Inconceivable

by Carolyn Savage

  The simple act of opening the front door without using a key made me feel as if I was leaving my family unprotected. Out where we lived, so removed from any dangers, we rarely locked any of our doors. From that night forward, I pledged to lock the doors and double-check them before I went to sleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  Our Cup Runneth Over

  SEAN

  AS I CAME INTO the bedroom, I found Carolyn on the phone with the fertility doctor. Why was she so polite with him? I think my flustered look helped motivate her to end the call. As I was trying to get to sleep, the doctor called on my cell phone again. He was making an impossible day worse. I reached to answer it so I could tell him off, but I decided to let it go to voice mail.

  The next day Carolyn remained sick. It hadn’t been morning sickness after all, at least not yet. Mary Kate was a little grumpy too, unusual for her. I hoped she wasn’t coming down with the same flu that Carolyn had.

  That day I consulted with Marty and his associate Mary Smith, a family law attorney, about writing a letter that would formally sever our relationship with the fertility doctor. Early the next day I made the trip to the fertility doctor’s office. My nature is to avoid confrontation, but I wanted to be straightforward and end the relationship in person.

  I’d saved the doctor’s voice-mail message from Monday night, and I listened to it before I went to his office. The message was frantic, and I felt bad that he and his family were suffering so much. Listening to it again reminded me that we were dealing with human beings and we needed to care for everyone, regardless of what they had done to us. This was a good thought to hold before I sat down with him. I needed to manage my anger and exercise self-control in this meeting. I hadn’t warned him that I was coming, but I figured, after all those phone calls, he’d see me right away. Within seconds, he appeared and ushered me into his private office.

  The doctor looked like I felt: neither of us had gotten any sleep. His talk was all over the place—apologizing, offering to give us a lifetime of free fertility treatments, and declaring that this mistake was in no way his fault. At one point he even suggested “reverse surrogacy”: transferring our embryos into the other woman’s body and keeping the baby she delivered. The idea sounded like it belonged in the circus.

  I handed him this letter.

  Dear Doctor,

  You have informed us that three of another couple’s embryos were transferred into Carolyn on February 6 and that Carolyn is now with child. We have received independent verification of the pregnancy. The purpose of this letter is to outline a few items. We have chosen not to terminate the pregnancy. We are requesting that you notify the genetic parents immediately. In the notification process we need to have our privacy protected. Please do not provide the genetic parents any information regarding us at this time, only the fact that we have decided to continue the pregnancy until delivery. We ask that the genetic parents contact our representatives, Marty Holmes and Mary Smith, as soon as they want to establish communication with us. We believe this is the most appropriate manner to open a dialogue between us and the other family. Privacy through this process is very important to us. Doctor, although a very difficult conclusion was reached, we believe that it is not a good idea for us and you to communicate directly regarding this matter and we appreciate you accepting this in the spirit it is being made.

  Sean and Carolyn Savage

  I went through the letter with the doctor line by line to make sure that he understood our intent. He needed to look me in the eye so that he could get a glimpse of what he had thrust upon our family. In the sincerity of his continuing apology, he gave me a few limited details about the other family, including the fact that the woman had a last name similar to ours. His partner, another physician in the practice, had given the other family the news Tuesday afternoon. I was relieved that they knew, but did they want the child Carolyn was carrying? He answered that question indirectly by telling me that the other family had been scheduled to meet with their doctor in a few weeks to discuss doing a frozen embryo transfer.

  I stood up to leave, but he had one more thing he wanted to say. “Sean, I owe everything to you and Carolyn.” I looked him in the eye and could see he was in a bad place. I was not even close to being ready to accept his apology. I was simply angry.

  As I walked to the car, the sound of ice crunching with each step and the cold, dreary day seeping into my bones, I reviewed the conversation. I could not believe that he had looked me in the eye and said that he was not at fault. How could he have said he owed everything to us and yet contend that he did nothing wrong? His heart was telling me that he was ultimately responsible, but his brain was making the counterargument that others under him were really the ones who screwed up.

