Early last April, I woke up feeling out of sorts. My energy was all trapped around my stomach and I knew in the way we all ‘know’ that something was off kilter. During January and February, I had had a complication with my kidneys. After a battery of tests and a minor outpatient surgery, the situation had been resolved. I wondered if this feeling in my abdomen was related to all of that and whether I should call my urologist for a follow up appointment. A few days passed.
And then it hit me.
I drove to CVS to refill a prescription and stood in Aisle 7 staring at boxes. The names all assured accurate results in only a few minutes. How do I choose? I started comparing prices and I remembered a scene from Sex And The City where Carrie and Miranda are doing the same thing.
Miranda: This one is on sale– it’s half off.
Carrie: I just spent $395 on a pair of open-toed Guccis last week. This is not the place to be frugal.
I bought a Vitamin Water. And a half-gallon of milk. And some gum.
I felt like a teenager buying condoms, loading up my arms with random impulse buys, hoping that the pharmacist wouldn’t say anything or notice. No such luck.
“You know these things don’t go together?” He said, eyeing the pink box and my prescriptions for Xanax and my anti-depressant. He noticed my wedding ring as I swiped my American Express. “Oh. You’re married.” I looked at him blankly.
Married. As if that matters.
Forty-five minutes later, I threw away the stick with two pink lines. For a moment there was hope. Then reality set in and grief overwhelmed me. I knew what was about to happen. I could feel that, too. The mild cramping had already begun, the sensitivity to light and nausea that comes with a hormonal migraine. I took a pain reliever and went to sleep. I had nightmares of inside-out babies with wings. Again.
Two days later, the cramping got worse. I put on black yoga pants and my husband’s hoodie, crawled into bed, and wanted to cry.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t blink or breathe or think either. But I couldn’t cry.
For the third time in five years, my body decided I had an infection. My hostile uterus ejected the foreign object with exacting precision. No infection here.
But it wasn’t an infection. It was… what was it? Not a baby. A mere clump of cells multiplying at breakneck speed. That’s all.
A week or so later, I met my best friend Ally* for dinner in a little restaurant at the mall. I thought of telling her, but couldn’t find the words. She ordered a ginger ale. I looked at her quizzically as the waitress walked away. She began to talk about an upcoming trip with her husband and how much she is looking forward to it because, “it will be a while until we can travel again.” She beamed. Radiant.
I squealed and hugged and asked all the obligatory best friend questions. When did you find out? What was your reaction? I bet Husband is psyched! How far along? When is the due date? Have you told your families? Let me know as soon as you pick the nursery colors so I can start knitting! When are you telling everyone else? I can’t wait to plan the shower!
An hour later, I hugged her in the parking lot as tightly as I could. As I watched Ally walk to her car, I remember thinking, “She is my best friend. This is what she has always wanted. I am incredibly happy for her.”
Driving home, all I could think of was that stupid pink box and those stupid pink lines and my stupid, stupid, stupid uterus.
I still couldn’t cry.
Over the next few months, eight other friends and acquaintances announced their pregnancies. Some were into their first trimester. Others barely knew for a week or two. I grew frustrated at the optimism of these two-week women. Don’t they know how much can change? What can go wrong? How fleeting and fickle that little bunch of cells can be? Frustration turned to bitterness and resentment toward these blissfully ignorant women. As they shared their milestones — the first heartbeat, first ultrasound, first time they felt baby flutter or kick, I couldn’t help but compare what might have been with what was. I felt like a kid who didn’t know the secret password to get into the treehouse, hearing her friends giggle from above. I felt left out.
As Ally’s pregnancy progressed, she was exhausted but confident. Ally was one of those mothers-to-be that carried the baby high with a little basketball tummy. For the first time in our friendship, I hesitated to hug her. The hesitation was not from jealousy or hurt. She just suddenly seemed so fragile to me, the little life inside so precious. I gingerly touched her belly when she asked if I wanted to feel the baby kick. I was afraid the heat of my hand might hurt her or the baby. When I felt the baby move, fear mixed with wonder and I tried to comprehend that her body was creating – was almost done creating — a new life.
I vacillated between my resentment of other mothers-to-be and my complete adoration and acceptance of Ally’s pregnancy. I was bothered by the irrational dichotomy, baffled as I put my friends into ‘bad’ or ‘good’ categories. I worried that it was a sign my medication needed to be adjusted and that I was again making erratic connections that had no bearing on reality.
When I went to visit Ally three days after she had the baby, I held him while she went upstairs to freshen up. I stared at my new little friend, counting eyelashes and looking at his fingernails. I heard her on the stairs and asked, “Do you just sit and stare at him?”
“No,” she laughed. “I think we’re still working on the bonding thing.”
And that is when it all started to make sense. I never resented or was hurt by Ally’s pregnancy because she wasn’t smug or pretentious or enamored with her own pregnancy. She talked about the baby’s development in an unassuming, clinical way. She answered baby questions when asked but was just as happy to talk about a new movie or local politics. At social events when new moms and expecting friends grouped together, she would leave the conversation after awhile to mingle with the couples and singles. During the last ten months, I never felt left out.
When I got home that afternoon, I sat outside and watched the dogs play. I thought back to April and breathed in, slowly. Breathing out, I felt the small muscles in the back of my neck relax for the first time in months. I felt calm. I felt release.
I still couldn’t cry, but I don’t think I needed to.