Saturday, May 04, 2013
Jack O’Connell: Yanks’ bats silent against Athletics
(cutoffman.mlblogs.com)
It’s one thing for Michael the Kay and Sen. Al Leiter to screw this up last night…but the BBWAA high muckety-muck? “Rookie shortstop Adam Rosales smoked a first-pitch fastball to left-center for his first career home run.”
Read More...Sabathia was taken deep on the first pitch of the game. Rookie shortstop Adam Rosales smoked a first-pitch fastball to left-center for his first career home run. Sabathis settled down nicely but needed major help from second baseman Robinson Cano to get out of a fifth-inning ...
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< 1 2Since everything happens in threes, I may as well link this piece, which is extremely well-written and almost impossible to read.
My wife and I are mostly lucky, since we were able to overcome fertility issues thruogh in vitro and have three children to show for it. We did lose a twin to our son that had a heartbeat, but that was early on. We put in six embryos and got three children, so there are three of them that could be here but aren't.
My wife's sister has never gotten this far - cancer took her out of the baby game while still a teen. Now they're trying to solve the adoption racket. There are tragedies of different orders. I guess life is always both a miracle and tragedy.
As for #7, it's not offensive, but it's banal to me. On all of these threads every single time someone's going to go for the tasteless joke.
Two friends of mine tried for nearly a decade to have kids. After about six years of this and that, she got pregnant through IVF and got pregnant with triplets... and she lost them at six months. It was months before she was able to even see friends and family. A couple of years later, they decided to try one last time, and now they have three beautiful, healthy kids, a girl and twin boys. She told me once that, even after five years, she sometimes still cries herself to sleep because she's overcome with joy when she thinks about what she has.
My own wife had had to have a hysterectomy earlier this year, which means we're only having just the one kid. It's been a few months, but I still feel a lingering sadness about it. If I had known how much joy one child could bring us, I would have started earlier, and I would have wanted more. As much happiness as a child can bring you, I can't imagine how unspeakably heartbreaking it must be to lose that child, and I don't even want to try.
I think if something goes wrong with our current pregnancy, it might be the last medically-assisted attempt for us. We might try IVF, but I'm worried that every successive failure would hurt my wife exponentially more than the last.
We--by which I mean the world in general, not BTF--don't talk enough about this stuff. Too unpleasant and too scary, I suppose, but I think people would feel less alone during tragic times if stories like this were more public.
My parents went through two miscarriages of potential younger siblings of mine, one of which was half of a pair of twins. The other half was born three days before my eighth birthday and has just started her freshman year of college.
It's not something I've thought about for quite a while, but I'm pretty sure the same wouldn't be true of my mom, despite her four living and healthy children.
well, that was the end of discussion on the 'where' of burial plots.
so yeah, it's a different road for the moms. just be there fellas
i am sure you will do worlds better than me. i specialize in callous, not caring.
In line with some other comments, the miscarriage finally explained some weird things that had happened with one of my graduate advisors. We eventually got to exchange our stories of grief and eventual positive outcomes. This patched up a relationship that truly never need have fallen apart, if only people felt more able to speak about such issues.
We will eventually donate the embryos...but that's legally harder than one might think. Too many people out there like one of the graduate students working on our research project. He is (well, was) a smug Chuck Colson devotee, and more than once has spent a chunk of time pontificating about the immorality of IVF procedures. I'm still not entirely sure that I'm proud of myself for NOT having punched him out....
My story... Two years ago, for a total of 12 hours we thought my wife was pregnant. Then the miscarriage started. Or so we thought. Turns out it was an ectopic pregnancy; my wife had to be rushed into emergency surgery and have that tube removed. Neither of us have truly dwelled on it, as we only had 12 hours of expecting the baby. From time to time, though, I do wonder... was it a girl or a boy? What would he/she be like? But we just don't feel sad about it for some reason.
Today, I'm a very proud father of a 23 day old girl. Yes, she cries a ton; yes, my sleep has been cut by 1/3. But when I'm holding her and see her staring into my eyes...... Let's just say I am extremely paranoid right now of all this situations; I won't leave the room that she's in without making sure she's still breathing. No one should ever even have to imagine some of the tragedies others have experienced above.
