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It's me. I'm home. I'm pretty wiped, so forgive me if this rambles a bit.

Today is a rough day--the chemical side of things, I think, is definitely hitting me. Hormones are crashing all about. Poor Charlie got food poisioning from the hospital cafeteria and is sick as a dog, and crashed into another car in the hospital parking lot when coming to pick me up (don't worry, it was just a minor biff, he left a note), so it's been tough for him too.

My head, and heart, are so full of thoughts--at the moment, I'm overwhelmed because the doctor who released me from the hospital this morning was considerably less optimistic than Dr. Mama about our future chances--he looked at me like I'd sprouted two heads when I said we were going to try again. He feels our chances of the same thing happening are 30-50%. While this may be true (thanks, Grrl, for sending similar info to Sarah), I'm not going to process it right now. We have a plan, which I'll tell you about another day, and the very first thing on that list is to get my body healthy. After all the infertility treatments, the OHSS, weight gain, etc, there is no doubt in my mind that my body was not healthy at the start of this pregnancy. So perhaps our odds will be better if we begin from a different starting point.

What I'm not ready for, at the moment, is to accept the idea that this is the end for us.

I have a couple of things I really want to say.

Thank you, Sarah, for telling everyone so I didn't have to. You've been by my side in this whole process, sharing the joy and the pain. You've held me up when I couldn't hold myself up. Knowing I could just hop back into posting today without having to explain everything is a great gift, as is the clean house I came home to today, thanks to you. I love you so much, and I'm so, so, so thankful each and every day that you are in my life. There are few women who've been through together the shit we've been through together. God bless you--I love you so much, and I'm so glad my blogging friends got to know you a little bit (everyone, convince this woman to start her own blog--she's a great writer in the midst of an incredibly fantastic romance, a mother, and starting her own business--she'll write a great one!). Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know you were looking forward to being an aunt and you are grieving as much as we are.

Thank you, Charlie, for being my husband, for posting what you posted, and for coming when I called, and listening when I cried. I'd forgotten that you could cry, too, when we got the news--it was good to share the tears with you, good to not be alone. I love you so much, and I'm so glad to be home with you.

Thank you, my in-person-friends, who follow this blog to keep updated-- both your comments and your help have been invaluable. Thanks for visiting me in the hospital, for taking care of the dog, for crying on our behalf.

Thank you to my new on-line friends, the women I email regularly that I've met through this blog that have been great friends and have left such wonderful comments.

Thank you, you crazy, wonderful other infertile bloggers who have circled the wagons and directed so many people to our pain to help in this time of need. Thanks, especially, to Tertia, who unwittingly helped prepare me for this by sharing her own story.

Thank you to all you folks who delurked to tell me how sorry you are. You have no idea how touched I am. Stay delurked, please. I want to get to know you.

A special thanks to Moxie who helped prepare me for the hormone crash and helped me remember to keep my mother away from me for the next week or two.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I will write about the whole experience later, because I have to, it's become how I live. But for now, I want to end this by saying just one other thing.

No one, ever, should have to choose between their own life and the life of their child. I have to say I am so grateful that I live in a state where I didn't have to choose to deliver the surviving baby. I was able to have a dilation and extraction instead. I'm not sure I would have had the strength to meet the surviving baby only to watch it die. In fact, I'm sure I don't have that strength.

Before you vote next Tuesday--and you'd better vote--remember this. If George Bush had his way, I would have been forced to deliver the surviving baby and the doctors would have been forced to try to save him. I won't lie--there's a teeny part of my deeply pro-choice heart that wonders if that's what I should have done, just in case there was the slightlest, teeniest chance of survival... but in my head I know that instead my son ended his too-brief life painlessly in the safety of my womb instead of in the cold, harsh light of the world, away from me.

Grief is difficult for me--I'm much better at moving on than I am at processing. I hope you can all bear with me as I try to sit still and feel these feelings.

And again---thank you, thank you, thank you.