Statistics

Today my husband and I drove to Oxford (1 and a half hours away) to see a senior consultant at the John Radcliffe Hospital. We had booked the appointment in the expectation that I would still be pregant and we were not sure whether we should cancel it or not. But we decided to go. It rained heavily all the way there. I feel like it's been raining for three years. The appointment with the consultant was all about statistics. If you've lost five babies then the chance that you'll lose another is 50%. If you get pregnant at 42 then you have a 50% chance of losing the baby. If you have had a detached placenta then there's a 10% chance it will happen again but the risk is much higher if you are older. At some point I lost track of whether one of these figures is subsumed into the others, or whether I am meant to add them all together. If the latter is true then I seem to have at least 110% chance of losing another baby - even if I could get pregnant. (In another mood I might see the comic side of this). Well, the consultant was doing his best. At least he listened - which is more than can be said for most of his profession. I stopped listening at a certain point. I am very bad at maths but even I could figure out that, no matter how you add the figures up, the answer always equals Totally and Utterly Hopeless. I managed not to cry in the appointment or say bitter things but towards the end of the conversation I was beginning to lose control. As we left the consultants office, he said, 'You know there's a cafe, if you want a cup of tea. At the end of the corridor, a cup of tea.' Poor guy, we want a baby and all he can offer is a (very British) cup of tea. I came home, went to bed, cried for two hours. But after that I had to get up and make the supper and try to play the Normal Life Game. My husband and I get through the day but the grinding, grinding misery is pretty hard to bear. And there isn't really any end to it as far as I can see.