:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Friday, July 29, 2005 ::

Nick's lame copout.

I was surprised when I heard someone say Nick was "pro-life". I didn't get that at all from the "apology" at the end of the song. It went something like this:

"I ain't makin' no judgements.
I ain't makin' no decisions."

I still like the song, and I still think it has already saved the world for a few people out there.

As an aside, I wish people would stop making this statement:

"No one knows what it's like to be open prey in your mother's womb unless you were born after 1973."

Oh really? Tell that to all the jar babies in Magda Denes' Necessity and Sorrow book. Hello, this notion just perpetuates the fallacy that if Roe v. Wade is ever reversed abortion will be illegal.

When it happens abortion will still be legal in the vast majority of states. The only thing Roe v. Wade did was mandate the legalization of abortion for the country. It took the right of local government away; individual states could no longer decide what they wanted for themselves. In short Roe v. Wade took away the right of the state to choose.

:: ashli 11:19 PM # ::
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BUST!

:: ashli 1:20 AM # ::
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This reminded me of Rowan.

You know... the kid had a chance. It was small, but it was his, and he had a right to it. A LEGAL right to it. After reading the article, it hit me for the first time: Rowan really, truly had an honest chance of surviving the abortion if only the abortion facility had called 911 like Rowan's mommy begged them to. Heck, he might have survived if the abortion facility would have simply let paramedics in after Angele called them herself. Evidently, staff doesn't really believe in the right to choose.

And anyway, can you see the looks on the faces of waiting "patients" as a little one is wheeled out of the back room with paramedics actively resuscitating him? I mean, this could possibly be something of a turnoff to a waiting mother or two.

For cryin' out loud, people, consider the scope of potential financial loss the abortion facility could have incurred. These people have to eat too lest they lack the energy to get up in the morning and help women be equal to men in the workplace. Even abortionists need cash to live, baby, and we're talkin' second trimester abortion day. These are the big mamas, cash cows. Why let a retro-fetus get in the way of a living when a killing can be made?

Plus, it just wouldn't be fair to all the women trying to exercise their right to choose. Women waiting to abort their late term children should not be victimized by the inconvenience of having to witness a mass of cells flailing around fighting for his life.

:: ashli 2:17 PM # ::
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Abortion: Kind of a bummer.

:: ashli 11:06 PM # ::
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Apparently sponsored by NARAL.

HT: RA

********
Tennessee, you're in my heart today on your due date...and every day. You would be 8. I miss you. Gianna won't speak to the mother who aborted her. Surely, you would feel the same about me. I love you anyway. I always will. There are no mulligans in abortion. "I'm sorry you missed your life," isn't enough. "I love you isn't enough." But I do. What can I say? I do! I know it means nothing now; that's abortion. What happened to you is not OK. May God hide you in the shadow of His wing away from the pain of what I did to you.

:: ashli 2:08 PM # ::
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Here's a puzzler.

HT: TRA

P.S.
God is alive and well and loves TRA.
(And so do I.)

:: ashli 1:15 PM # ::
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Discrimination?

:: ashli 1:49 PM # ::
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Yikes.

HT: Aa

:: ashli 2:45 PM # ::
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A very caring "pro-lifer" just sent me this hoping it would help me.

Once again we see the theme of forgiveness and then "healing".

Perhaps if my only link to my child were guilt I could be "forgiven and set free". But you see... there's that pesky little matter of love.

After all the guilt is gone, my child is still dead and the death was still sanguine. It grieves a mother. I'm terribly sorry if that doesn't sit well with the Hollowell crowd... the crowd that balks at the idea that the mother of an aborted child could feel love for that child.

It's love, love, love that keeps me up at night. The culpability lingers, but the love is bigger, the missing badder.

People who lost children in the 9/11 attacks have no guilt whatsoever to contend with, and yet they still grieve daily, still anguish over the circumstances of a "bad death" happening to someone so very dear to them. I have that, and the cherry of guilt on top. Why would it be easier for me then?

