Baby Steps (16 page)

Dr. Sahakian regularly monitored the development of my eggs with an imaging machine, which allowed him to look at my ovaries, count the follicles that contained the eggs, and monitor the development of the follicles into fat little pods that could rupture and produce a ready-and-willing egg. After the first look inside at my ovaries after being on the stimulating drugs for a few weeks, he noticed that one of them was flattened and not producing many eggs at all.

“It's weird,” he said. “Your ovary on the left side is flat, with no good follicles. The other side has a few good ones, though. Let's just stay on the drugs a little bit longer.”

My first thought was,
the abortion.
Had they done something wrong during that abortion all those years ago? Had they destroyed one of my ovaries? Was that the whole problem? I was wracked with guilt. I asked Dr. Sahakian if that could be the reason.

“Who knows?” he said. “But we're here now, so the reason doesn't matter.”

It mattered to me. Who has a flattened ovary? I kept thinking someone had to have done that to me, but I'll probably never know the answer.

Dr. Sahakian said the other ovary looked good with viable follicles, and the drugs would help those eggs to continue to mature and get juicy (as he put it). Throughout the visits, he continued to watch the follicles. They weren't developing quite as quickly as he liked, so he had me do another round of the drugs before retrieving the eggs for the fertilization procedure. I worried that this meant it might not work.

But on August 4, we began the HCG injections, which stimulate egg development, and then we began to prepare, mentally, for the big day: August 6. Egg Retrieval Day. Dr. Sahakian said I was ready. My eggs were juicy. It was time.

Ron and I both went into the clinic and they prepped me for the procedure. I was nervous, and I remember sitting on the table, trying to prolong the moment when they would put me under because after that, there would be no turning back, no more hoping. The eggs would be what they were. I talked and talked about this and that. I knew Dr. Sahakian had other people scheduled, but I couldn't stop myself. I sat there in my hospital gown asking questions about the eggs, the collapsed ovary, asking him to repeat everything he was going to do. He was very patient with me. I think I was trying to entertain them, too. I kept trying to pull them into my personal story, then makes jokes and crack them up.
If I make them laugh, they'll treat my eggs more carefully. They'll do the procedure better. I'll be more likely to get a baby.
It was like I was auditioning for a director. If I made them laugh or told them my deepest thoughts, I would have a greater chance of being cast in the role of “mother.” I imagined the nurses whispering, “Doc, let's make sure the funny girl gets the baby!”

Egg retrieval requires anesthesia, so they put me out. While I was asleep, Ron had to do his part, giving them a good sample to use for
the fertilization. I remember waking up in the office from the anesthesia and feeling calm and peaceful. It reminded me of waking up after an emergency appendectomy I'd had a few years back and feeling like everybody was taking care of me. I was drowsy when Dr. Sahakian came over and patted my wrist. His hand on my wrist felt like the best, most comforting thing in the world.

“That feels good,” I said. “I'm very tired. I think I'll go back to sleep.”

When I finally woke up, he told me I could get changed into my clothes and go. I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay there, being cared for, while they made me a baby. When Ron and I walked out, I could hear another patient behind a curtain, although I couldn't see her or recognize her voice. It was the first time I'd ever seen anybody else in the office. They certainly were discreet.

Dr. Sahakian told me that he was able to retrieve eight viable eggs. Two were in excellent condition, three were pretty good, and three were average. The next step was to fertilize the eggs in the lab. I would come back in three days for the embryo transfer.

August 9, 2007, was Embryo Transfer Day, the day the doctor would implant the embryos and, we hoped, make me pregnant. It felt like a national holiday to me, but this was the day that Ron finally lost it.

He had misplaced a bag that contained his passport, and he was upset. Really upset. I knew the gravity of this moment—the moment I might become pregnant, I
would
become pregnant—so I began to snap at Ron for being upset about his passport. Who cares about a stupid passport when we're trying to make a baby here? Some part of me knew that the passport was just a trigger for the terrible stress we both felt about what might or might not happen in those moments after Dr. Sahakian worked his magic, but I couldn't verbalize this at the time. We poured all our anger, frustration, and fear into that passport
argument, like it represented everything important about our future.

