How do you help someone through a high risk pregnancy?

We often look at the darkest points in our life and think how they could have been different. Imagine if someone had have told me this or shown me that, how I would have dealt with that situation differently. So if I had the opportunity to go back and help me out when I was really struggling with our high risk pregnancy at around 20 weeks who would I send? And what would they show me? I've been thinking about this and I can honestly say I don't know.

Probably the most common thing you hear from other people is "I have a friend of a friend that had a complicated pregnancy (that has nothing to do with your situation) and blah blah blah...". I probably sound like an unthankful bastard reeling off that last line. Don't get me wrong, it's really nice that people care enough to want to try and find ways to reassure you and that might help some people but it didn't really do much for me. I know that for that story there are plenty of other sad stories told and even more sad stories that mothers and fathers out there never tell. So in essence, references to past positive events didn't help me.

However, I can tell you that references to negative situations definitely don't help. Why you would pass those on to someone is beyond me. "Lets hope that blah blah blah isn't the case because then you'd be screwed" was said to me word for word minus the blah blah blah part. Some people are inconsiderate and then there are others that I guess simply don't know how to deal with certain situations.

So what would I do if I knew someone was going through a high risk pregnancy? I think if I knew them well enough I'd take them out for a beer or a coffee. I wouldn't talk about the topic that is probably the only think they can't stop talking about in their heads....unless they brought it up of course. I would take them to a movie where a distraction might take their mind off things for a while. And I think most importantly if I didn't think they were talking to anyone I would try and plan the seed that it might be a good idea. On top of that I would offer to take whatever responsibilities off them (eg kids) so that they could do those things for themselves.

One of the best things I did along the way was to make it along to a social basketball run on a weekend. For the better part of a few hours my mind "worried" about inconsequential things like which pass to make, when to shoot and who to defend. These problems demand your attention, you have to immediately react. Whilst you want to make the right decisions, ultimately if they go wrong they are not important. If you play any sport socially and think what just happened matters any more than having another crack at the next play then you and I probably wouldn't play well on the same team :)

In summary, I think there are simple acts of kindness you can do for people. I think anything that can take their minds of things is a good thing. The irony is that I'm sure people gave me the advice along the way to "try and think of other things" but it's just so hard to do. I think at best you distract someone temporarily with some kind of external stimulus (ie a basketball, a chinese burn maybe) but that's about as far as the distraction can go.

30 weeks along, its time to depart

I'm sitting in a birthing suite, my boys have made it just past 30 weeks....just. It's time to depart.