It is something of a challenge dealing ad nauseum with attitudes that can only see abortion in terms of guilt.

My husband and I looked forward to the day we would be holding our child in our arms in a hospital delivery room. Our child was real, came at the perfect time, was loved and wanted by us, etc. All the things that happy parents experience at discovering they are pregnant we experienced. We started that first pregnancy with awe and wonder and love, and I really DO NOT CARE if others dispute that because of the tragic, messed up way it ended. HG does things to a woman. And so does abortion. These things, at least for me, expiation can not heal.

:: ashli 9:41 PM # ::
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You don't tug on Superman's cape.
You don't spit into the wind.
You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger.
And you don't mess around with the Banannie!

HT: RealChoice

:: ashli 11:59 PM # ::
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I'm ok, people. I have my moments. But that's life in the Cell.

(Thanks for all the eLove.)

:: ashli 11:50 PM # ::
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Well heyyyy, it's five after midnight and whaddaya know! I'm having myself a li'l "Dear God in heaven, I killed my child!" freak out session.

I'm telling you, I read everything in the abortion facility's literature and this was just not in the brochure.

I needs must retire. My children (you know, the living ones) need a well rested mother tomorrow. Would one be willing to come over? Because I will be zonked.

Humor, humor.
Comic relief.
Talk me down, man.
TALK ME DOWN.

Breathing deeply.
Telling myself the moment will pass.

It's something of a panic attack, but not a real panic attack, the kind that don't make sense. I had those during my fourth pregnancy. They come from nowhere. They leave a residue of impending doom. Total flight response. Nothing to wrap your head around. This is different. There's a sort of panic, but not wrought by impending doom. Rather precipitated by retro doom. Someone else's demise and my blasted survival without him/her. Tomorrow looms... a sense of living another day without the would-be 8-year-old. My child.

My child.

Presently, if I flew into my darkened room, crawled into bed... I'd be asleep in less than ten minutes, and yet I persist. I am slightly afraid of dreaming tonight.

C'mon, Mother. This is nothing new.

There's a wee one at my church. She was born on my tummy mummy's exact due date. I look at her and think of my own. I look at her and die.

...a moment passes.
...a moment more.

Ah, the lifelong instant departs in the sense of immediate emotional urgency. I will let it go until the next one. As with contractions I will breathe in the interim.

God finds me here
looking at my hands,
longing for the love they decimated.

:: ashli 3:30 AM # ::
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I think I'm in love.

:: ashli 11:43 PM # ::
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I am so furious about this article that it brings me to tears. It reminds me of this. The answer is not to vilify women who have already taken ownership of their tragedy, so much so that they are willing to flay themselves for a public who might respond hatefully.

Hollowell repeatedly uses inflammatory language to drive the knife of blame in deeper. She does not understand the SICLE and her seeming "authority" is particularly vexing.

"Rowan's mother, Angele, thought she wanted an abortion."

If she knew Angele she would know that Angele did not "want" an abortion. I did not "want" an abortion. Who "wants" an abortion?

"Reportedly, the laminaria cannot be removed even if the woman changes her mind. She must return for the subsequent completion of the abortion."

Patently untrue. It is potentially dangerous to disseminate this kind of misinformation. Women change their minds. Laminaria can be removed, affording the mother a chance at a successful pregnancy outcome.

"Despite the calculated decision to end her son's life, he was born alive."

"Calculated decision" is neither compassionate nor completely accurate. There were a lot of "calculations" going on in the midst of Angele's crisis. Abortion was not the first choice. It was, in fact, the last thing on the list. "Calculated" evokes shades of coldbloodedness. For many women, perhaps even most, abortion is more complex than an unfeeling woman walking into a facility and asking to have her child butchered. I don't think that portraying a reported quarter of our fellow women as emotionally inferior is entirely accurate nor does it help anyone.

There is a lot people don't know about Angele and the lengths to which she went to try and have Rowan. But, OK, she ended up the stirrups anyway. What now?

