Hurry!

1-15-09

The cramps began early this morning, awaking me from my dream where Max and Kathy Crud had recently welcomed their second child into the world, a cherubic boy named Purvis. I bounced Purvis on my knee, wondering even in dream-world if I would ever give birth to my own Purvis. (Who, for the record, I would not name Purvis.)

Over the last week my desire to “try this bullshit again” as I told, Kelley, my massage therapist and (fingers crossed) doula-to-be has gone from trickle to waterfall. Last Friday I had a moment to talk to Jan*, the pregnant yoga buddy who has endured 2 miscarriages, each about a month before mine. I dropped off my mat then stepped up to her office door.

“Congratulations,” I said, peeking around the corner.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “How are you?”

“I’m good, really good,” I said. “How are YOU?”

“I’m good too.”

She gave me the montage version of her miscarriages. The first came quickly after the positive pregnancy test. The second was an experience similar to mine—ultrasound of doom at 9 weeks after already having a positive ultrasound at 6 weeks. She and her husband did the full battery of tests: blood draws, an ovary stress test, sperm tests, the whole work-up. The news was mixed.

“We decided to give it one month, one more chance, before doing in vitro and—“ she cradles her belly. “I still don’t believe it, but it’s getting pretty hard to deny.” She laughs.

I ask her about the anxiety, if she can relax, why she stopped doing yoga for two months. The questions flow in a giddy rush. In part, I will be late for work if I chat too long, and in part, I need to hear good news, to pretend for just a moment that her experience will be mine.

“I am relaxing. We’re having a boy. After a positive ultrasound experience, I could relax,” she says.

She stopped the yoga on doctor’s orders after she started to bleed. “But the bleeding was probably caused by the ultrasound or the progesterone. They didn’t tell me that of course.” She snorts. “I had to stop longer than I wanted, but it was okay. I did hatha and it was fine. Of course I’m not where I used to be.”

But who is in ashtanga world? Sometimes it feels like we are in constant recovery from past injuries or keeping a wary eye on those creaky body parts for injuries on the horizon. Do I require drama in all aspects of my life? Even yoga?

“The doctors said that yoga wouldn’t cause a miscarriage.”

Every time I hear those words, I am almost rushing to hear them again. Like Lenny and his rabbits, I need to be told daily that nothing I did caused my miscarriages, especially not yoga.

“How about you?” Jan asks.

“We’re thinking about getting going again,” I say, tears glistening in my eyes. “I’m terrified, but what can you do?”

“I’m praying for you,” she says. We hug.

“But I won’t ask if you’re pregnant. You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”

“I’ll probably tell you first thing. I’ll need the support.”

Walking to my office, I feel lighter. The possibility of having a baby is no longer an impassible mountain.

I email my doctor with thanks for her calls, her card, and all her kindness. We set up a phone appointment for the following Monday. Then, Sunday, Mr. Crud and I stop by the bakery before yoga class. Seconds before walking in my spidey senses tingled. I dismissed my intuition as hopeful thinking.

I buy us bread—a 7-grain carrot roll for me, a short skinny for Mr. Crud—and we step towards the door. Dr. Awesome (her newly coined PPC2 name) spins around, her son on her hip.

“Hey!” We say in unison.

The woo-woo side of me goes into overdrive. Despite all my anti-meant-to-be propaganda, I still feel like coincidences are more than the sum of their parts. This is a sign! First Jan, now Dr. Awesome. We must skip yoga class and commence to making Peabody 3 despite the fact that I am a week past ovulation.

We chat, we meet Dr. Awesome’s hot-chocolate mustached son. “You growing a mustache?” Mr. Crud asks.

I smile at Dr. Awesome. Isn’t he good at this?

We confirm our phone appointment and head off to yoga class, my baby mania quelled by the promise of restorative poses.

“So, what are your questions?” Dr. Awesome asks the following Monday morning.

I shut my office door and tell my student worker that I’m going into brief seclusion. He can hear through the window that separates my office from the front reception era but I don’t care. I’m less and less worried about my coworkers knowing about MC#2 these days. They can know. I just don’t want to talk about it.

“Can you go over what happened one more time? I was kind of in a fog right after it happened.”

She consulted the genetic counselor before calling. MC#1 remains a mystery. MC#2 was caused by Trisomy 22. Trisomy 22 is the second leading cause of chromosomal miscarriages and has nothing to do with my old lady eggs or Mr. Crud’s sperm.

“It’s a sporadic variation. Something went wrong when the cells were dividing.”

I jump in, always ready to flog myself. “So could anything I was doing have interfered with normal cell division?”

“No. It’s a mystery why it happens. It just does.”

Ah, the double-edged sword of mystery talk. I wonder if Dewey’s cells were happily dividing when all of a sudden I swung into triangle pose, causing a chromosome to hop to another cell.

“So tell me about the tests.”

Genetic tests. “They can tell you if you are at a higher risk for this happening again, but they can be expensive and insurance might not cover them.”

Thyroid tests. “We sometimes don’t know if something is wrong with the thyroid. It’s not likely, but it’s good to be sure.”

Thrombosis test. “This will tell us if you have a clotting problem. It might explain your first miscarriage if this is the problem.”

Saline infused sonogram. Dr. Awesome needs to consult with the doc who performed my D and C to see what we can learn from this. “Likely it will tell us if the embryo is having a hard time attaching to your uterus because of fibroids.”

Dr. Awesome tells me that most of these situations are treatable. The thyroid with drugs; the clotting with baby aspirin. She and the genetic counselor agree that the genetic tests will likely turn up negative.

Now for my silly question. “Should we wait until we get the test results to start trying?”

“Probably, but if we find out the results early enough in your pregnancy then we can start treating you.”

I decide to consult with Mr. Crud before canceling the genetic tests. I know he will be disappointed. He’s been itching to get his blood drawn. I suspect he’d even be psyched to have to give a sperm sample.

I calculate the date of my expected period. Getting the test results before the fun times of fertile days will be a tight squeeze. I’m in a devil-may-care-fuck-it-let’s-try phase, but I’m alone. Mr. Crud still gets the jittery “eeeee” face when I bring up the possibility.

Purvis’ cousin-to-be will likely be on hold another month. At least.


* Not her real name.