  No, doctor, I thought, you are responsible for the mistake. You set the tone on how strictly procedures are followed. Just as we had thanked him for everything he did for Mary Kate’s birth, we had to hold him accountable for everything he did not do to prevent this tragic error.

  I got into my car and called Carolyn. As the conversation began, I pulled onto the highway and started the drive to my office. I had worked so very little this week, and it was already Wednesday. It was only the third day of this crisis, and I was already falling behind.

  CAROLYN

  My new rule was that whenever Mary Kate took a nap, I’d try to take one too. I needed rest. I knew that. But every time I put my head on the pillow, my mind would give me no peace. Physically the baby was no bigger than a speck of sand, but it was everywhere I looked.

  I thought about being pregnant. I knew I would feel horrid for the next several months. And if I was fortunate enough to carry the baby successfully, I would probably spend weeks on bed rest with my health endangered and our family life disrupted. I could picture the birth, but my imagination stopped when I tried to picture handing this baby to another woman.

  Those first moments when you hold your new baby in your arms are some of life’s sweetest. That beautiful fresh life filled with possibilities, and you are the lucky one who gets to be the custodian. And for couples who have suffered through infertility, cradling that baby has a feeling of a victory too. You beat the odds. You got around the diagnosis.

  Then I tried to picture the next part: my arms outstretched with the baby offered up in my cupped hands. The hands were in empty space, nothing but blue sky behind them, while other hands came to grab the baby, and then my baby was gone, gone forever. I could get as far as the arms offering the baby up, but then my mind would clamp down in disbelief. I could not imagine giving this baby to someone else.

  I drew my green afghan—my “blankie”—around myself for comfort. Yes, I am a grown woman who has a blankie. This one is the third I’ve had in my life, purchased after I lost the last one on vacation in 2008. I have a favorite pillow too, and I only sleep with that pillow. I also have to turn on a white noise machine in order to sleep. I guess I am kind of a high-maintenance sleeper. Everything has to be just right, and at a time when nothing seemed right, I wasn’t embarrassed to cling to these little pieces of comfort.

  Despite my angst, I tried to be the best mother I could to Mary Kate, who seemed to be coming down with something. She was not her usual cheerful self that morning. Maybe she wasn’t sick. She might have been responding to the fact that her mom was so distracted. I spent considerable time thinking about the mother of the baby I was carrying and how she would be worried. I figured the only way to keep her feeling safe was to communicate with her, but our lawyers advised us to be cautious. Sean’s Tuesday conversation with Mary Smith, our new lawyer, was fresh in my mind.

  All communications would be handled by our lawyers. Beyond our commitment not to fight for custody, the other family would get nothing but medical information, at least until we were certain that the pregnancy was viable. I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with this approach, but how could we know? We had no idea who the other family was. They could be people who would want to capitalize
on this mistake and sell the story. They might be dishonest or insensitive, thinking it was their right to force us to terminate the pregnancy. What I understood from the lawyers was that, at this point, the other family and our family were, in some sense, adversaries.

  I wanted to think that the other parents were good, decent people, but that hope might be setting us up for disappointment. Maybe they were generous—so generous that they would rescue me and my family from this nightmare by allowing us to keep the baby and raise him or her as our own child. I could love another couple’s child. I knew that. It was something I had experienced as a teacher and a principal. After the baby was born from me, wouldn’t the baby always be in some sense mine?

  As I burrowed under my blanket, I tried to picture the other mother. I pictured her as a tall woman, older and more sophisticated than me, with short brown hair, wearing a business suit. This woman was a powerful lawyer or a formidable businesswoman, I imagined, someone who had had significant successes in her professional life but had never been able to have a baby. I could give a gift like that to a childless woman. There was so much that I wanted to say to her, whoever she was and whatever she looked like. All the while, I felt badly for her. She probably had the same fears. She would worry about her baby’s well-being since she had no control over the situation. As strongly as I felt the yearning to keep the baby, I wanted to reassure the other mother that I would treat her baby as if he or she were my own precious child. Every piece of this that was under my control, and each decision I made, would be with the health of the baby in mind.