Blaming her is futile. It is a stick that beats down a woman already groaning under the weight of her SICLE. It is unnecessary, gratuitous. It's a "God hates fags!" poster at Matthew Shepherd's funeral. Furthermore, the approach sends at least some hurting mothers running into the arms of abortion supporters who may not be telling the truth, but who will at least refrain from pummeling them when they're so desperately down. These groups offer a brand of sympathy and acceptance, and in the midst of despair some moms are willing to meet the terms of any form of comfort even if it costs them something personally.

"I for one am not prepared to extend an immediate healing hand to Angele; at least not until I hear her take ownership for her actions."

Only Christ can expiate Angele's SICLE. Angele is not required to give account to Dr. Hollowell.

"To my mind, Angele premeditated the murder of her son. She traveled to Florida from her home state to seek a clinic experienced in late-term abortions. She got educated on the process and chose the method of his execution ? stillbirth."

One may have a manifold of snappy titles, but if one has not love...
While Hollowell's statement is technically true, I am disappointed in her apparent lack of grace . While crisis rationale doesn't make abortion right, those of us with SICLEs can understand and identify with Angele's mental "back-and-forth" in a period of great and terrible desperation.

She was in a crisis. Abortion is legal. Everyone was telling her to abort. Professionals were telling her to do it. Perhaps it seemed she would almost be an idiot NOT to do it. A cruel idiot at that... inviting ages of torment into the lives of her children. Oh, what to do? What to do?

Perhaps she came to believe that she had a responsibility to abort. Perhaps sacrificing so much to keep Rowan was even somehow twisted into a sort of perceived selfishness. She was in a terrible, desperate situation that goes much, much deeper than Hollowell is willing to go. It's easier to point a finger than to sit down and listen, to try and figure out what would cause a woman to choose this. It takes time, effort, and genuine concern to attempt to figure out how to solve such a problem that similar problems might be circumvented in the lives of others... others, by the way, who aren't bothering to talk or reach out, precisely because of responses like Hollowell's.

"Inexplicably, digoxin was never administered. Without the fatal injection, Angele had to know he could be born alive."

Angele has not spent her life in the abortion industry and is not terribly familiar with second trimester abortion techniques. Plus, she was lost on auto-pilot inside the numbing void that enabled her to "solve" all her problems with the advised, advised, advised abortion.

Like most of us, Angele was rather naive about abortion, thinking that perhaps she had misunderstood the process and had been given the digoxin in the I.V. She was under the impression that the digoxin would simply target Rowan's heart and "put him to sleep". (George Tiller's staff tells women that digoxin turns their children into angels.) It never dawned on Angele that facility staff wouldn't do what they were supposed to do as "medical professionals". She trusted them implicitly.

Instead of taking myself to the nearest hospital, I stupidly sat in a hotel tub waiting to see if I would bleed to death or survive. Why? Because the friendly neighborhood abortionist told me to. I complied like a "good girl"; give me my Scooby snack.

"Still determined to end his life,"

More volatile language.

"At the sight of him alive after delivery, yes, she cradled him and told him she 'loved' him."

Ah, the word "loved" in quotes. Hollowell makes the point I blogged a little over a week ago. How on earth could a mom with a SICLE "love" her child? Well, she can't, of course. She doesn't deserve to. She can only feel guilt, saith too many participants of the "pro-life" movement.

Perhaps this is why the logic is: remove the woman's guilt (via the death of Christ) and voila! She is "healed". Or should be. Or better be. (Even though the same "pro-lifers" concomitantly remind those considering the SICLE that they will always be mothers even if their children are dead.)

Is it so hard to understand that we as a society have been convinced that killing is kindness? Does anyone really believe that Mike Schiavo thinks that "letting Terri go" was mean? In case anyone missed it, here in America, we are being taught to love one another to death.

Angele loved Rowan more than anyone else ever could. Angele made a bad choice in a crisis. A bad choice that she owns. A bad choice that she is trying to expose to anyone who will hear. A bad choice that she is trying to dissuade anyone else from making. A bad choice that America has legalized. Legalization sends a message. Smoking pot is illegal. Illegalization sends a message. Illicit drugs are bad. "Abortion is just a personal choice... one that is only personally bad to personal people who have personally silly beliefs."

