happy_birthday_pony pony The day of my birthday last year, Birthday 31, I found out that I was pregnant. This wasn't supposed to be the case - I had my tubes tied for good reason when I gave birth to my twins, but nobody told 25 year old me that when performed on a woman of a young age, these things can reverse themselves within 5 years. My partner, before even giving me a chance to tell him this - although he knew it was something I suspected - picked a fight with me early in the day and used it as an excuse to not only cancel the party he'd told me he had planned, but to storm out and disappear for the day, only to return very late at night and very drunk. Picking fights to avoid acknowledging me on my birthday is a pattern I've experienced with men all the way back to my father, and it comes to the point where you really question whose fault it all is. When I did finally tell him, he didn't believe me, he thought it was a manipulative tactic, but I can tell you from experience, these tests can produce false negatives but not false positives. I was so distraught by our argument that day, and by being left alone once again, that I tore into the pile of drinks he had stashed for us and got drunk. Two days later I miscarried, in a very painful and bloody scene alone in my bathroom, in the middle of getting the kids ready for school. I cried a lot at the time. I blamed only myself, knowing full well that these things simply happen, regardless of what you do. Even though I know that the loss was actually just a twisted blessing in disguise (and the second of the kind I've experienced in my lifetime) - for I already know what it's like to be bound to brutal men through bloodlines - it didn't hurt any less, and it isn't any less of a stain on my list of birthday memories. 240319 ... epitome of incomprehensibility To echo warmthofrelease in what_made_you_swear_today - christ, that must have been stressful. I hope your birthday this year was much happier and less fraught. And if it was yesterday, a belated birthday greeting! (I'll be 36 on June 20th - though I'd rather be equinox than solstice, Nowruz than Fete Nationale.) 240320 what's it to you? who go blather from