  All of my thoughts about the other couple helped me understand how much this pregnancy had changed my feelings about having another baby. Only a few days earlier, I had been okay with not having any more children, but now I wanted a baby more than ever. Even though I now had to use bifocals to read the ingredients on the baby food jar, and I was bathing Mary Kate in the kitchen sink to protect my arthritic knees, I’d bathe both of them between the coffeemaker and the toaster until they were toddlers, if that was what was necessary. We could still have another child.

  Could I still get pregnant? We had embryos that were left untouched in a freezer in the clinic. If I brought the baby inside me now to term, I’d have to wait at least a year before trying to get pregnant again. Then I’d be forty-one years old. Considering my health history and the number of C-sections I’d had, we would have a hard time finding a doctor who’d condone a pregnancy for me at that age. Besides, I didn’t just want a baby. I wanted this baby. I already loved him.

  Sean called from the road. He’d just fired our fertility doctor, and he said the other family now knew of the error. I held my breath.

  “Well, what did he say about them?”

  Please, God, please, God, let this be good news.

  “He indicated they were eager parents.”

  “Then they want this baby?” I choked on my words.

  “Carolyn, I’m coming home.”

  When Sean came through the door, I was out of bed and standing in the kitchen with my head in my hands. The concern on his face was tender, but I did not want his comfort. He didn’t deserve my rage, and he couldn’t help me in my sorrow. Mary Kate deserved a buddy, just like Drew and Ryan had in each other, and I wouldn’t be able to give her that, not with the baby that was inside me or any other to come. There would be no more to come. Sean tried to hug me, but I pulled away suddenly.

  “This is my last pregnancy. After my third C-section with this baby and my history, the doctors are going to say, this is it.”

  “We will need to speak to the doctors about this.”

  “The other family is going to get a baby out of this, and we may never get a chance again.”

  I could see from the look on Sean’s face that he had not yet connected the dots between the mix-up and the end of our chance for another child of our own. He was the consummate planner, someone who could project possible outcomes six, nine, twelve months ahead. Yet each day this pregnancy revealed a new problem. How many dimensions did this crisis have? His arms were still open, still holding the space where he had tried to hug me. I saw his eyes drifting over to his BlackBerry, which was flashing with calls from his office.

  “You should go back to the office, Sean. There is nothing you can do for me here,” I said.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” Sean replied.

  “There is nothing you can do to help me!” I said. “Just go.”

  God love Sean. I know I do. His reaction to me rejecting him and sending him off to work was to find us a therapist. He was right that we were going to have a difficult time dealing with the emotions as they arose. There was no map for this experience, not as there was for a family crisis like a death or an illness. He remembered a therapist named Kevin Anderson whose articles he’d seen in The Catholic Chronicle and whose spiritual take on marital challenges he had liked. I’d heard Kevin Anderson speak before. I remembered him as a peaceful, soft-spoken man with a Zen-like quality. He seemed like a perfect fit, as I needed some Zen in my life right about then.

  MK had thrown up Wednesday night, but by Friday morning she seemed on the mend. Our appointment with Kevin Anderson was at noon, and I had no choice but to bring her along. I packed her diaper bag, strapped her in her car seat, and made the twenty-minute drive to the church where Kevin had his office.

  I toted MK in her car seat into the lobby near his office door. When I lifted her out of her carrier, I noticed she was wet. On closer inspection, I realized the source of her wetness: a total diaper blowout. My precious baby girl was completely covered. Luckily, I had a spare outfit in her diaper bag. I went around a corner, laid her on her changing pad, and began to undress her. As I got her clothes off, the extent of the mess became abhorrently apparent. I started to sweat—five minutes to the appointment—as I realized that I didn’t have enough wipes to thoroughly clean her. Just then, Sean came through the door and around the corner.

