Smile, breathe and go slowly.
Yesterday morning we went to the doctor for the first prenatal checkup. After a lot of poking and probing the doctor was unable to find a heartbeat. The fetus was too small and had no movement. They call this "intra uterine demise." Most of the rest of us call it a miscarriage. It was a fairly wild ride. My only hope when we went in was to hear the heartbeat. The doctor was unbelievably gentle while still being very direct. I felt sadness right away but never scared or confused. I imagine in the last twenty years he has given this information to people many, many times. He said right from the beginning that he was very pessimistic and so I wasn't waiting all morning for the second ultra sound believing that things would be different. Hoping, of course, but not truly believing. I keep coming back to something I heard in a dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hahn (Tick not han) a few weeks ago. Life happens when the prope...