Think of what we have been taught since Roe v. Wade. Think of the children who have been nursed at Roe's teat by our government, by liberal parents, by friends, physicians, etc. Blaming Angele is fruitless. Examining the problems and the ways to ameliorate them is not. Shift the focus; Learn to love.

"Yes, she called for help and no one came or answered. But her response reeks more of fear and guilt than love."

Love denied. Fear and guilt on the other hand, yes. Sure. A given. But love? Prohibited. Angele's response, we are told, reeks. More language. Hollowell's personal disgust is evident, punitive fruitlessness.

"Bottom line, if she really wanted him alive she could have – should have – gone directly to the hospital when she went into labor. (Angele has two other children, so she knows something about giving birth.) "

Hollowell also asserts, as did Angele's facility of choice, that the laminaria could not be removed, that Rowan's fate was already sealed, so the comment is not only contradictory but terribly unfair.

Angele, really wanted Rowan to survive. From the start. She didn't know how to accomplish it. The world was telling her she couldn't. She was in a crisis. She wasn't strong enough, spiritual enough, moral enough, name your frailty. She was human and duped. Milk-drunk from Roe's blood-tinged repast.

How many abortion supporters would think twice about supporting abortion if they came face-to-face with a child, aborted in the second trimester, drowning in the toilet of an abortion facility? One? Two? More? Roe works because no one sees (and no one wants to). A dying baby in a toilet is a crash course in truth. So many of us need it. Angele is only different because she actually got it.

"But Angele cannot hide behind their inaction, callous hearts and criminal acts. She is responsible for her choice and no amount of finger pointing will change that."

(Would that Hollowell had refrained from finger pointing.)

Angele is not hiding. She voluntarily opened herself up to the type of negative scrutiny evidenced in Hollowell's composition. If there were a rooftop Angele would be shouting on it. The media doesn't want to hear it; they're not piping it into your living room, and "pro-lifers" are sitting on the story for whatever reason. Perhaps this one's too controversial for seat-warmer Sunday. Perhaps it's too lacking in the feel-good factor. Maybe it doesn't have a good beat that you can dance to. So where does Angele go but deeper and deeper inside of herself?

"As for Rowan, my heart does ache. He suffered brutally and died at the hand of his own mother."

It takes a village to abort a child, but granted, Mom is kind of a key player. This is the SICLE. We live it without anyone having to point it out.

While it can be said that Hollowell will never feel for Rowan what Angele feels for Rowan, a contest should not be made of love. If we love, we work together for the good of all. This tragic circumstance should be pause for serious reflection, a massive session of brainstorming so that solutions might be found, that another might be helped, that it never happens again.

"But Rowan joins the ranks of thousands of children who die each day by abortion"

And his mother joins the ranks of millions of mothers who are hated by people who lack compassion, love and grace.

:: ashli 1:57 PM # ::
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I notice NARAL took their Screw Abstinence page down.

:: ashli 10:24 AM # ::
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NARAL screws up again.

HT:Aa

:: ashli 5:45 PM # ::
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Dennis the menace visited Florida and borrowed my computer for about a day and a half. It was really weird not to be online every spare moment.

I almost... started... living again. (Shudder.)

Anyway, in the spirit of destructive winds, I feel a total tirade coming on regarding an article I read on Rowan and his mom. A ROARING RANT! Yeah, that's a threat. And if it seems Hollow well...

Look for it in a day or so.

:: ashli 2:38 AM # ::
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A dear friend sent me this.
(More here. Click on "Moviemails" and then "Vitae Caring Foundation".)

:: ashli 1:50 AM # ::
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"[Partial birth abortion] was cheaper for the insurance company and it guaranteed a dead baby – not one who would require surgery and expensive medical care."

