The lost ones

I had big plans for a post about how I made decisions about my infertility journey, treatments, etc. today, but now I'm too sad to even think about it. Today I found out that TWO of my close friends have had miscarriages. My heart is aching.

H has been a dear friend since college. She met her wonderful husband a bit late, and started trying to conceive at 36. Then she had a cancer scare, which forced them to stop trying for a while. They started again the next year. After six months of nothing, they saw an RE, and got the awful news that her husband's sperm had 0% normal morphology, and that their only chance of ever conceiving was IVF/ICSI. They started IVF at the same time as my first round, and were the lucky winners of the IVF lottery, scoring the daily double, boy/girl twins. Two weeks ago, the membrane of the little boy ruptured at 19 weeks. She lost him a few days later. Her little girl held on for another week, but was born two days ago, and lived for only three hours. Rest in peace, little ones.

S is my closest friend here in Korea. She had a daughter 7 years ago with her first husband, and two years later lost her husband to cancer. She remarried last year with an absolutely wonderful man, who is the best stepfather ever. I suspected that they wanted another child, but being infertile myself, would never dream of asking anyone that question. S is the only one at work that I was actually looking forward to telling about my pregnancy, and I had decided to share the news today. AFTER I told her that I wanted to speak with her privately, because I had big news, and needed her advice, but before I actually told her the news, she told me that she'd had a miscarriage while I was in the US (this was the first time I'd seen her since I got back). I felt like such an ass when I then had to tell her that my big news was that I'm pregnant (while choking back tears about her loss). I wish that I was quicker on my feet and could have thought of some OTHER big news to share, but I'm just not a good liar. She was an absolute angel about it, of course, but I'm just so sad for her. Sad for her loss, and also sad that if everything goes well with my pregnancy (please please please), it's going to be a constant reminder of her own loss. Our due dates were only about a month apart.