Mystery Solved

I pick up the messages on my work voicemail. Message #1 is from Sara, genetic counselor. We have been playing phone tag despite my initial plan to not call her back right away.

“What? What does ‘you’ll call her back next week’ mean?” Mr. Crud asked me as we lay in bed last night.

“Next week is what it means.” I pulled the covers tighter around my chin.

“Not Monday?”

“I don’t want to talk about this right before bed,” I said.

The truth was that I had grown comfortable in the post-D and C world of not knowing. What if there was an answer? What if was my fault?

I called her back. She called me back on two different lines. Then she called Mr. Crud at home. The second voicemail message was from him.

“Good news, uh, sorta. The tests found a chromosomal abnormality so this miscarriage is unrelated to the first one.”

Yay? Chromosome 23 is the culprit. The miscarriage was destined to happen from the moment of conception. Embryos with this abnormality don’t make it past 11 weeks so there wasn’t any risk of Down’s Syndrome or the other feared conditions listed in Sara’s notebook. The chance of this happening was 1 in 149. Should we play the lottery?

Mr. Crud’s message continues. “Oh, they also found out that you aren’t a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis.”

Good news, of course, but I know Mr. Crud is a little bit disappointed. If I had been a carrier then they would have tested him too and all through both pregnancies, Mr. Crud has hungered to be tested for something. When the doctors tell us that only I need a blood draw, Mr. Crud face takes on a momentary “what-about-me” sadness.

His time has come! For the tests that they would like to run on us, to rule out more systematic chromosomal problems, both Mr. Crud and I will have blood drawn. Sara tells us that there is no rush. And I feel no rush to get back on the pregnancy train. I have been thoroughly enjoying dirty martinis, sushi, bean sprout-laden spring rolls, stinky, unpasteurized cheeses of all kinds, and a few cigarettes here and there. The cigarettes bother me the most. During the pregnant days, I liked the feeling that I had stepped off the cancer train. Self-righteousness is among my favorite natural highs and now when I partake of a smoke, I also trade in my well-worn high horse. Alas.

The only times I feel the pregnancy urgency return is when I hear about my friends getting pregnant, mostly through Facebook status updates. When I read that Old High School Friend is hunting for daycare for the twins she’s expecting, the tears well. Or New Adult Friend has learned the sex of her baby, I sigh. I get an email from Old College Friend who says all the right consolations about my miscarriage until I get to the next paragraph…she’s pregnant too. I feel genuinely happy for her.

And sad for me.

Our kids would have been born close together. We could have gone through their stages together, comparing notes on who is smiling, walking, babbling sounds that we swear sound like “Mom.” I mourn the experience of being pregnant with my friends. I mourn unmitigated joy when I read their preg-related status updates and emails. I am happy for them and glad that they have been spared this claustrophobic world of miscarriages. I am also sad for me, for Mr. Crud, for my yoga friend and her 2 miscarriages, for the band friends of Mr. Crud, Liz and Mark and their recent loss, for the woman who used to be my manager at my record store job years ago who found me on Facebook and shared her story of 2 miscarriages in a row. The loss of pregnancy innocence is another death that I revisit even as I had hoped to leave it behind after miscarriage #1.

In a conversation with my brother, he reminds me that fear during pregnancy is just the beginning. The other night my sister-in-law awoke to their child making weird snurfling noises and unable to make eye contact with either parent. They flew into a terrified frenzy that something was WRONG with their daughter. The doctor talked them down and advised them to feed their daughter, which was the trick that brought her back from whatever haze she had fallen into.

“I mean it’s easier because you can see them breathing and know what’s going on with them,” my brother says. “But birth is just the beginning of a-whole-nother world of worry.”

That’s what we have to look forward to?