HT: Aa and RC

:: ashli 1:17 AM # ::
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With permission, excerpts from a recently received email:

"It's 6 AM and I have been up for the last three hours doing nothing but reading your blog (browsing way back into the archives too). Yes it is on of those nights..........I am sure you know well what I mean."

"I always end up frustrated and angry and want to grab people by the shoulders and shake them and just scream out of sheer frustration when I get into debates with people over abortion. Especially with people who have never had an abortion and who "NEVER would myself, but I would never tell others what to do with their own body." Oh I want to shake some sense into them."

"Sometimes I immerse myself in anything and everything abortion and child loss related and other times I run as fast as I can to try to hide from it and usually find that through excessive drinking to feel numb but it always comes back........always. And tonight it's back with a vengeance. But such is life and how my life will be.......by my 'own choice'."

"I am hopeful President Bush will nominate a judge who will be able to see how many lives are completely destroyed through this 'freedom' we have been granted. I do wonder what the founding fathers would think if they saw how their words had been distorted and manipulated to include that women have the right to kill unborn children."

"I just want to shake people and scream at them and sometimes I want to show the whole world my box of things I have kept as connections to my child and show them my diaries and letters I have written and basically just show them my pain to try to make them understand......and I know it's not about me.....abortion needs to stop because a baby dies, period. But I get so very angry with so called feminists who have never had their feet in stirrups and fight wholeheartedly for this 'right' of ours to kill our child thinking it is such a wonderful freedom that we have.

What freedom is it to feel no other hope? Makes no sense at all. Women deserve so much better."

:: ashli 2:42 PM # ::
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The New York based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) will "live to fight another day", and perhaps, because of the CRR's recent legal loss, so will several tiny Floridians.

There's a saying here in Florida that the more south you go the more north you get. We have a large influx of New Yorkers. Some of them have run for office and won, so now we have New Yawkuhs representing "Bible belt" southerners, which is beyond me, but there you have it.

New York was "country when country was uncool". That is to say they were aborting children pre-1973, when it was not federally mandated for the country, i.e., when states that didn't want it weren't forced to have it anyway. The late abortion supporter Magda Denes' book, "In Necessity and Sorrow", chronicals these early and late term convenience abortions in a strikingly honest manner. If you can get a hold of a copy you must read it.

I think it's interesting that in long ago years the "South" was intent on disenfranchising a whole subset of people while the "North" was determined to save them. I marvel at the somewhat reversed roles.

Long ago the North was right, but now they are so very wrong and they are ever spreading their "compassionate" malevolence like a cancer to other parts of the country.

For years in Florida a child couldn't get her ears pierced without Mom and Dad's permission, but an abortionist could crack open her uterus and dig out her second (or even third) trimester baby while Mom and Dad were none the wiser. Florida parents voted to stop this insanity.

A message for the CRR from Florida parents of Florida children:

THIS IS NOT NEW YORK.
(Yet.)

:: ashli 12:25 PM # ::
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Another response about the issue of comparing grief perspectives:

"Isn't it ironic that women like you are held up as an excuse for keeping abortion readily available -- everybody wants abortion to be there just in case some ailing woman "needs" it. But then when the ailing woman, in her darkest moment, succumbs to what she's been taught -- that this is there for her to help her -- she's treated like a pariah.

Ashli, you have every right to feel the same pain as baby Henry's mom. Your baby was taken from you by a horrible illness, to the point where you were HALLUCINATING!"

The people around you, who were supposed to show you another way, who were supposed to be the voice of reason and intellect while you were out of your mind, failed you. You know darned well that people's decision-making skills go to Hell in a handbasket when they're stressed. That's how abortionists stay in business in the first place! They capitalize on that! And you were way beyond stress into the realm of trauma. Serious debilitating trauma. Your body was
self-destructing all around you. Something primitive kicked in and you didn't know how to fight it. You'd been taught that it was WRONG to fight it, FUTILE to fight it.

