Inconceivable

by Carolyn Savage

  We’d known about this mess for only a week, and I was already getting sick of lawyers. I respected them, and I understood that they were necessary and that we were getting prudent advice, but the way this was all shaved and sorted seemed wrong. The language they used to discuss what we were doing was so cold. Mary told us that we had no legal claim to the child that was growing inside me. But my heart had a claim. This baby could not survive without me, but judges had ruled repeatedly that my contribution to this life was irrelevant. How could that be? There would be no baby without me. I’m not just an oven. I am not nothing to this child. Right?

  The next day, when the boys were at school and MK was playing quietly at my feet, I began researching the question online, trying to find just one legal scholar who backed up what my heart felt. I pored over laws and rulings. It seemed that, in most states, a birth mother is the biological mother. But if challenged on the grounds of genetics, DNA wins. I grew more and more upset, reading opinion after opinion that said I was indeed nothing to this child. I was an incubator, an oven. My feelings, my family, were meaningless. It wasn’t that I was hoping to find an excuse to stake a claim to the baby. But I desperately wanted to read something that said I mattered.

  Finally, I found some essays written by a Cornell law professor about our very predicament. Her opinion was the only one that recognized the value of my contribution to this life.

  I didn’t know whether to feel vindicated or abused. In fact, I felt both. There would be moments when I felt sweet pride at being the steward of a life. Then, in an instant, I would be slapped by the knowledge that my act of generosity was seen by the official world as irrelevant. My life mattered not at all, while at the same time this baby could not have a life without mine.

  The next thing I knew, consumed with anger, I called Sean. Before he could get a word out, I started in.

  “I can’t do this. I don’t want to give this gift. Why can’t they give the gift? Why do we have to sacrifice? Why can’t they sacrifice?”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I don’t think I can go through with this. This is too much for me. Why can’t the other family allow us to keep the baby?”

  “Look, I’m coming home,” Sean said.

  “Don’t. Stay at work. Coming home won’t help,” I said.

  “I know this is so hard, but we will get through it together,” Sean said.

  I didn’t know how I would get through this day, let alone the next eight months.

  “I looked at all these opinions, all these different papers on the subject, and there is only one that says I matter,” I continued.

  “Carolyn, what does that matter, really? Our situation is unique.”

  “Yes, unique. That’s a great word! Great! That doesn’t mean that they can’t use all these laws and decisions on me.”

  I must have sounded like a lunatic because Sean was speechless. I waited for a response from him, but there was only silence.

  “Forget I called. Just forget it.” And I hung up. I felt stupid for having a tantrum over the phone. I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish, and in the end I think I just stressed Sean further.

  As my emotions continued to flare, practical care was moving forward. That next day Dr. Read ordered an ultrasound much earlier than would have been done under normal conditions: exactly three weeks after the transfer. She wanted to know how many babies I was carrying. My blood work suggested a multiple pregnancy. We were scared to death that I was carrying triplets.

  In the more than ten years I’d struggled with fertility, I’d spent a lot of time with Dr. Read’s sonographer, Linda, who is a mini-celebrity among the doctor’s patients. Whenever friends heard that Dr. Read was my obstetrician, they always commented, “Don’t you love Linda?” The lights in her ultrasound room were dimmed, but she had decorated it with Christmas lights and a cheerful bulletin board tacked with pictures of babies from appreciative parents. Linda had an ease about her that made everyone smile. You couldn’t help but greet her with a big hug, even if you knew when you entered her room that you might be facing bad news. Petite, graying, and fit, Linda was quick on her toes and had a witty sense of humor. Sometimes, when I’d fire rapid questions at her during an ultrasound, she would tell me, “Cool it, kiddo.”

  I held my breath while her internal ultrasound wand searched for evidence of the baby or babies. This ultrasound was so early, we knew there would be no heartbeat, only a gestational sac and a yolk. There were both, and only one of each. She searched my tubes to make sure there were no ectopics, and then we were finished. She printed a picture, handed it to me, and admitted that she didn’t know what to say.

  I grabbed the ultrasound image of the little one, and wondered, Who are you?

  A few days later, Ryan was home sick, down with the bug that was traveling through our family. He was in the basement curled up with a blanket in front of the television. MK was getting whiny and needed a nap. I had just put her on the changing table and removed her diaper when I felt what I feared was a huge gush of blood. I instinctively crossed my legs and bent forward.

  I got MK dressed quickly and laid her down haphazardly on the family room floor. I shuffled to the bathroom for some privacy, praying that I was wrong, but my worst fears were confirmed. I was bleeding.

  “Damn. We hadn’t even seen a heartbeat!”

  I screamed for Ryan. He didn’t respond at first, so I screamed louder. I think I scared him. He came flying up from the basement, and I asked for the phone so I could call Sean. Through the bathroom door, I directed him to pick MK up and put her up in her crib for her nap. I called Sean, whispering so that Ryan didn’t hear me.

  “I’m bleeding.”

  “What?”

