"how many pregnancies?"
"how many live births?"
"oh, your son is 11? wow, that's quite a stretch in between, isn't it?"
people don't naturally assume that you choose adoption for your firstborn, and i didn't correct the assumptions that i was parenting. there's no point in that. or is there?
at one point, during my second ER visit, after they shot me full of Dilaud!d in preparation for Pitoc!n, my mercurial nurse leaned over to me and murmured that when i got home, i should try to "keep it together" for the sake of my son. Chris was out of the room, taking a breather for a moment, and when she left i tried to process through my narcotic haze what she had said.
can i fault her? not really. what irritated me more was her almost saccharine demeanor when Chris returned, telling me that "she had been there" and that she "knew what i was going through" as she hooked up the Pitoc!n drip. i don't know about you, fellow miscarriage survivors, but hearing that while you're literally in the midst of things isn't so helpful. at least not to me.
would my care have been different if i had told them from the start that my son was adopted at birth? probably not. but i've been through this enough, telling health care providers over the years, to dread that look. being on the receiving end of that look is one of the lowest emotional lows for me.
and like the kindly nurse-vampire who extracted vial after vial of blood at the first ER visit told me, we can always "try again real soon. or adopt."
