From how many years away does a baby come?

It is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. -- Longfellow

I keep hearing that waiting and patience are beautiful virtues-- "good things come" and so forth-- but I've had enough of that bullshit.  Neither Heather nor I can avoid watching for the pot to boil.  If I'm around when she comes out of the bathroom, I look for a thumbs-up to let me know that there's no bleeding and Heather, bless her heart, changed from pink to white undies before bed so she'd see for sure if she bled in the night.

What also happened last night is that, as we wended our way towards the bedroom, I saw that she'd missed a call from her mom.  They don't talk all that often, and the last time it was because Heather's sister Ashley was sick, so I told Heather she should check and she muttered something about drama.  Drama indeed.  She played the voicemail message on speaker-phone so I could hear, and her mom was saying that Ashley had had another episode and gone back to the hospital where the doctors helpfully discovered that she was six and a half weeks pregnant.  Accidentally.

Heather sat still on the edge of the bed with this amazing expression on her face of shock and disbelief and irony.  I let the dog in and tried to process.  Goddamn.  Ashley's got two small kids already, as does Heather's brother, and they're popping more out, like it's easy or something.  For some folks, I guess it is.  Instead, Heather went into the bathroom and called out to me that there was a slight orangish tinge on the tissue paper.  Hence the white undies.  They looked fine this morning, but the tissue was dubious again.

It's a little gross to talk about a woman's used tissue paper, but "gross" is part of this blog's title, and you reach a point in these efforts when there's no shame or reluctance in getting so intimately detailed.  We regularly have cups of pee on our bathroom counter, and we discuss daily the quality and quantity of Heather's discharge.  It's just not a thing.  

If Ashley has a girl, I am going to be pissed.