  “I’m bleeding. You need to come home.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Afraid to move, I called Dr. Read from the bathroom. She told me to come in for another ultrasound.

  I cleaned myself up as best I could and hobbled up the stairs to change my clothes. Once dressed, I lay down on the bed and waited. I feared I was losing someone else’s baby. How would we explain this to the other family? They would blame me for this. Oh…and my fertility clinic. They’d be ecstatic. The loss of this baby would be a bullet dodged for them. My stomach flipped over with a wave of nausea. I didn’t want to vomit, because I thought that would make me bleed more, so I willed it away.

  I heard Sean come in through the door to the garage. The force of raising my voice might hurt the baby, I thought, so I lay quietly until he found me.

  “Did you call the doctor?”

  “Yes. We need to leave for an ultrasound. You need to wake MK, get her packed up and in her car seat. When that is all done, I’ll get in the car.”

  I could hear MK crying as Sean woke her and bundled her up to go out in the cold. I felt bad for disrupting her nap. I felt bad for all of the disruptions. Mary Kate was growing and developing so rapidly as she neared her first birthday. I already recognized how distracted I’d become by this pregnancy, and I knew that she, Drew, and Ryan weren’t getting the attention they deserved. But this time was crucial for MK. How was I going to concentrate on her milestones—first steps, first words—without thinking about how I wasn’t going to get to see this baby pass those same milestones? I was so torn. Here was my precious daughter, the baby Sean and I had struggled for so long to have, and I was barely attending to some of the most important passages in her young life.

  I carefully walked to the car and sat very still while we made our way to Dr. Read’s office. It was a perfectly sunny day, and as we exited the highway to pull into her lot we fretted over what we were about to see. I thought of the ultrasound where we’d seen MK’s dead twin in my uterus, then the horrid ultrasound in November 2006 when we were blindsided by the news that our baby had died in utero. I didn’t want my body to fail another innocent life. I was petrified. Yet wouldn’t a miscarriage be an escape? A way out? It didn’t feel that way.
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  “This is probably the end,” Sean said.

  “I hope not,” I replied.

  “Me too,” Sean said.

  We were praying for this child, rooting for him or her with everything we had.

  As the ultrasound image came up on the screen, I held my breath. I wanted to be the baby’s biggest cheerleader and protector. So I prayed for the baby and for myself.

  Please, God. Please don’t let this baby die. Please, God, protect him or her. Let this baby grow to be healthy. Let this baby have a strong body and a stronger mind. Allow this baby to grow to know the joy of breathing and the opportunity to feel love. Please don’t take this baby from me. Not now. Not before I can give the gift of life and I can receive that gift as well.

  “Well, there you go. That’s why you are bleeding.”

  Linda pointed to a big black blob underneath the gestational sac. I looked at Sean and shared with him the joy he reflected back to me. We both looked at the ultrasound screen again.

  “Is that a subchorionic hematoma?”

  In my hours and hours of reading about the science of pregnancy and what can go wrong, I had learned much about the conditions that cause a miscarriage. The subchorionic hematoma is a blood clot that forms, usually in the first trimester, and is far more common in IVF pregnancies. My bleeding was the clot draining. The chances of a miscarriage because of a subchorionic were less than 2 percent. Linda continued searching.

  “Uh…no heartbeat yet, but the baby has grown since Friday, and the gestational sac looks good. Everything is measuring right on target. Now the blood is sitting on your cervix, so you are probably going to have more bleeding.”

  She captured a bunch of images and escorted us to an examining room to meet with Dr. Read, who said the blood would either drain or reabsorb. Though Dr. Read was confident that the clot would not harm the baby, I asked for another blood test so we could confirm that my pregnancy hormones—the HCG reading—were continuing to rise. I knew that a fetal heartbeat would be detectable at 5,000. I wanted to double-check that the jig wasn’t already up.

  Dr. Read agreed and handed me a lab slip. We scheduled another ultrasound in four days, and Linda shared with us that if there was no heartbeat by then, there would be reason for concern. Dr. Read said to take it easy until then—lifting MK was fine, but nothing more strenuous.

  On the car ride home, I fretted about what the boys would think. My guess was that they were already suspicious. Poor Ryan heard me screaming in the bathroom for the phone, then Sean arrived in the middle of the day. Next thing he knew, we were scurrying out the door. Ryan asked where we were going, but we didn’t answer. He asked again…still no answer. Then he said, “Never mind.” How was I supposed to pretend that everything was fine when I was lying in bed all day?

  The next day, when I had to drive to the lab for blood work, I knew that, even as light as she was, I should put MK in the stroller and wheel her into the lab. I was feeling weak and woozy from all the blood loss, but I had to continue to be a mom, to run the house and provide the meals. I was trying to figure out what we needed for dinner as I pulled into the pharmacy drive-thru to retrieve prescriptions. When it was my turn at the window, I reached back for my purse. Where was it? I twisted around to check the backseat, but it wasn’t there. I’d left my purse at the lab. “Sweet mother of God, can I catch a break, please?” I screamed in my car. I caught the startled look of the pharmacist, who I’m pretty sure was glad that there was a pane of bulletproof glass between us.

