love
When we went in for our emergency ultrasound at 12 1/2 weeks, we saw the woman who led us through the ultrasounds of our first IVF, and the second. She had counted all my eggs with her ultrasound equipment during the drug regimen, and she was the first to see that twin A’s heart was no longer beating. This woman isn’t much older than I am — it’s strange for me to realize now that actually she might be younger than I am — and she is no more mature. When I think of her I think of her chatter about cookie dough and decorating easter eggs with her nieces and nephews and about suntanning and jogging on her lunch breaks. I was afraid it would be her that entered our room when I knew that the fate of twin A might not be good, and it was her, and she was quiet and composed right when I needed her to be.
If I’m bleeding again should I get another ultrasound? I asked her after the last emergency one.
She stopped and looked at me. This baby is so loved. You’re allowed to call for every single concern. I’m not saying that a baby born of a crack-smoking mother isn’t loved, but you guys have worked so hard for this.
I thought about that a lot afterward. Because what I’ve been feeling for a fifteen-week-old fetus that I’ve never met is not necessarily love. It felt okay to say that to myself, but I told Rosie that today and she didn’t understand. Of course you love it, she said. And I rushed to agree with her because, twisted logic, I didn’t want her to think that if I didn’t love this fetus inside of me then I also didn’t love her.
I’m not going to begin to define what love is, because when I’ve tried I’ve started to doubt just about everything. But what I feel for the coming baby is more protective, a little possessive, tender. I’ve been okay with that. I couldn’t have loved my dogs before I met them, and I had the added benefit of seeing pictures of them online first. I don’t even think that I loved them once we met them: it took much longer. I had to get over Moby ripping holes in my pants and flesh, Joon peeing on every good rug. I’ve read studies showing that babies conceived through IVF are more likely to be taken to the emergency room, but they are no more likely than a baby conceived naturally to be ill: it’s the parents who went through IVF who are the sick ones, having undergone that sort of trauma. (The trauma: hoping, trying, time passing, future plans on hold, hoping, trying, learning the diagnosis, infighting, blaming, feeling the pull of biology — a carnal beast inside that finds cliffs and bombs everywhere — trying alternative methods, again and again, paying thousands of dollars without the assurance that it will ever work, it working, the fear that it will be lost or lost again.)
But today I was thinking about it more, and it felt suddenly very wrong to not call my feelings for the fetus love. This feeling now that I wouldn’t be the same without this coming baby, that’s powerful. The feeling of connection that involves no language, just breathing and heartbeats, the conscious knowledge that with every bite I eat I am making something that is its own person, that feeling involves more than just being in a host/parasite relationship. I think maybe I’ve been afraid to think it, love, because if this disappeared it would be more tragic that way. But this one hasn’t been disappearing.
I don’t think I’ll, I hope I won’t, be the parent who takes her IVF-conceived child to E.R. I already feel like that phase is so far away. I don’t connect what I went through with what I’m growing now. That was one experience, and this is a whole other. And maybe, maybe they aren’t connected. It’s a game I play. For all I know this baby came naturally, out of love and into love. In the end, who could say? Maybe it did.
