as i have probably told you a thousand times already, i am a planner. i research things. i like to be prepared; i like to know the odds.
and i am always secretly convinced i am going to lose.
this is something i've struggled with since i was a kid. for some reason, i am just wired to be afraid, to see the risks, to assume the worst.
it took me a long time to learn how to untangle myself from my fears, but it was a crucial step for me. there's something to be said for playing it safe - when i was a single 20-something in new york living paycheck to paycheck, it certainly came in handy. but almost every part of life worth living involves risk. moving away from home can be risky. marriage can be risky.
having children can be risky.
so i had to train myself to take the plunge anyway. and for me, a big part of that process was statistics.
every time i embark on something that scares me, i google everything i can about it. i take books out of the library. i study it from a thousand angles. i look for the things that can go wrong and i create a million contingency plans. and when i feel really, really panicked, i look up the statistics - the likelihood that the thing i am terrified of will happen.
in the last ten years of my life, most of those fears involve my children - especially when they are babies in the womb, and everything about them is so unknown.
i'd look up every test i took in pregnancy to see what percentage of results were abnormal. i'd look up the percentage of pregnancies at my age that became complicated. i'd look up my measurements, the baby's measurements, the rate of the baby's heartbeat.
each week, i'd google the statistics of something going wrong at that week. for instance, the risk of miscarriage at week 9 is something like 5 percent. by week 14 the risk is around 1 percent.
once my babies reached the age of viability (around 24 weeks), i'd google the chances of preemie survival rates at each week - because that was the worst case scenario i could conjure then: preterm labor. if i went into labor right now, would my baby make it?
and as the weeks went by and the positive statistics climbed, i'd allow myself to relax just a little more each time. i'm at 31 weeks...most babies can make it at this point with only a short NICU visit. i'm at 36 weeks...plenty of babies are born now without needing any extra help.
these numbers would soothe and reassure me - as i think they are meant to. pregnant women are already so anxious, right? i think many of the articles and studies out there are designed to help us say to ourselves: look, i made it this far. at this stage, 99 percent of babies are okay. everything is going to be okay.
do you know what the risk is of sudden fetal death - that's what it says in my medical record: IUFD, intrauterine fetal death - at 37 weeks, with no other complications?
it's something like a thousandth of a percent.
and yet that statistic was me. this time, i was the statistic.
i find this thought rattling around in the back of my mind often as i go about my day: the little daily routines of my life, as normal now as i guess it will ever be. i wash dishes and do laundry and drive to and from camp and i think: the odds were so small. i probably had a greater chance of being struck by lightning. but it was me. i was the statistic.
i think what is dawning on me is this: before, when i'd google these terrible things and feel reassured by their unlikelihood, what i was really doing was drawing a line between myself - normal, safe, good - and the victims of a thousand different tragedies - unreal, unthinkable, other. i think i partly convinced myself that because their numbers were so small, the people behind these other statistics - the ones that weren't me, the ones living the bad outcomes - were practically theoretical. and that allowed me to live in a world that felt safe, where nothing bad ever really happens to people who are important to me, let alone to me, full stop.
what i have learned is that someone is the statistic. someone is always the statistic. and we cannot wish away the suffering of people in painful, impossible situations by downplaying their proximity to us; we cannot keep ourselves "safe" from their sorrow by telling ourselves that they are so different than we are, that there is no comparison.
a few weeks ago, i attended a support group for the first time. it was a group for pregnancy and infant loss. if you've ever been to support groups, you know how they start - everyone goes around and says their name and why they're there.
as i said my bit ("hi, i'm perel, i just had a full-term stillbirth"...like a nightmare elevator pitch), i looked around at the other faces on zoom.
i saw couples who had lost their pregnancies at 20 weeks.
i saw women suffering from infertility after ectopic pregnancies.
i saw parents mourning the sudden, medically inexplicable death of their healthy toddler.
for the first time, i saw the faces behind those statistics no one likes to talk about. the ones that are glossed over in prenatal books and parenting classes and pregnancy apps that compare the size of your fetus to random produce. they were not numbers. they were real. these were the people on the other side of those stats i'd used to comfort myself: people who had just been going about their normal, everyday lives when lightning struck.
they were just like me.
and i realized they always had been.