And that Washington Post article linked above on kids suffocating after being left in cars is just devastating, not least because of its assertion that the parents who do this (a few dozen a year) are indistinguishable from other parents, as loving and conscientious as anybody else.) One day they are harried and drive right to work instead of to day care, and the kid is sleeping, and they forget. In their mind they think they've dropped the child off. Sometimes they've even called to check in with the day care to see how the day is going. Then someone says you didn't bring the kid...totally unbearable. I am a pretty conscientious parent but it is chilling to think of how little it would take for a normal day to turn tragic. One time my daughter lost control on her scooter and flew away toward Amsterdam Avenue into the path of a bus. I was sprinting but couldn't catch her and she was screaming but couldn't stop. A stranger paused at the corner, caught her, held her scooter until she stepped down, then kept walking. On one level, I owe her my daughter's life and my own. How many things like that happen between 0 and 12 or 18? A few dozen? None of which is likely the end but any of which could be. You roll well on all 25, and you think you're doing great, but one rolls against you...
About two weeks ago, we were all in the backyard, and my son found a small spider on crawling on the deck. "Is that a spider?"
"Yes," I said.
"Hi, spider," he said. "Do you want to play tag?"
My wife didn't think the exchange was as hilarious as I did.
My wife and I had troubles having kids, finally going the IVF route. We got lucky first time, and the joy of seeing two little heartbeats on ultrasound was indescribable. And the pain of one of those heartbeats stopping a month later was almost as large. We were on pins and needles for the rest of the pregnancy, but our son M will turn 4 in November, and he's amazing.
Second time round for IVF and absolutely no problems. Our second son Z was born last August, and everything was perfect. We ended up back in the ER 2 days after he came home, and that resulted in an ambulance trip and an extended stay in the NICU. First they told us to brace ourselves for him to die; then they said that he wouldn't die right away, but would linger unconscious for a few years before dieing. He proved them al wrong, though, and came home for the second time a year ago tomorrow. We're keeping a very close eye on him to see if any other issues arise, but right now he's a happy, healthy, curious little boy who is pretty much exactly where he should be for his age. He's also amazing, and the experience has made us truly appreciate what is important in life.
I've taken my 7 month old daughter to several games. And she's never been the youngest baby in our section. I don't think this is something you need to explain or apologize for.
Very scary, and I could see myself being that parent. I'd depend on my paranoia to double check myself, but it only takes one time in 1000 to be a tragedy, and I'm a person quite capable of forgetting my insulin before leaving the house. Good thing my wife became a stay at home mom and I don't have to worry about that.
I feel really bad for the Nesheks.
Sorry about that. We went so far as to be one of the subjects in the local paper for an article about fertility. I don't regret that. We also told my mother, who's a one issue pro-life voter but has been good about the whole thing.
Some of the comments from the other couples in the article made me realize that other families weren't always so accepting. Since then I've at least tried to gauge the parties in the conversation before going into IVF. Just don't want to get into some needless argument with someone whose opinion I don't care for anyway.
With IVF I would recommend not dilly dallying. I think the woman's age has a lot to do with the success rate, and my wife was on the youngish side (very early 30s) for the procedure. Our two fresh cycles both worked, but the frozen ones did not.
miscarrying is really horrible when you want the baby. you feel guilty. you just do. you don't know what you did wrong. and you blame your self. the doctor told me - one of 3 conceptions is miscarried before 3 months. it seems unbelieveable but bout every girl i know has had at least 1.
my mama is in her 60s and she lost a newborn baby to spinal meningitis. she won't talk about it. 35 years and it is still too painful. and her mama and my daddy's mama lost babies - back then it was a lot more common, especially without doctors or hospitals. we don't think like that these days and sometimes we forget to be grateful for modern times.
and after all that, it is just sorry to see all the unwanted and abused and murdered infants and children - there isn't enough foster care to go around.
sigh
of course BITGOD i would not have survived past maybe the first 6 weeks i was so sick, so we wouldn't be talking about this.
and yes, i think it is really important for men to talk about the pain of loss and the joy of being a father (no matter how much of a pain in the ass your kid can be.) and i think that sometimes us grrls don't realize in our own misery how much it hurts you too. as my Husband told me - well there wasn't nothing i could do and you're supposed to DO something and i couldn't do nothing.