  “Holy s—!”

  “Literally!”

  I sent him to find some paper towels as I continued to wipe MK down, hoping and praying that Dr. Anderson would be running late. No such luck. I heard his office door open. I’m sure the stench hit him before he even realized we were hiding behind a corner changing the most heinous diaper in the history of mankind. I heard his footsteps approaching, and I wanted to disappear. He rounded the corner as I looked up. “Sean, Carolyn?”

  “Hi, Dr. Anderson. Nice to meet you!” was all I could say as I tried to remove MK’s blowout from her hair. “I’m so sorry. We seem to have had a diaper emergency.” I could feel my cheeks burning.

  “Oh, man. Been there, done that. I have five kids. No worries.” He smiled, got me a garbage bag, and showed me where the bathroom was.

  Kevin was a tall man with broad shoulders, and his size could have been somewhat intimidating if it hadn’t been for the sweetness of his demeanor. He had a full head of brown hair that blended seamlessly with his full beard and mustache. A serene and open spirituality was reflected in his bright blue eyes, which seemed to shine with a deep inner compassion for all living things. I could sense this even if I couldn’t focus on the specifics of the conversation he was having with Sean. I confess I don’t remember much of that appointment.

  While Sean brought Kevin up to speed, I became transfixed by a poster he had on the wall facing me in the office. It was an M. C. Escher drawing of fish and birds, with the dark shapes of the fish at the bottom level gradually becoming lighter and thinner as the same silhouette transformed into the outline of birds in flight at the top layers. That was us right now. Sean and I were the fish in the dark at the bottom. This man was as gentle as I remembered him being when I heard him talk, and his voice was so soothing. I hoped he would be able to help us shed our scales and fly away from this darkness.

  We left feeling relieved. We had someone to help us. Sometimes I look back on that moment when he rounded the corner and laid eyes on us for the first time, while I was up to my el
bows in…well…shit, and think that it was fitting. We would have a lot more of that to dig out of by the time this mess was over.

  By Friday night Mary Kate was so dehydrated that the doctors admitted her to the hospital. (Our cup runneth over.) In the hospital, she lay in a crib as Sean and I looked in. For a period of time our focus was solely on her, and that, oddly enough, gave us a slight reprieve from our grief.

  Late that night, after Mary Kate went to sleep, Sean and I sat back in the hospital chairs and looked at each other. How could one week have been filled with so much? We held hands. Then we agreed that Sean would go home to tend to the boys while I stayed at the hospital. As Sean hugged me good-bye before starting home, he asked the one simple question both of us were thinking: “What is next?”

  CHAPTER 5

  Heartbeat

  CAROLYN

  MARY KATE HAD BEEN just under three pounds when she was born, and she has always been tiny for her age. She’s a good sleeper, though, and slept through the night from the time she was only a few months old. Most moms would have been thrilled by that and would have left her undisturbed. Yet I always gave her a bottle before I went to bed because I believed she needed the extra calories. This was even more important after she lost so much weight during her illness.

  As I sat in the rocking chair with her in my arms that first Saturday night after we found out I was pregnant, I held her tightly. MK, our miracle baby, getting stronger and bigger every day. I thought about how much I loved her.

  Those snuggles and cuddles were the moments that I cherished, the reward for pregnancy and childbirth. I knew I would never get a moment like this with the baby I was carrying. It was then that I realized tears were streaming steadily down my face, darkening the front of my robe. In the days since the news, I’d had plenty of practice crying quietly in my bed or with my eyes shielded by sunglasses as I drove about town on errands. I didn’t want to disturb the world with my tears or to invite any questions. I couldn’t ask anyone but Sean for comfort, and he too was overwhelmed. Plus, he’d fallen ill with the same virus MK and I had. All of us were weak and tired, but only two of us knew I held the source of our stress.