The number on my phone caught tight in my throat. It was the fertility clinic.
Two weeks earlier, my wife and I had done our first frozen embryo transfer as IVF patients—our first attempt after a miscarriage 11 weeks earlier. As instructed, I’d guzzled 32 ounces of water in an hour. The fullness of my bladder was supposed to assist the procedure, though it also helped me find every bump in the road during the 30-minute drive. Once in the room, a man in a white lab coat showed us a magnified picture of our microscopic blastocyst, before loading our little blob of cells into a tiny tube. Traveling between air bubbles across the ultrasound screen, the blastocyst glided toward the small opening in my cervix. One at a time the bubbles dissolved into the dark. The procedure was done; now the waiting began.
But for each wave of nausea or breast tenderness that gave me hope, there was an undertow of anxiety bringing its own physical symptoms.
The wait between IUI or IVF and the pregnancy blood test is torturous. Potentially pregnant people engage in a wide assortment of distracting activities to keep from over-scrutinizing every bodily sensation as they sit with the unknown. But for each wave of nausea or breast tenderness that gave me hope, there was an undertow of anxiety bringing its own physical symptoms.
The phone rang a third time. With a slide of my finger, I answered the call and our wait was over. “Congratulations!” the nurse said, “You’re pregnant!”
Stunned, I half fell into the office chair in our guest-room-turned-pandemic-home-office and managed to jot down a few notes about next steps. I looked at my wife, beaming in the late afternoon sun. She hugged me tightly, the constriction matching the squeeze in my chest. With tears in her eyes, she paced to the other end of the apartment repeating “Oh my god!” My hands shook as her words, part prayer, part exclamation, bounced off the walls of our small apartment.
Eleven weeks earlier, it was only when the fetal tissue passed that I realized I’d ever been pregnant at all, and when it did, I mourned both the loss of the baby and the loss of 10 weeks of expectancy. Given another chance, I wanted to enjoy being pregnant. We had spent two difficult and expensive years trying to get to this point. I wanted to blissfully count the days and weeks measuring the size of the baby in the app as it compared each stage of development to every fruit and vegetable in the produce section of the grocery store. But looking at a bunch of grapes made my stomach lurch—the body threatening to reject any food, my mind refusing any image that might make the baby (and its potential loss) feel real.
Given another chance, I wanted to enjoy being pregnant.
My anxiety swelled faster than my pregnant belly. Obsessively, I tried to control anything that might influence fetal development. I restricted my exercise in an attempt not to jostle the potential baby. I recorded every food I ate, watching the balance of proteins, fats, and carbs with orthorexic precision. I hydrated religiously. I turned the water temperature in the shower as cool as I could stand it.
At other times, I fantasized about losing the pregnancy, too frightened to visualize the alternative. If I couldn’t control the outcome, I could preemptively grieve. Rationally, I knew I couldn’t eat or rest my way around a miscarriage. Nor could I protect myself from loss by grieving before it happened. Control was a mirage. The impulse to shield myself from happiness, just in case I lost it, succeeded only in robbing me of my happiness.
“Today I’m pregnant and I will enjoy this day with my little one” became my mantra. I didn’t want to miss one day with my baby, even if that day turned out to be the last. Through the long days of the first trimester, I would repeat those words— “Today I am pregnant”—pushing a wave of gratitude up and over the seawall of my fear.
The impulse to shield myself from happiness, just in case I lost it, succeeded only in robbing me of my happiness.
Lying in bed each night, my mind would start its pre-funeral procession toward grief. I couldn’t visualize the baby yet—it still felt too risky. Instead, I would close my eyes and watch two tiny air bubbles float across my field of vision. I would remember the words of Rebecca Solnit: “The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.” I would linger a moment between the air bubbles before I let them dissolve into the dark. Then I would wait, alone or together, for sleep to carry this moment through the narrow opening of the next day.