Thanks, Ann and Jenni!
I loved how you wrote this entire chapter, with everyone being so kind and supportive.
I have to say I wrote it this way as I think it's nice, but it's also what I experienced. Online there's all this talk about people being insensitive and not realizing how hard this can be, but we experienced almost none of that. To be fair, they also point out online that some of the "insensitive" things people say are really not trying to be insensitive - things like, "Well, you can always have another." or "It's for the best." and we did get some of that, but for the most part I don't get too upset at that - I know it's hard to know what the right thing to say is.
Only one person made what I really considered to be an "insensitive" remark. Someone replied to the news that the baby was not going to make it with "Well, that's why most people don't announce their pregnancy so soon." This was mostly annoying as it was an immediate family member - we hadn't really told anyone aside from very close family and two close friends (and I told my boss as there were all sorts of impacts on work).
But still, everyone else (my boss included) was really great and we definitely didn't walk away with the feeling that next time we'll keep it to ourselves until we're sure everything is okay - we felt like nearly everyone was glad we had told them so that they could be there for us. So, I wanted Lois and Clark to have the same feeling.
Again, the sequel thing is very unlikely. Not just because I'm not sure I'm in the right mental place for it, but because I don't have the knowledge base. The main reason I decided to end the story soon is that I don't have any experience being pregnant past the first trimester, and am not really interested in doing the appropriate research for that now. I did some for the last chapter, since while I was pregnant longer than Lois currently is, my baby never got to be the size hers is, but just can't muster the interest in doing more.
The last chapter will be an epilogue of sorts. If there's still interest after that, maybe I'll come back to it later, but I'd also be more than happy if someone else wanted to take this and write an epilogue themselves.
