The Big Fix (16 page)

Chapter 9

CRISIS IN A MINIVAN

W
hen the epilogue of my life is written, no one will ever be able to say that I wasn't determined. One night I was sucking down a carton of saag paneer and rice. The only thing to come out of having a miscarriage that is not completely horrible was being able to eat sushi and spicy food again. Indian food numbed my mouth and my pain. I knew I would regret all this garlic and spice tomorrow. Tonight I was in the mood to say “Fuck it.” There was a place close to my house that delivered. The proximity of that place and my mood made for a perfect storm of indulgence and isolation. Despite pleading from my fiancé, I couldn't bear to leave the
house when I was not at work or school. Everywhere I went, it seemed like I ran into someone who wanted to discuss the progress of my now-lost pregnancy. Since I'd been stuffing my feelings with food, I could see where I would still look pregnant. But I was sick of explaining myself: I am no longer “with child.” Now I just look, feel, and eat like I am fat. I was oh-so-bitter. One day I might take a few steps forward, the next it was a few steps back.

I had to be out of work for a few days to heal. Plus there were the pain meds. Seeing me with pinned eyes certainly would not be inspiring to the methadone patients seeking my assistance. I felt like I was having the worst period in the history of womankind. I was having cramps. I was tearful. I wanted to eat everything. Eating was my way of dealing with depression. The food gave me a way to shove down the feelings. I was still trying to process the shock of the event. I had felt so powerless lying there on the gurney as they wheeled me through the halls. I had felt so empty at home knowing there would be no “special delivery” on March 31. My friends wanted me to talk, but I didn't know the words to describe the pain I was feeling. I just wanted to pass the time without feeling anymore. I spent hours researching the nuts and bolts of getting pregnant using an ovulation tracker. With a click of the mouse, I transported myself to a new fantasyland where having a baby would be possible again. The fantasy allowed me to block out my painful reality. It was not just the loss of the child that threw me into a state of despair. I had an utter loss of hope. The world seemed as cruel as it had before I had quit drugs. I had fallen into the trap of believing that I could be a “normal” person. I had
started to believe that I would be able to have a family, to have a house filled with love, unlike the one I'd had as a child. The loss of the child was the death of my dreams.

Before the pregnancy I was going to meetings sparingly because of my heavy course load at school. I found that getting to one meeting a week could be a struggle. Now my attendance had been even more sporadic. I found it difficult to hear a room full of mostly men explain all the things their “higher power” had done for them, when I felt like he, she, or it had let my baby die. I really began to notice the gender disparities in those meetings. It seemed as if there were at least five men for every woman. In the past, I had been going to the one women's meeting every week in my area, but I could no longer fit it into my schedule. My miscarriage also wasn't a topic I felt I really wanted to share at a group level. Instead I was sitting in my dark bedroom, clicking away, hoping that somehow I could find an answer to my spiritual crisis.

I was trapped in my own thoughts, with the healthy exception of calls here and there from concerned friends. But it was still too hard to talk to anyone who knew me. They tried, they really tried, to help me. But I just felt as if there was no one who understood the depths of my pain. Miscarriages, though very common, seemed to me to be taboo. The lack of information or discussion about them made me feel like a failure as a woman. I was so inept, I couldn't even carry a baby to full term.

When I took to the magic of technology to find out how long I needed to wait in between pregnancies, I also found support from strangers. On the Internet, I felt I
could share my pain without judgment. There was a whole community of women who had experienced the same thing. Those women found solace from behind their avatars. I had nothing fancy to offer. I created traceyh415. That would be my new Internet identity.

“How are you ladies tonight?” asked babyfever1970.

“I am okay,” I typed. “Finally stopped crying.”

“Don't worry,” added AngelWings2006, “we understand. Let it out.”

“(((HUGS)))” said sugarbearinTX. There were sparkles in her avatar. I suddenly loved sparkles.

Somehow, I felt this hug. For a split second, I felt a tiny bit better.

I was asking anyone who would listen about my chances of getting pregnant again—nurses, doctors, and counselors. I got a lot of “I can't answer that question.” I suppose that was normal since they worked at the methadone clinic, not in the field of reproductive technology. But that didn't deter me from asking. I was a professional. I had a degree. How could there be no possible way I could take control of this situation? The loss of control was sending me spinning like a top on the ledge of a skyscraper. I was thirty-six years old! I could not wait much longer.

In a moment of complete desperation, I made an appointment with a fertility clinic. Even my fiancé gave me the “I am going along with this, but are you fucking crazy?” eye roll. I paid $350 for a doctor to tell me the equivalent of Your eggs are fine, chill out. I went from heroin addict to baby addict. Is that even a thing? I wondered to myself. If not, I have invented a new addiction.

This obsession was slowly starting to take over my life. All I could think about was how horrible my life would be if I could never have a child. Why was I so stupid? Why did I believe all that garbage I had seen in women's magazines telling me I could have the family
and
the career? Why did I wait so long? It all seemed like such bullshit now. I just wanted to have someone call me “Mommy.” I wanted to know I would never be alone again. I wanted to have that feeling of being part of a family,
my
little family. I was incurable. I felt a little saner when I immersed myself in my plan. I constantly practiced my new language: cervical mucus, ovulation tables, luteal phases, and basal body temperatures. It was as if the pursuit of a baby was the only thing that could help me manage the pain over the one I had lost. I knew I was running from my feelings. I was running the way I ran with drugs. I was going to drive this car until the wheels fell off.

“Let your body heal,” the ob-gyn told me.

I was in his office for my follow-up appointment, six weeks after my procedure.