Anyway, it was and still is ####### terrible and BBTF folks have been actually really great in helping me sort through it. I relayed to my wife a few stories I was told which helped her keep in perspective that this happens. I can't imagine how m uch worse it would've been to go through what the Nesheks did.
I travel about 1/3rd of the time for work and I will be forever grateful I was in the U.S. when we had the bad doctor visit, instead of her going by herself and me being in Phnom Penh or some other god forsaken place.
My condolences to the Nesheks and everyone else who has had to deal with something like this.
I was at home (in another city) grading exams and was going to catch a flight the next day. Needless to say, a couple feet difference, a couple of seconds one way or the other, and everything would have changed. I can't imagine how we would ever have recovered.
So yeah, go give your kids a hug and a kiss, and try not to be afraid all the time.
you would manage. it's that or just stop being.
So sorry Bourbon Samurai, my condolences.
EDIT:
And good luck DEF, hope Z stays out of trouble.
Just about three years ago this week, our daycare provider mentioned to my wife and I that our two year old son was tilting his head a little bit to one side. We ended up in the pediatricians office, who really didn't know what was going on, so he ordered an MRI. Ended up being a tumor that was pushing on his brain stem.
What followed was a year and a half of intense chemo and radiation treatments. Watched him lose his hair, grow it back, lose it again, and grow it back. Thought we had it beat for a couple of months in January of last year, only to watch the tumor pretty much explode and spread to other parts of his body. We lost him about a year and a half ago.
My wife is now due with our second child in exactly one week. And I am petrified, nervous, anxious, and a whole host of other emotions that I never had the first time. Mostly, I'm worried that I won't be able to invest myself completely if I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Thanks for giving me a forum to just write that out - haven't really said much since it all happened, being a good Minnesotan who doesn't talk about his feelings.
Deepest condolences. I can't even imagine the pain you and your wife must have gone through.
Don't worry about not being able to fully invest in your second child. There are a countless number of other shoes that could drop on us with Z - you learn to just accept the possibility that something could happen, and get on with your life. If anything, having that threat hanging over you makes you appreciate everything all the more at the time instead of taking things for granted. You'll fall in love with your child the moment you first see and hold him or her. You'll probably worry a little bit more than you would have otherwise, but that won't lessen your committment to the child. Good luck!
My wife had a couple of very early miscarriages, and we found she had a small uterine anomaly that was fixed by a minor surgical procedure. We have two kids now, and they're awesome...most of the time. But, yes, those first two are always far more in her thoughts than they are in mine.
As a four year old, I didn't really grasp it well, and nobody wants to explain. (No other siblings at that point.) All I knew was that she had died, she wasn't there anymore, her room was off limits, and I had to be very careful what I said around my mom or she'd burst into tears. (I couldn't say her name around my mom, for one thing. (Which was hard because there was a 2-3 y.o. girl across the street with the same name.)) My mother became a tad bit overprotective after that, which was just annoying, because why was I being punished? We had to shift bedrooms around when my brothers were born, because my mother couldn't bear to have an infant in the same room that was my sister's.
Then, when I was eight, I came home from school and my mom was holding my one-year old brother in her arms and acting disturbed about him. She sent me to run across the street and get my neighbor, who had been an army medic. He runs over, takes one look, and calls 911. Ambulance comes to house and whisks him away with my mother (dad was at work an hour away). My three-year old brother and I were shuffled from neighbors to friends to grandparents while my parents stayed at hospital. Nobody would tell us anything, and this lasted for about a week, without, to the best of my recollection, even seeing my parents. He ended up being okay - it was a near-fatal allergic reaction to a particular antibiotic. But it again made my parents a bit... Crazy, from the perspective of a child. As an eight-year old, had no idea how to behave/react. Can I play with friends? Have fun? Knew that wasn't appropriate, but didn't know what was appropriate.
Moral of the story is, if you have other kids and somthing like this happens, G-d forbid, make sure you think about them and how your reaction will impact them. Don't take it out on them, and don't leave them out of the loop.
As for #7, it's not offensive, but it's banal to me. On all of these threads every single time someone's going to go for the tasteless joke.
So then can we retire the ridiculous "kids should be taken away" meme?
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