Here in Korea, we get AFN, the American Forces Network, and they do a lot of features about how POWs endured torture and deprivation. It was because they'd been given the tools they needed! The Code of Conduct gave them something to cling to, gave them structure, gave meaning to their suffering. That was how they were able to endure. Because they knew they COULD endure. They'd been told that it could be done, and they were told how. They had a full toolbox.

But where was your toolbox? What were you supplied with before the HG to give you the tools you needed to get through it with your baby and your psyche intact? You were never given the tools in the first place. You were surrounded by the message that sick women need abortion, that it's heartless to come between an ailing woman and her abortion, that abortion is necessary for women's health and well being.

Just living in the US is enough to brainwash you into believing at some level that it must really BE necessary and okay. You were given rubber crutches and expected to walk on them. You were given a Fisher-Price tool kit and told to repair the Space Shuttle so it wouldn't burn up on reentry. Pick your metaphor. You were in way over your head, and that was not your fault. You had no way of forseeing it.

Now, you make it your business to hand other women toolboxes and fill those toolboxes with everything they'll need to get through. And that, my dear, is where your character shows through.

My mom beats the shit out of herself for not giving my brother an orange when he asked for it, because it was only fifteen minutes to suppertime. She told him to go play. He played with a rope in a tree and accidentally got strangled. She does the woulda coulda shoulda with herself. I did the woulda coulda shoulda with myself because I was in the yard with him when it happened. I woulda shoulda coulda gone in and told a grownup what was happening. But, human frailty being what it is, as a 2 1/2 year old child I didn't have the tools to recognize the peril and know what steps to take. Human frailty, Ashli. Mom woulda shoulda coulda given my brother the orange and he'd have been in the kitchen spoiling his supper instead of outside in the yard dying. I woulda shoulda coulda gone for a grown-up. And to me, expecting yourself to have been rational enough to have avoided the abortion table, given your circumstances, is about as reasonable as asking the two-year-old me to have recognized that Brother was in danger and run for Mom.

Oh, such a simple thing in retrospect! But damned near impossible when the thing is going down. There's a high cost of human frailty sometimes. I failed my brother. He's dead. I was an ordinary human two-year-old when he needed somebody who had more knowledge and experience than I had. Just like you were an ordinary Mom, and your baby needed somebody with way more knowledge and experience than you had. We fell short, we were just ordinary human beings with ordinary life experiences up to that point, and the death of a loved one was the result.

It hurts me to see you hold yourself to an inhuman standard. Later, when you had the tools, the knowledge and experience, you saw another baby through to birth. If you'd have had the tools, you'd have seen the first baby through, too. But you'd only learned what you needed to know to get though that pregnancy from having had the horrible, soul-crushing, devastating experience of the first pregnancy. It was no shortcoming in Ashli, other than Ashli being human. And sometimes being human sucks. You'll get no argument about that from me and my mom."

My response:

"Thanks so much for this. 99% of me accepts it. But there's still that damnable 1% that can't entirely swallow it, 1% that feels more culpable than that, and that 1% is somehow gargantuan.

Even so... your words bring me comfort. You make me feel like a better person than I actually am, and I am ever grateful. Ever, ever grateful."

:: ashli 1:40 PM # ::
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One response I've gotten from this post is a question as to why I believe that others might be offended at my comparison.

The reason I know that some will be offended is because I once belonged to a group of women who were grieving child loss before birth, and they resented the "h-e-double hockey sticks" out of me. I didn't find this out until someone finally just got sick of the fact that I killed my child, sick enough to just blurt it out... to the basic applause of myriad other members who had been secretly hating and resenting my presence for weeks.

Barbs flew including explanations of why I didn't belong and why I had no right to grieve or claim real love for a child I killed. I was reminded that they would have done "anything" to have their children while I, on the other hand, went out of my way to kill mine.

Etc.

So this is why I offered up an apology. I have lost a child through no fault of my own (baby #2), and while it was fluffly pink bunny cake compared to the SICLE, I can understand that grieving moms without SICLEs have a unique grief perspective. I imagine that it would be very hard for them to understand any reason for a SICLE much less the love and loss a mom with a SICLE might feel.

