October is National Miscarriage and Stillborn Awareness Month. I realize that is a lot to say...but for those who have lived through it, it is a lot to handle. Infertility and stillbirth affect every aspect of a woman's life, not only because it can affect her physically and emotionally, but because of the societal expectations put upon women to bear children and because of the way we raise up expectant mothers as public figures to be celebrated. Which of us has not smiled upon seeing a pregnant woman glowing with happy expectation? How often have you seen someone go out of their way to assist an expectant mother? From holding doors to giving up one's seat on crowded public transportation, expectant mothers are given special status (as they should!). Even at the office, expectant mothers are celebrated and feted as the excitement of a new baby radiates through the air. For the woman struggling to have children - be it struggling to conceive or struggling against repeated miscarriage - the atmosphere that celebrates pregnancy can feel like breathing toxic fumes. While she is happy for her those who can experience the success she craves, she is brokenhearted for herself - and for her partner, as they mourn a baby they never got the chance to know.
While I have never made it a secret that I cannot bear children, I generally keep it to myself that it wasn't always that way. To follow is an essay I wrote back in 2008, a reflection on a memory of an event that had occurred a few years prior. It has been over a decade since I wrote it, and my feelings on parenthood have changed - too late, leaving me to wonder what might have been.
For those struggling with infertility and stillbirth, know that you are not alone. Here is my story.
Two Lines
Two
lines. Two pink lines, to be
specific. Two pink lines, staring up at
me from the plastic stick onto which I had just urinated, to be very
specific. I remember standing in the blue-walled
bathroom stall at the local Wal-Mart, staring at the results of the EPT home
pregnancy test I had purchased only moments ago. “Good luck!” the cashier had told me, a plastic
smile smeared across her round face, a mystery stain covering her ill-fitting
blue smock. Good luck – I suppose that’s
a pretty neutral statement, covering all the bases from “Congratulations!” to
“What a relief!” I thought ________ and
I had covered all the bases, too, but the proof of our carelessness was right
in front of me – and “over 99% accurate” according to the box that I had just
discarded into the sani-can beside me. I
laughed at the irony of the word and thought about how that was the last
deposit I would be making into such a receptacle for quite some time…
The
stale smell of urine permeating the air around me reached my nostrils and broke
the mesmerizing shock into which I had drifted.
“How could I be pregnant?” I
thought. “__________ always told me he couldn’t have children. Right! And the check is in the mail and I’m
from the government and I’m here to help you!” The sounds – and smell – of someone in the
next stall gave me the strength my wobbly legs needed to propel me out of that dirty
hole-in-the-wall that Wal-Mart had the audacity to call a restroom. I had walked in there a young woman, footloose
and fancy free, but I walked out an expectant mother. Suddenly, the world around me seemed a
different, more dangerous place.
As I
walked towards the front of the store and the door to the outside world, I
noticed a display of Pampers disposable diapers and nearly choked when I
noticed how much they cost. Even at
Wal-Mart’s famous roll-back prices I still thought them ridiculously expensive,
considering their purpose, and made a mental vow to have my baby toilet trained
by 18-months – sooner, if physiologically possible. A young child, no more than five years old,
raced by me on a pair of roller sneakers and for the first time ever I did not
yell in annoyance as I jumped out of the way of “moving traffic”. Rather, I made a mental note to never, ever
allow my child to strap such a dangerous contraption onto his (or her!)
feet.
My
mind full of psychological sticky notes, I decided to take a detour through the
children’s clothing section, just to get an idea of what this little growth in
my uterus was going to cost me in the coming years, when I stopped short at the
sight of the newborn baby clothes. I felt as if a million more thoughts flooded my head all at once; everything from,
“Malibu Barbie herself could not possibly
approve of this much pink!” to “How
adorable is this pair of footie pajamas?”
I suddenly understood why expectant moms were always glowing with
happiness, laughing with excitement over anything and everything that even
remotely reminded them of their impending loss of freedom: it was the hormones. It had to be some sort of chemical imbalance.
What else would explain why I, a well-educated, high-profile career woman would
suddenly start screeching like a teenage girl over, well, over anything.
Disgusted
with myself, I took a short-cut through the housewares section to the front of
the store. Matching bath towels with
coordinating rugs and shower curtains have a way of soothing me when I am
stressed; they imply a greater sense of organization than I can ever hope to
achieve. No one will ever mistake me for
Martha Stewart’s long-lost twin, but the way I see it is only one of us can
look good: me or my house, and my house doesn’t work in the corporate world. “Neither
do babies,” my mind screeched at me. “What am I going to do? I’m Catholic!”
