's hard not to when you've miscarried twice in six months, and then had to wait six weeks to be told at the end of it that there was something wrong which could not be fixed. But I've still got lots of hope, because now I know what's going on, now I know that it's not something I've done, it's just this part of my genetic makeup that I can't control.

To me, this is comforting. . .

Next Time: My First Miscarriage