I simply want to be sensitive to every type of grieving mom. And in particular, I didn't want Henry's mom to ever stumble upon the post and feel affronted.

It's kind of a common phenomenon when many mothers who miscarry are horrified and furious to find the medical term "abortion" on their medical records. To have their experience even remotely compared to induced abortion is much more than they are willing to tolerate. But the SICLE is a poverty after all.

I don't want to add to anyone's pain.

:: ashli 2:34 PM # ::
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(Warning: Link features picture of premature infant struggling for life.)

I know that, due to culpability issues, I'm not allowed to say this, that it is offensive to some and in extremely poor taste to others... but...

My husband and I can relate to many, many aspects of this married couple's grief and loss experience:

"...no band-aid is big enough to heal me."

I apologize to all who are affronted by the audacity of such a comparison.

:: ashli 12:10 AM # ::
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"...women must be recognized as the primary moral agents in decisions of pregnancy and birth.
...the woman [is] the primary moral agent in the decisions that affect her life. Any church or society refusing to promote these policies is, in effect, promoting abortion."
~Catholics for a Free Choice
(They are their shepherd.)

"Diverse religious denominations and traditions compassionately affirm a woman's moral right to make reproductive decisions according to her own conscience and religious principles."
~Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
(The Bible as written by [insert your name here].)

"Why in the world any Christian would try and claim abortion of a soulless fetus is wrong is beyond me." And assorted Bible verses that "support" abortion found at
~Liberated Christians. (Apparently they are liberated from Christ.)

"Abortion is not murder and I feel no obligation to justify my Christianity..."
~Chuck Currie (who still isn't listening)
P.S. While you're up Chucking, take a gander at the United Church of Christ commercial.

Etc.

Well, broadband babes, they brought it up. So rev up your cable connections and have what the above could use: a healthy dose of Charles Stanley. (With particular focus on the message beginning at 39 minutes 18 seconds. Just slide the little bar on over if you can't stand hearing a full hour of wisdom.)

:: ashli 3:27 PM # ::
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I just noticed this topic which, interestingly enough, aired on the 8th anniversary of my child's untimely death. (Hit "broadband" and slide the little lever to 32 minutes: 37 seconds if you don't want to hear the whole thing.)

I'm kind of glad I missed this "anniversary" airing. It might have been a little much on that particular day. Funny how things work out.

Actually, this is a perfect segue into the teacup and the ornament mentioned ad nauseum... but by golly, for once the timestamp is correct and I'm just too tired.

(I do realize that when I finally get around to blogging the above subjects you'll already be sick to death of the whole thing.)

:: ashli 3:05 AM # ::
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Somewhat strange Britney Spears song/video accompanied by nice shots of "baby bump".

(For video, click on "Someday I Will..." in the top ten list on the right side of the screen.)

HT: Stanek!

Post Script:
OK, OK. I've watched the video again, and I think I finally get it. It's that whole "akuna matata/circle of life" kinda thang, right? She's talking about her baby and then talking to her baby about her baby's baby...
umm... right?

Cute.

:: ashli 11:31 AM # ::
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Just got back from Gainesville, Florida where I spent an alacritous 7 hours digging up everything I could on hyperemesis gravidarum. 97 articles later... the overall verdict is that there's a whole lotta nothin' goin' on, although I did read some interesting theories and one fairly smashing review.

Disheartened to see that Wernicke's encephalopathy cases have not been eradicated and disgusted to see that the psychogenic etiology theory still abounds in some professional populations (can you say "Frenchy"?). You'll forgive me, but their arguments are less based on evidence and more ad hominem. Flipping members of the GPWHC (God-playing Women Haters Club)! Ugh and double ugh.

No one knows how many children ("wanted" children for the "pro-choicers" who are reading) are aborted due to the debilitation of severe HG, but estimates indicate that roughly 5 in 1,000 develop the illness, which translates into several thousand hospitalizations in the U.S. annually. Some sources estimate 55,000 hospitalizations a year, though 39,000 were reported for one year in one of the studies I was taking a gander at. In short, big numbers have HG bad enough for hospitalization, and HG that bad translates into abortion.

