Well my weekend was a tough one for a number of reasons. I had a bt on Saturday and the levels still aren't high enough to indicate ovulation is approaching. I am going back tomorrow. I just don't know what to do now. I feel like my body is not responding to this either.
On Saturday I also went to a symposium on Stillbirths by Professor Frederik Froen, Co-Chair of the International Stillbirth Alliance and has been conducting ground-breaking research into stillbirth for the past ten years. He works at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, is a medical doctor and has two PhDs - one in obstetrics and one in paediatrics. Professor Froen is an international expert on stillbirth and has received some awards for his work, mostly working on stillbirth prevention, stillbirth classification, stillbirth genetics and identification of risk of stillbirth through fetal activity and fetal growth. It was targeted for health professionals but parents were invited to attend as well. It is good to know that they want to mirror the work that they did on reducing SIDS to reducing Stillbirths. There were people there from the Stillbirth Foundation and SIDS and Kids and everyone is keen to see Stillbirths get alot more public awareness and hopefully funding to help with the research into reducing Stillbirths. The hard part was when I asked one of the speakers where cord accidents fit into stillbirth classifications. They said that it didn't have its own classification because it is just so rare. I don't know if it makes it any easier hearing this. I guess if a cord accident is so rare then the chances of it happening again is so slim. But I just find it hard to understand that if it is so rare HOW THE HELL DID IT HAPPEN TO ME!!!!
After the symposium I went home and got ready for the Stillbirth Foundation Ball. I had 19 wonderful family and friends that attended the ball with me in support and in loving memory of Cooper. The target was to raise $100,000 and by the end of the night they reached it, which is great. Professor Frederik Froen was there are gave a speech but the hard part was when he said that while we sit here in this room, someone in Sydney is preparing to give birth to a still baby. It just broke my heart and instantly I had images in my head of when I was preparing to give birth to Cooper. I just couldn't believe that it was going to happen to someone else. While it was a hard night, we did also enjoy ourselves, there were a number of auctions and prizes and alot of family and friends won them. We have decided that we are going to make it a yearly event. There was a beautiful quote on the night and I wanted to share it with you all:
You were loved from the beginning
And we will love you until our end.
There were also some interesting statistics that were displayed on the night (deaths in Australia 2004).
2,761 men died from prostate cancer
2,661 adults died from breast cancer 1,374 babies were stillborn
1,209 people died from skin melanoma
851 women died from ovarian cancer
59 babies died from SIDS
While all the deaths are a tragedy, what I don't understand is how all these deaths, except Stillbirths, receives funding and public awareness. The government has just launched a vaccine for women (free to schoolgirls and women up to 26) for ovarian cancer, (which is great) but when you look at how many Stillbirths there were why aren't we doing anything to change these numbers. I am sorry if this is too much for some people but I am just so passionate about the Stillbirth cause because if I can save one family from going through this, then that is enough for me.
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