  After I got my purse and returned for the prescriptions, I had to pick up Drew early from school for an orthodontist appointment. While he was at the doctor, I shuffled through the market like I was eighty years old. I figured keeping my legs together would prevent the baby from falling out. After the appointment, Drew wasn’t feeling well, so I took him home instead of back to school. There I got a call from Dr. Read’s office saying my blood work was good. I lay down that afternoon in hopes of resting while Mary Kate napped.

  Sleep had been elusive since we learned of the mistake. I needed to get to a point where the situation wasn’t consuming my thoughts every minute of the day. I prayed for the strength to move past my anger toward the person in the laboratory who made the mistake. I knew I had a right to be angry, but I didn’t want to walk around being mad all day. How could I forgive this person? Did I have to forgive him or her? Was that the only way I would get some peace?

  Focus on the baby, I thought. We’d just dodged a tragedy. The baby was strong, and I was strong enough to survive this.

  SEAN

  That night I couldn’t sleep, and I saw that Carolyn was restless too. It seemed silly to pretend that either of us was sleeping when we both were so shaken. I touched her on the shoulder, and she opened her eyes immediately. “Carolyn, that drive to the ultrasound was terrifying,” I said. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you. The fear of losing the baby is still with me.”

  “I know,” she said as she turned to face me. “With all the problems we’ve had lately, it surprised me how much I love this child already.”

  “The baby is already part of our family,” I said.

  As we lay in bed I started to understand that the child inside of Carolyn was now someone I needed to protect. How long he or she would be with us was already defined by law and by the choices we made, but for these eight months I was the baby’s father. After that, Carolyn and I would want to be a part of the baby’s life, but it would never be the same kind of connection we were going to have for these few months. Although I never could fully comprehend what Carolyn was going through, I could support her by taking on the planning and organizing needed to set up a structure that would guide us throughout the pregnancy. And that was a task that played to my strengths.

  Ever since I was young, I have been someone who likes to plan out everything. My parents taught me the importance of planning, and I went into a profession where I help individuals and families plan for their futures. My own financial planning began at age five when my mom drove me to the bank to open a savings account in my name. When I had earned enough money for a deposit, I loved watching the teller make another entry in my ledger book and seeing my balance increase. Heck, I do not think I took a withdrawal out of that bank account until I paid a college tuition bill.

  After our sessions with Kevin Anderson and the one with Father Cardone the day we found out about the pregnancy, I had written down several lists of action items. When I went for my run, they were just in my head. The next morning, after my talk with Carolyn, I woke up early so I would have time to write down everything that this mistake had introduced into our lives.

  I began with the fundamental choices we made to (1) continue the pregnancy and (2) not fight for custody. All of our problems and plans flowed from these two decisions. Next, I wrote down the tasks and difficulties that resulted from those two decisions and divided them into categories. When they became so numerous that they crowded the edge of the page, a light went on in my head. We needed a binder. I had to smile at that. There are few problems that can’t be solved with a big black binder.

  As an adult, my ledger became my binders. I have binders for work, for all of the teams I coach, and for our own financial plans and estate planning. I got one of the black “mega” binders out of the box I keep in the basement. As with all of my binders, the new one needed a name to capture the essence of the situation. After some deliberation, I titled it “The Sean and Carolyn Savage CF File.” (If anyone asked, I decided I’d tell them CF stood for “Caring Family.”) Inside the binder I made a table of contents on a page entitled “Sean and Carolyn Savage: The Road Never Traveled.” I labeled the headings with letters A through Z, guessing that I’d be adding more categories in the next eight months.

  a. Information from Clinic or Legal Representatives

  b. Prioritization Categories and Timeline: The Lists

  c. Family Law Information

  d. Genetic Family Information and Communi
cation

  e. Communication Planning to Family and Friends

  f. Savage Family Security Plan

  g. Other Legal Issues

  h. Expenses Incurred (Direct and Indirect)

  i. Catholic Church Information

  j. Medical Documentation: Ultrasound Pictures/Medical Records

  For me the stiff dividers between the categories illustrated the structure that would support my view of the crisis and where it might lead. These eight months could bury us under paper if I let them. I also got out the box of plastic sleeves I use to file documents. I knew from experience that, with plastic sleeves, if we had a question about one of our decisions or about what one of the other parties involved had said, we’d be able to get our hands on the answer in seconds. Slipping the handful of documents we’d already produced into the plastic made me feel as though we were starting to get a handle on the situation.

  Then I devised another category—“Beyond the Stuff”—to cover the core emotional items, including:

  Open discussion of thoughts and feelings

  No judgment

  Discussions twice a week on personal impact

  Control anxiety and limit turning into opponents of each other

  These last categories were the most important because they would support our psychological well-being.

  As the Friday ultrasound appointment approached, I comforted myself with the reminder that we were doing all we could. Either there would be a heartbeat or the pregnancy was over. We would be capable of dealing with either of those outcomes.