“Have
a nice day!” shouted the greeter by the store exit, a man with obvious physical
and possibly mental handicaps. For the
second time that day I froze, unable to move a muscle, as the greeter
continued to scream at me, insistently telling me what kind of day to have. “What
if my child is born with severe handicaps?” I panicked. “How in
the world will I handle that?” Due to my thyroid condition, this was a very
real possibility. For the
second time that day my legs were goaded into action by an unpleasant smell;
this time, it was a woman who, from the looks of her, had not seen the inside
of a beauty parlor in many summers. Her
hair looked like a rat’s nest – I was afraid there might be some sort of
entomological life living in it and moved quickly to put as much space as
possible between us. I was starting to
feel nauseous, and I wasn’t sure if it was my condition or the unpleasant odor
that was causing my discomfort.
As I
opened the door to my sports car, I realized that I would probably have to
trade it in for a sedan before too long – or even worse, a mini-van. The thought did nothing for my nausea. “Fuck that”, I said to myself, “Let ______ trade in his Mitsubishi. Why
should I be the only one to suffer?”
Thinking
of _________, I realized that he did not yet know he was going to be a
father. I sat behind the wheel of my car
and laughed in amazement at the sheer simplicity of it all: Of course, _________ didn’t know yet; this
was my special secret! So why, if
it was so special, did the thought of telling him cause my ever-growing nausea
to overcome my disgust of vomiting? Thank
God I hadn’t closed the car door yet. “Let Wal-Mart clean up the mess”, I
thought, wondering if they gave their parking lots the same T.L.C. as they did
their bathrooms. I keep bottled water in
the trunk of my car, a hold-over from my years as a practicing bulimic – the
taste of bile never did make the cut onto my list of favorite flavors, which
left me wondering why Bertie Botts made “every flavor” bean. The things
kids will eat when searching for adventure. "Am I ready for this?"
I
pushed open the hatchback of my coupe and saw – along with jumper cables, road
flares, and my gemstone mining equipment – a case of bottled water nestled into
the small space. Old habits die hard, they say. Thank God for that, too. Yes, I was really racking up a debt with the
man upstairs. “Just put it on my tab”, I said aloud to the God that I was
taught always listens to our every prayer.
Apparently the one about not wanting children must have gone to his spam
folder.
As I
pulled out of the parking lot, I realized the drive home would be a slow one
from the looks of all the cars on the road.
For once, I didn’t mind the heavy traffic. It gave me time to rehearse what I wanted to
tell _________. “Great news, honey,
you’re not sterile!” seemed a little too direct; “Guess what?” a little too
vague, not to mention immature. I may
have had to give up my freedom, my designer wardrobe, my high heels, my career,
and maybe even my sports car, but damn it I was going to keep my dignity
intact.
As
slow as traffic was moving, it was not moving slow enough for me. I arrived home in only twenty minutes, my
head still spinning with the afternoon’s events. “Why
had I even thought to buy an EPT in the first place?” I asked myself. “Oh,
that’s right,” my thoughts answered, “because
during my weekly trip to Wal-Mart, I couldn’t remember when I had last bought
tampons”.
As I
walked into the house, I received another shock in the form of _________, home
from work several hours early, with some bad news of his own: he had just been
fired from his job for “sexual harassment”.
That was truly the last thing I needed to hear – that my boyfriend was
coming on to other women; other, more beautiful women whose bodies would not
soon be distended by a growing midsection and swollen ankles. So much for keeping my dignity – I started to
cry. _________ started explaining to me that
he hadn’t been hitting on another woman; it was just the opposite – he had made
a disparaging remark about a lesbian at the office, not realizing she was
within earshot. He told me I was the
only woman he loved and that we would get through this “together”. He then looked into my eyes and, through the
tears and smeared mascara, somehow guessed that he wasn’t the only one with bad
news to tell. “Together”, he
repeated. “We’ll get through this
together, too.”
Four weeks later, he was gone. “He” being the baby boy growing inside of me. The doctor called it a “spontaneous abortion”. I called it the end of a dream. What had started out as my worst nightmare
became an idea to which I had grown accustomed: Motherhood. Four days later, ________ left me too, unable
to become accustomed to the idea of “having a woman support [his] unemployed
ass”, and blaming himself for “our loss” – but was it really a loss after
all? It is a question I still ask
myself, wondering if I will ever hear a different answer than the resounding
“no” that echoes in my brain. Some
people were never meant to be parents, and I believe that I may be one of
them. To this day the smell of poop makes
me gag, as does the price of a box of Pampers…and yet, I still coo whenever I
see a newborn-sized pair of pink footie pajamas.
KJM
09.28.2008
As I said, my feelings on parenthood have changed since I wrote this essay. (In another twist of fate, I have become the Martha Stewart of my tribe, complete with color-coordinated housewares). Maybe it was my experience step-parenting; maybe it was my biological clock catching up with me. I like to think it was the time spent working with young adults, seeing the result of what years of faithful parenting and positive influence could achieve. It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child; I thank those who have allowed me to be a part of theirs.
KJM
09.26.2018