As we bickered, Dr. Sahakian kept reminding us that this should be a happy time, and that it was especially important not to be stressed because stress could make the procedure less likely to work. Still, we kept snapping at each other, and the air in the room got tenser and tenser as I got onto the tilt table, my head dangling toward the floor. I tried to breathe deeply and think calm, happy thoughts, but I was heartbroken as I lay there with my legs in the air. Then Doctor Sahakian inserted the embryos with a tool that looked like a turkey baster.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts
. . . in went the embryos, and then I waited, still inverted, to increase the chances that the pregnancy would “take.” Sweet music played in the air, as if I was in a spa, while the acupuncturist poked me with needles meant to relieve my fears and calm my stress. The acupuncture was meant to keep me in a peaceful state, so the embryo could implant. Upside down, a science experiment at its most crucial stage, I breathed deep, long, and full,
Think baby. Think happy. No stress.
Ha! It was one of the most stressful moments of my life! Sometimes I felt like I was married to Dr. Sahakian. He had all the information, all the power over my future status as a mother. He was the one inserting the embryos with a turkey baster. He was the only one who could make this happen for us.

So this was my impregnation? Lying on a steel table in a flimsy gown annoyed with Ron while a doctor inseminated me, overwhelmed with the fear that none of this was even going to work? The kindly nurse told me to relax, so I tried to relax into the whole bizarre scenario. It was the path we'd chosen, so it wasn't going to do any good to complain now.
Happy thoughts.
I felt ridiculous and unromantic. Even after they told me I could put my legs down and go
home, I stayed. Just in case. I wanted to give my body every possible chance of success. Finally, after hours, Ron took me home. We were both exhausted, sorry, nervous. Hopeful, always hopeful.

Next came the waiting. I wouldn't know the answer for two weeks, but I didn't feel pregnant. I walked around like I was in a bubble, wondering, trying to feel something. I felt nothing. I was sure we would have to do it again.

On August 19, I went back for a blood test, and then I went home to await the results. I was told they would call me in the morning. It was the longest night of my life.

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

—Dr. Seuss

 

“
M
om?” I knocked on the bedroom door. “I need to ask you some
thing.”

She opened the door—stark naked. Big breasts, broad belly, jiggly thighs, bare feet.

“What is it, honey?”

“Oh my God, Mom, why would you open the door if you're naked? Now I can't even remember what I wanted to ask you!”

I pushed the door shut and ran into my room. It was
not
the way an eleven-year-old girl likes to view her mother. Humiliating!

Welcome to my daily childhood anatomy lesson.

If my mom wasn't wrapped in a bathrobe chanting or meditating, or out in public, chances are she was naked. She didn't like wearing clothes. They just weren't comfortable for her. It's not like she vacuumed or cooked dinner in the nude, but if she was hanging around in her bedroom, well sure, why not? She felt like clothes were restrictive. As a stay-at-home mom, why not lose the clothes? She wasn't exactly the type of mom who was obsessed with convention.

But my mother's penchant for nakedness did not amuse my younger self. I was always telling her to close the door. No, she could not hug me if she was naked. And I was leaving
my
bedroom door closed, thank you very much. When I was naked, I was keeping it to myself.

One of the many great things about my mother was that this was perfectly fine with her. Although I found her frequent nakedness mortifying, she never expected
me
to walk around naked, and she completely respected my choice to maintain my own privacy. I was always more modest than she was, maybe in response to what I perceived as her dramatic
immodesty.
But living with that kind of openness also made me more acutely aware of the complexities of the
body. I learned at an early age what it was to both despise and love a body. My mother literally
embodied
everything I came to understand about the body: that it can be both beautiful and flawed, nurturing and disappointing. That it can betray you, but ultimately, that it is your vehicle, your temple, and your only means for existing in this world.

My stepmother had a similar predilection for nudity, so even when I spent time at my dad's house, I often had to contend with nakedness, frankness, bluntness, and immodesty. Although Jessica, my father's second wife, had a smaller, fitter body with tighter curves and a tiny waist, my mortification at having to see
all of it
was no different than it was with my mother and her softer, wider body. I just didn't understand why they all couldn't
put their clothes on.
Isn't that what clothes are for? Aren't clothes an
excellent invention?

And yet, everywhere I went, nakedness seemed to be a theme.

Once, when I was fourteen, my father and Jessica took me on a white-water rafting trip in Colorado with a guide and a group of other people. We spent an incredible day riding horses on the trails and then riding down the river on a raft. At one point, we stopped for lunch, steering the raft to the bank and making a campfire on a sandy beach backed by rugged pine trees, near Beaver Creek. This would turn out to be an aptly named location.

As we climbed out of the raft and the guide began to unpack the food, we all heard a whooping sound and then a big splash. Curious, some of us ran down the beach and peeked through the trees; there, in a little grotto out of view of the river, a group of naked people were climbing up the rocks and hurling themselves into the water.