“Tell me the truth,” I asked him, “what is the minimum amount of time I need to wait?”

He helped me down from the table. “I would say three to six months.”

His advice fell on deaf ears. I had a case of selective hearing.
Yeah right, three months,
I told myself.
Let's start trying now.
It should be fine since it certainly would take more than three months. I was tuning out all reasonable feedback while filling up my mind with online advice. The women on these message boards hadn't waited!
They had perfectly healthy babies! Why not me? I knew I was beyond the point of baby fever. I had baby delirium.

My fiancé was willing to participate in anything that would get me to stop sitting around in the dark in my pajamas. During the “fertile window” of five to eight days, it was required that we have as much sex as humanly possible to catch the egg as it made the journey to my tired old uterus. There was lingerie and porn and lube of all kinds to get the motivation going for the two to three sex sessions
per day
required for this endeavor. By the end of the fertile window, we were sore and tired. Then, we had to wait ten days for the pregnancy tests.

Our impending marriage was completely overshadowed by my obsessions. I was willing to go through with the wedding, but I can't say I was particularly excited about it. Deep down, I felt as if the only reason my fiancé had agreed to marry me was gone. I forced myself to push through my doubts. I got a light purple dress, he got a matching shirt and suit. The idea of wearing white was simply too ironic for me. I felt as if the Christian God, if there is one, would certainly strike me down on the spot. I was fucking with all his traditions. A whore like me didn't need to wear white at my wedding. I certainly was no virgin. I was pure as the snow on the highway. I was pissed at God anyway. This God let my baby die. Fuck him.

I was trying on my off-the-rack dress at home after the alterations when I caught a glimpse of my fiancé in the next room.
Why does he put up with me?
I wondered to myself. This man—I had this man. He loved me. I snapped out of my baby haze to look at this beautiful man. He accepted me
for all my crazy. I was trying to squish my size 18 ass into a taffeta dress while he patiently waited for me to come back and watch TV. He thought I was beautiful, and smart, and special. How did I ever manage to get so lucky?

I took another look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I didn't recognize the person I saw there. Here was a woman who was radiant. She was glowing from the inside. Was that me? Was I this person? For a split second, I felt my happiness. It was overwhelming me. It wasn't the marriage or the dress. It was the love we had for each other. WE had been through this horrible thing—together. Every man I had ever cared about had hurt me in some way. Not him, not ever. I got out of my dress and gave Christian a kiss. He deserved much more attention than what I had been giving him the past few weeks. I was going to make a commitment to myself to try harder to be good to him. Within a few days, we were married.

We exchanged vows at City Hall in front of a few friends. It was small and special. I stayed in my dress as we went out for oysters. I exchanged my heels for flip-flops. The first time I wore platform heels in the fifth grade, I had broken my leg. This had been one of a handful of times since then that I had put on heels. It is well documented that I've always had horrible luck with shoes. At least that hadn't changed when everything else in my world was topsy-turvy.

Our honeymoon was an exhausting four days. It certainly was not some wild festival of sexual adventure. We had worn that out in the fertile window. It was exhausting because my young, incredibly fit husband dragged me on hikes from hell around the coast of Kauai. I have never been so tired or sunburned in all my life. Sticking a needle in my neck was as
close as I had ever come to testing my adventurous side. Now, I was out inching along the side of wet cliffs while the sun toasted my shoulders well past a crispy red. The next day, to cool off we went swimming on a reef. I got sandwiched between some coral and a hungry sea turtle. My legs got battered by the tide trying to swim away. By the last night, I had collapsed on the couch of our condo. This was just the trip I needed. My husband and I held hands, the only part that was not stinging, as we realized we were in this life together.

A few months later, we found out I was pregnant. I peed on a stick in the bathroom of a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I was still pissed off at God, but I was trying to get back in to the swing of meetings. I needed the support of my friends there. When I saw that my test was positive, I prepared myself for nine long months of hypervigilance. I would have spent nine months lying on my side on the couch if I knew that would make this happen. Every single cramp or creak sent me into a panic. I ate my way through my anxiety, gaining well over fifty pounds. When I heard that I was eating for two, I took this completely to heart. I think I was actually eating for three or four adults.

Every time I would see the doctor, the result would be the same: high blood pressure. Of course, I was a nervous freaking wreck. I had done all the tests, made every appointment. I would see the doctor and panic would set in. Was something wrong with the baby? Was I ever going to stop gaining weight? Would I ever see my ankles again? So many questions before each visit. I would pull out my
What to Expect When You're Expecting
book to make notes, my tired, swollen legs propped up on the ottoman after a long day
at the hospital. The baby swirled around in my belly as she pushed the book up and down. A girl—we were having a girl. The amnio had confirmed it. With the cat on one side and the dog on the other, I would fall into a nap as I daydreamed about what would happen when she was finally here.

I was so worried about the pregnancy, I never gave much thought about the birth. As it got closer to the event, I turned to my mom for advice.

“What happened when you had me?” I asked her. “What was it like?”

I could hear her take a sip of her Diet Pepsi. This was part of her routine since she had quit smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. At night, she would drink diet soda, watch the home shopping network, and hope for the phone to ring.

“Welllllllll.” She paused. “I don't remember much.”

This puzzled me. I thought this was one of the most important days of her life, the birth of her third baby, the last one. My mother had told me on a few different occasions that she had wanted to have five children. My father was from a large family and my mother was always lonely as an only child. She had some type of bleeding incident after my older brother was born where they advised her not to have any more children. I was born five years later. The day I was born was the day the cicadas started emerging from hibernation, a once-every-seventeen-years event. My mother would joke that my birth was an event of biblical proportions.