The tale of four girls in the saga of miracles...

I was thinking this morning... about the words that we always hear.  About how a baby is a miracle.  I don't know about you, but to be honest I mostly hear it from women who haven't been touched by loss.  I think to many women out there the word "miracle" equates with "beautiful little darling" or something aesthetic like that.  And they've heard the word "miracle" spoken in relation to "baby" before, so it's a learned phrase.  It's proverbial.

Those thoughts lead me in the direction of statistics.  The fact that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage.  That's 25%.  Only 75% of pregnancies MIGHT end in a live baby.  I mean a take home one.  Oh, but wait... then you need to remove the stillbirth statistics, and the neonatal statistics.  Perhaps at this stage we should also take out the many other statistics for abnormality, disease and anything else that means our babies won't make it to an age where they can leave the nest to die in car, plane, boat accidents.  Doesn't that make you feel sick?  It does me. 

So, there is a further understanding, a deeper, more meaningful understanding of how babies are really miracles, right?  Except it's still only something that happens to other people.  Not for us of course.  But the type of thing that someone can also tell you about their uncle Bob's cousin's brother in law's wife, you know?

What I'm getting to with all of this, is that those thoughts lead me to those who I know.  Not the ones who I have met through the loss of our beautiful boy.  But the ones from before.

I was particularly thinking of four friends.  Where a story began forty odd years ago. 

First there was Wendy and I.  We were "friends" from babyhood.  She used to beat me in the baby contests apparently.  We had our ups and downs of course, and some major blowouts from when she wouldn't play with me at kindergarten, to when I ducked and weaved from her at high school one recess to hang out with the "cool ones" because I was welcome but she wasn't.  Oh, the shame.  Wendy is still my bestie, I'll let you know right now!

Then we started primary school, and after the school year began, a new girl, Sonja, started and we became a threesome.

Sometime after that, a month, a year, I don't remember, another new girl, Ranjana, arrived, and we became four.

Sonja left our town when we were about 14, but we've stayed in touch.  Ranjana left a year or two after she arrived as her doctor father was only on contract for that time.  We lost contact and it was only a year or so ago that she found me through fac.ebook.

There is the four.  Among us we have six children including a preemie, two dead neonate babies, several miscarriages and many failed IVF treatments.


What were those stats again?