On joy and scars
There are two versions of this story. Here’s the first.
THE SHORT, SUNSHINE-AND-DAFFODILS VERSION
My wife Jen and I are expecting our first child in December. We are very excited.
That’s the first version of the story. If you want to stop there and go on with your day, that’s fine. No hard feelings. But if you want the more complete story, you’ll need to read the second version.
THE LONG, UNCOMFORTABLE, MELANCHOLY VERSION
My wife Jen and I have been trying to have a child since about October 2016. We’d been married for a little more than four years, and while I really can’t recommend the D.I.N.K. lifestyle enough — that’s “Double Income, No Kids” — we both had come to a point where we were ready to expand our family.
And so, we started trying. A couple of months went by without any luck, but in early February, Jen woke me up around 3 a.m. and told me she was pregnant. In hindsight, I should’ve been more excited and jumped up and hugged her, but it was three in the morning. As a result, I think my exact quote was, “Neat.” I turned over and went back to sleep.
A couple of days later, a blood test confirmed the home pregnancy test, and we began to get that new-parent excitement. We started talking about names, showers, nurseries, how we were going to tell our parents, how we were going to tell our friends, maternity wear, how Jen was going to live for nine months without wine. You know, the usual stuff.
We went in for our first appointment with our doctor on March 10. By then, we’d known for about six weeks, and Jen was about eight weeks along. We’d read from Dr. Google that we should expect an ultrasound and our first pictures of the little guy/girl.
When our doctor did the ultrasound, she couldn’t find anything. Well, that’s not exactly true — she found the sac where our child lives, but no child.
Our doctor said that this can be normal, that maybe we’re just a little bit early. Come back in a week and we’ll look again, she said.
And thus began the worst Spring Break ever. We canceled our planned vacation to Washington D.C. — we told our parents, who still didn’t know anything, that I had to work — and instead had nothing to do but sit around thinking about the fate of our child. We analyzed and over-analyzed and over-over-analyzed every word we could remember that the doctor had said. We grasped at every reason for hope — She said it could be too early! This could all be very normal! — but I think deep down, we both knew. Everything we did that week, including attend a wedding, was set against the backdrop that we’re probably careening headlong into devastation.
When we returned to the doctor a week later, nothing had changed from the week prior. It was a miscarriage.
More specifically, it was a blighted ovum — that is, the egg had been fertilized, but the embryo never developed. To put it in layman’s terms, everything had worked until it didn’t, for no real discernable reason.
I’ll never forget that drive home from the doctor. It was pouring rain. Jen was crying. I was trying not to, not only to stay on the road but also to maintain some semblance of strength. It was the worst moment of my life.
We didn’t tell hardly anyone what had happened — our parents, Jen’s boss, a couple very close friends. It felt, for some reason, shameful.
Our doctor suggested that Jen have a procedure called a D&C. To put it in most-simple and least-graphic terms, Jen’s body still thought she was pregnant, so what was supposed to be a child was not leaving. There was an option to let it leave naturally, but our doctor warned that it could result in significant blood loss. Jen is small — 5-foot-even — and petite, and I worried that such significant blood loss could be very dangerous to her health. But in the end, it was not my decision to make. Jen worried about a number of things — that this would affect her ability to conceive, that this would essentially be an abortion, that it would be painful (none of which are true) — but in the end, she decided to have the procedure.
A week later, Jen had the D&C. I can’t recommend ever seeing your significant other being wheeled back in a hospital gown, and I especially can’t recommend ever seeing your significant other being wheeled back in a hospital gown knowing that it’ll end your pregnancy.
We still didn’t tell many people, in part because we didn’t want to burden people with our problems. And it left the people we did tell in an uncomfortable spot — what do you say to something like that? A few people told us, “Hey, at least you know you can get pregnant!” and while I know their intentions are good, that did not make us feel better in the least.
We did, however, find out that as alone as we felt, we were not. Almost everyone we told let us know that this was not their first encounter with miscarriage — either they had experienced it first-hand or second-hand or knew someone who did. It was a large club that nobody wanted to be a part of.
