12 1/2 weeks
Last night I went to the bathroom and there was blood. I sat on the toilet and cried, and then I googled the worst. This had happened before, it had looked exactly the same, and we had lost twin A. The nurse this morning instantly understood the concern and told me to drink a lot of water to prepare for an ultrasound within the hour. Actual conversation:
me: Do you require that everyone who’s bleeding at 12 weeks get an ultrasound?
nurse becky: Not all the time, but you’re special.
me: Thank you.
nurse becky: You are special in God’s eyes. But also you have a history of bleeding with spontaneous abortion and you have cysts from the IVF procedure, so we have to monitor you more closely.
(To hear from a nurse, no matter if she was joking, that I was special in God’s eyes, I felt small and scared enough that I actually really needed to hear it.) I called Steve at his volunteer activity to tell him about the sudden doctor’s appointment, and he asked if he should come. I said no, and he said that I should call him for anything. I was at that moment in the parking lot of a swimming pool waiting for Rosie’s lessons to end. There were people everywhere and I started bawling. Joon licked my ear. When the first IVF hadn’t worked, I could say that it wasn’t meant to be. When we lost Twin A, I felt similarly, though we had heard the heartbeat and I was naturally torn between sorrow over the loss and optimism over what remained. But this time, I felt the fighter in me that wouldn’t let me accept this fate. The same fighter that wouldn’t let me be okay when we learned that we would never be birthing a child at all, or at least not naturally. This internal mechanism isn’t helpful or thoughtful, it just swings its arms and aims at anyone who might have hurt me or who might have caused this. I cried in the parking lot because I felt small and porous, angry and scared. I was not going to be okay with losing this baby. I was going to fight and cry instead. Steve called back and said I should pick him up on the way to the doctor’s office.
This is how much water I drank. I drank so much water that, after I’d picked up Steve, in summer construction traffic, I opened the car door while I was driving and vomited it out, again and again. Also, I’m pretty sure I was nervous. Steve assured me that it would be fine – he said we didn’t owe anything to the universe right now, that we’d already been through enough to get this far. I wanted to believe him that it worked that way.
At the doctor’s office, we saw that the baby is indeed fine. When I asked the ultrasonagrapher why she thinks I bled, she said that kids scare their parents all the time for no reason. There it was in its sac, its heart beating normally, it size accurate, its head as big as it should be. When I laughed, it moved. Not huge scooping movement like in the last ultrasound, but small ones, reaching its hand toward its head, slowly kicking its legs. We got to watch it for a long time, Steve making sort-of funny running commentary throughout.
She strained to see the sex, but she couldn’t make it out this early. I have thought on and off that it’s a boy, I can’t yet imagine it a girl, and when Steve saw it in the ultrasound two weeks ago, he agreed. Today he agreed again, but when I asked why, he said scientifically that it’s because it was moving a lot and it had a big head. Rosie’s mom thought that Rosie was a boy her whole pregnancy, but out she came, so I’m not saying that our guesses are godly or accurate. And I’m also not saying that I care either way: I’ve closely raised Rosie and I’ve raised Jack with one hand tied behind my back – both have been worthwhile, difficult, and awesome for different reasons that may or may not relate to their gender. And if men tend to want to raise boys and women tend to want to raise girls, then it must be okay to be whatever you are. When we started the pregnancy, I was adamant that we would find out the sex; the further we get into this, the less I care. (Though still we’ll find out – I dislike the lie of the nurse seeing and knowing and not letting on. It feels like part of this century that people now easily can see the sex, and I’m content with having a five-month surprise over a nine-month surprise with that information. I am confident that there will be plenty of other things to take in at nine months, and I think that knowing the sex is helpful for bonding purposes for Rosie and Steve because they don’t get to bond by carrying it [yet]). But in truth, after twelve-plus weeks of eating as carefully as I can and worrying over pregnancy books and feeling the fatiguing effects of being the best host I can be, I don’t care whose mouth or nose or eyes or sex it will have or what day it arrives. Like everyone says and like I couldn’t feel until going through this, all I care is that the baby is healthy and whole.
