One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir (28 page)

T
hat Monday, six days after I found out I was officially pregnant, my miscarriage fear kicked in. My mother had had several, but she smoked. I was going to be flying to eighteen cities on a book tour—
I see her smoking and I raise her fifty!
I consulted my Boston IVF handout.

THE BIGGEST MYTH IN IVF

Embryos can fall out.

If the uterus was like a balloon, this might make sense. Embryos cannot fall out into a pothole, toilet, etc.

I consulted
What to Expect.

I consulted Lorene. “You can’t cancel your book tour, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I was pretty sure I could; Workman would understand. “I don’t want you moping around here. I personally don’t think the universe could’ve come up with a better plan. You just need to make sure to eat and rest—you’re going to major cities, not the Amazon.”

When I told the publicist, she immediately offered to cancel the tour. “If at any point you’re not feeling up to it, you promise to let me know. I’ll make sure you have places to rest, late checkout, I’ll rent you a room for the day if I have to. Do you want me to tell the tour contacts?”

“Please, no.” I had pushed public telling back until after the amniocentesis, whenever that was. The first ultrasound was still a week away. Normal fertile people probably wouldn’t even have taken their pregnancy tests yet.

At the first ultrasound, they were looking for a baby, specifically a heartbeat. The technician put the gel on my abdomen. She prepared us as she started searching around: “I may not be able to find it, and that doesn’t mean anything, they’ll just schedule another ultrasound in a—” We heard it! Over the whoosh, we heard a heartbeat! Next, we saw it! A tiny blinky bulb in the sea of my uterus. “One hundred and twenty-six beats a minute!” We cheered.

I wasn’t just hoping so, I wasn’t just saying so
. . . Lorene squeezed my hand so hard. “Ow! I really
am
going to have a baby!”

“Wow is right!” the technician said.

After the ultrasound, we had our last meeting with Dr. Penzias. “Very healthy, seven weeks gestation—due date, looks like October 26th.” Lorene’s mother’s birthday.

“Thank you for everything,” I said, which didn’t begin to cover it.

“It’s all pretty miraculous. The best part of my job.” He smiled. “Do you have any questions?”

I asked about flying and miscarriage, miscarriage risks in general, and any miscarriage risks specifically associated with my ectopic pregnancy. The answer was I had nothing to fear. He came out from behind his desk to congratulate us. We were graduating to normal-people ob-gyn care.

I
left for Detroit several hours later. My specially purchased one-suitcase-fits-all was twenty-five pounds overweight, so I ended up putting all my shoes, toiletries, and several other items in a separate carry-on.

I promised Lorene I’d let the escorts lift my heavy suitcase, but when Sheila Potts pulled into the handicapped space at the first Barnes & Noble and explained, “I have spinal stenosis, Judy,” I knew Lorene would have made an exception.

“It’s Suzy,” I told Sheila.

Sheila led me to the customer service desk. “I have an author, Suzy Becker,
I Had Brain Cancer, What’s Your Excuse?
” Sheila told me how much she’d enjoyed the book while we waited. “How’s your husband— wait, hold that thought!” The customer service guy was back. I signed a pile of books and Sheila took me to the café. “You’re entitled to a free beverage.” I ordered my usual, then remembered the baby, feigned a sip, and tossed it into the next trash can. At least it was free. Luckily, Sheila never missed a free beverage, so I ordered a decaf at the next Barnes & Noble and grabbed a water chaser at the third.

When I got to Chicago, I established a routine that worked pretty well throughout the rest of the tour: On arrival, I unpacked and ironed my clothes for the next morning, checked my e-mail, called Lorene, requested my wake-up call, then watched late-night TV until I fell asleep.

I’d do the early show, have breakfast, and then I often had the rest of the morning free so I could exercise nonvigorously (an outdoor walk or a tread in the gym) and do a little work. If you’d asked me at the time, I would’ve claimed no morning sickness. However, the sight of those book-tour clothes still turns my stomach. And while most food tasted fine, as soon as I finished, I’d make a mental note to never eat whatever it was again, plain bagels excepted.

Most afternoons, I was able to fit in a nap. Then I’d pack up, grab a dinner I could eat on the plane, head to my evening event, and it was on to the next city.

If I hadn’t seen the blinking light in my belly, I would’ve sworn I was carrying this baby in my butt. My boobs, previously sympathetic to the idea of pregnancy, really blossomed, but my stomach wasn’t having any of it.

Every few days I considered playing my pregnancy card, but I always thought better of it. Once I said something, there was no taking it back. And it was much easier to not think about miscarrying when no one knew you were pregnant. Besides, assimilating my new public identity as a “survivor” left very little room to contemplate my new secret identity as a pregnant person.

I had never thought of myself as a survivor. True—I didn’t die, but all I’d survived was brain surgery, not being stranded on the side of a mountain, left for dead in a park, or extreme poverty or abuse. Meanwhile, I was meeting real survivors by the dozen every day, listening to their stories, unforgettable stories: the postal office employee with brain cancer whose buddies collected a wad of cash ($3,500) and gave it to him on his last day of work, along with their pooled paid leave time (four and a half months). There-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I stories; please-e-mail-me-in-two-months-so-I-know-you’re-still-alive stories.