After a couple of months, we were told that we could start trying to conceive again. But things felt different this time around. It felt like a job, a task, something to be crossed off a list. It was no longer about trying to start a family; it was about accomplishing a goal.
Undoubtedly, the biggest change was our reaction to failure. Before, when we found out that it didn’t take that month, there was an “aw shucks, better luck next time” feeling. Now, it felt like we had wasted time, like it would never happen for us.
A month passed. Two months. Six months. It wasn’t happening. It was so easy the first time; what’s wrong now?
For the first time in our five years together, our marriage struggled. We argued more. We talked about it less. We never said it aloud, but I think we both were looking for someone or something to blame.
Jen cried a lot at home, a needed release to maintain a smile in front of other people. I didn’t, thinking that she needed me to be strong. Instead, I would futilely attempt to hold back tears in the car on my way to work.
Social media was especially difficult. When you’re struggling with infertility and coping with a miscarriage, it seems like Instagram and Facebook are entirely comprised of cutesy pregnancy announcements, birth updates and baby photos. It sends you down a particularly insidious mental spiral — you resent the person posting it, then resent yourself for feeling that way about someone’s joy, then remind yourself of why you resent that joy, then feel all the more despondent. This happened literally every day, to the point that I would sometimes get stomachaches when a social media notification came across my phone.
After six months, we’d reached a state of near-hopelessness. Our morale was at an all-time low. It’d been a year since we’d begun this process, and all we had to show for it was pain.
We decided to see a fertility specialist. Our meetings were informative but blunt —full of tests and blood work and screenings. Eventually, Jen would have an outpatient procedure called a hysteroscopy, wherein the doctor removed a polyp in her uterus. I was sent to a urologist, who poked and prodded and asked uncomfortable questions about my bedroom performance.
More months passed. Nothing was working. Eventually, we set up a meeting to discuss next steps — specifically IUI, or intrauterine insemination. In case you were wondering, it is not cheap, and there’s no guarantee of effectiveness.
And then, as we were about to start these highly intrusive, highly expensive treatments…it just happened.
In March, about a year after our miscarriage, Jen was late. She took a pregnancy test — positive. We didn’t believe it, so we bought a digital pregnancy test — positive. We still didn’t believe it, so she went in for a blood test — positive. She was pregnant.
But there was no joy this time, no discussion of names or nurseries or niceties. Instead, there was only worry. We’d been here before, only to have our hearts shattered; that wasn’t going to happen again. We guarded ourselves, anticipating — even expecting — another disaster.
We went back to our fertility specialist for our five-week check-up, the point we’d never crossed in March 2017. Another ultrasound. The sac was there, but this time, it wasn’t empty. Our kid was there, a tiny speck.
Our doctor printed off a photo and congratulated us. A year’s worth of anguish, a year’s worth of despair, a year’s worth of fear, and here it was: a photo of a white dot on a black background. For the first time, I cried in front of my wife.
You may be asking, why write this? Why linger on the past?
The short answer is that it wouldn’t feel right to act like everything was perfect and carefree. Too often, social media is a reflection of the top one percent of our lives — nothing but how great our lives are. But that has the side effect of making those going through the other 99% of life feel more alone.
I know Jen and I often felt very alone during the darkest time of our struggles, and Jen would read and re-read the blog posts she found about people with similar struggles. Maybe our story can be helpful to someone else.
We’ve struggled and lost and grieved, but we also know that we’ve only been through five percent of what others have gone through. Millions of people are struggling to start a family. It sucks, and we recognize how blessed we are to be in the position that we are.
We’re thrilled beyond belief to start a family. But we’re still nervous. Even though everything points to a healthy child — we just had a doctor’s appointment that confirms this, now into the second trimester — every little thing scares us. We know the pain and the heartache, and we keep our hearts guarded.
That’s what scars are — a reminder of past pain. Hopefully, our joy will make us forget long enough for them to fully heal.