In one study population the abortion rate was 8%. That's flipping high. In most of the other studies I've chanced to peruse the rate was around 1-2%. I wish we had an actual reflection of numbers, but reporting is not mandatory and women are not comfortable admitting that they opted for abortion. Planned Parenthood, whose "live-at-5" banner was seen draped across one of the main roads leading through the center of the uber liberal University of Florida, will blame those of us who oppose abortion. We've created the stigma. Of course it has nothing to do with disemboweling children. Were it not for our wholehearted rejection of that idea, society would embrace it, hunky dory scenario that it is. Silly us. Harmful us. First we ruined slavery and now this. We don't know when to quit.

I digress.

One of the things that continues to occur to me is the notion that women are being put on hold until their HG can truly be elucidated. Read: women are being made to suffer, "to get behind the 8 ball," as my beloved physician puts it, in order to prove that they are really sick. That and the fact that some aren't trained well enough to recognize the disorder. Unnecessary suffering. Suffering that steals lives. Grrr.

The grossest understatement of the century:
For sick moms, the ones who are always being used to pimp abortion to the rest of the world population, the cry should not be for easier access to abortion. The cry should be for better flipping health care.

Could any solution be more apparent???
Can I get a flipping witness?

Anyway, I'm back.
For a little while yet.

:: ashli 10:12 AM # ::
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Buh bye.

:: ashli 1:06 PM # ::
...

The missing is killing me lately. Especially at night when I turn out the light and have nothing but a canvas of black on which to paint obscenly lit images of despair and death.

I see his/her little hand flickering on the screen. I hear his/her heart beating on the doppler. I can't tell you. I can't tell you how I didn't know. I saw him/her. I loved him/her.

"I miss you I miss you I miss you..." I whisper into the darkness.

The utter loss keeps me so preoccupied that I never even have to touch the guilt. But I do. I abandoned my child completely... to death and dismemberment in a malevolent, steel-tooled eviction. And "sorry" is a fart that changes naught.

There it is in my mind's eye again. The preciousness of the moment just before. But you know... what's the point? I still can't rescue us. I go over and over, but I'm here; those alabastar forms are there. Fixed.

I will not wake up in those stirrups again. I will not feel the loss occurring. I will not heave and shake and sense the scene within.

Away me and now,
before the heifer needs a brand.
Take me away
to that little waving hand.
"Hi, Mom!"
typed onto the film
above
the little arm,
the little hand.

Despondent, with all the necessity in the world, I search for a quick bit of preserving denial. Make it a nightmare! Make it unreal. Make it anything untrue but, for the love of God, tell me it didn't happen. Tell me so I can close my eyes and sleep with nothing.

A would-have-been birthday is coming. It approaches in pieces, but it would have been whole and fit for a whole child. A whole hand. An 8-year-old growing hand. A hand to rip into presents. A hand to hold a balloon, a forkful of cake. A hand to kiss. A hand to love.

Where is that hand? Heaven aside, where IS that particular flesh and blood? Ever looking to satisfy a void that nothing fills on a birthday where no one sings or even deigns to remember.

All that I wanted forced through cheesecloth.
Such a strange valley. Such a long strange furrow.

I had the film interred with my mother and father and my miscarried child who rests in a small, porcelain box depicting Christ as He holds a lamb. Film, you know, because it was all I had of my first child. If you held it up to the light you could see him/her. And the floating arm, the waving hand, "Hi, Mom!"

The tech could have typed:

"I don't know why you say goodbye;
I say hello."

I close my eyes and hear it.

I see the sweet hand. The precious hand. The outline of five tiny fingers to lace and hold. Substance and form and ethereal beauty... an advertisement for a lifetime of love.

But legs in stirrups spell ephemeral.

I don't know why I said goodbye.

:: ashli 1:06 AM # ::
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