When it’s right, it’s Wright

Historic photo of the Wright brothers' third test glider being launched at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, on October 10, 1902. Wilbur Wright is at the controls, Orville Wright is at left, and Dan Tate (a local resident and friend of the Wright brothers) is at right.

Actual footage of the first trimester.

Pregnancy is like an airplane.

This has been the running metaphor in my mind lately. Partially from my own recent trip to Colorado, and partially from my daily visits to multiple recurrent loss groups, this simile has become hard to shake. Or perhaps, to be more accurate, I should say pregnancy seems like an airplane flight.

Plane crashes are exceedingly rare. The “fear of flying” is hardly uncommon, however, though statistics show it’s often safer to fly in a plane than drive a car. I have always had some thoughts on that argument, but in this case, it relates to pregnancy right off the bat: pregnancy is, well, common. Miscarriage is, as well, but “having a baby” is more common than “losing a baby” in the grand scheme of maternity statistics.

But using statistics further, I’ve been mulling over the similar time frame of error that flying and gestating seem to have.

Continue reading