People sometimes compared our situation to putting a baby up for adoption, yet that was so off the mark from what we felt. Women who give their babies up for adoption have very specific reasons for doing so. Of course their feeling of loss is great, and many of those women grieve over the fact that they couldn’t afford or accommodate the new life they created. But we had the means and the space in our hearts and in our home to keep this child.
As the baby spun and twirled and kicked inside my womb, I had moments of pure pride for having managed to bring him this far. I was the woman who was about to launch this powerful Little Man into the world. That ecstatic moment when I’d hear his first cry, see him take his first breath, would be a victory for Sean and me. But what would the moments after that be like? When they cut the cord that connected him to me, he would never be mine again legally, physically, or emotionally. Yet as far as I was concerned, he would always be our baby. I knew Sean felt the same way. What kind of empty space would his departure leave behind? Every time I thought about it, I had to turn my mind away. I could feel myself falling into that loss, and there was no way out, no place for my hands to grab on to that would allow me a chance to pull myself back out.
One morning I was about to leave for our appointment with Kevin when I realized that I hadn’t given myself my morning shot of blood thinners for my blood-clotting disorder. I’d recently had to switch to twice-a-day shots of Heparin because the perinatologist said Heparin was safer in the third trimester.
At first giving myself shots had been fine, if a little stomach-turning. But when I had to do it twice a day, I had a hard time finding a place to insert the needle. The injections toughened my skin. My stomach and thighs were covered with welts and bruises that made the injections become more and more painful. Just before MK was about to wake up, I sat in the bathroom, syringe in hand, trying to find a bruise-free place on my leg, when I dropped the syringe and it plunged into my foot.
The pain was unimaginable, as if someone had just stabbed me in the ankle. After I pulled it out, I threw it at the wall and burst into tears. In that moment, I had nothing left. How could I endure all of this and not get a baby? After a few minutes, and many tears, I quieted down. I was stronger than this. I had proven it already, and we were almost done. I took a deep breath, loaded a new syringe, eventually found a place to take the shot, and switched to the task at hand: packing up MK for our final prenatal visit with Kevin Anderson.
I felt depleted and gloomy as I pulled into the church parking lot for our appointment with Kevin. I was weary physically and emotionally. On the one hand, I was so happy that Little Man and I had made it this far, and there was so much of me that wanted the pregnancy to be over. Then there was another part of me that didn’t want the pregnancy to be over. I wanted to stay connected to my Little Man. I was so weary of all of it and of having to be counseled. There had been sessions when we were feisty and combative, and others when we sobbed. We’d even had our share of laughter at the absurdity of some of what was going on. This session felt somber. We almost didn’t know where or how to begin.
“I’m so scared,” I said. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle everything that happens to me after the baby is gone. My body will be a wreck, and my hormones will be raging with maternal instincts that are too powerful to turn off.”
“Night after night the same vision comes to me,” Sean said. “A series of quick scenes flash in my head: Carolyn being carted to surgery, me with her in the delivery room, and then a fog comes with me not being able to picture anything. Then I’m shutting the door behind the room the Morells are in with the baby boy. A wave of anger flashes through me, and I become disoriented. I walk down a hallway with a storm blowing up inside me. With all of my force, I shove my fist as fast as possible into the wall. As my fist hits the wall, I scream, ‘No! No!’ I see a dent as I put my back on the wall and slide down it. When I hit the floor, I take my knees to my chest and place my hands in my face and cry.”
Kevin looked at the floor, folded his hands, and thought in silence.
“Who would blame me? How am I supposed to give a baby away? How is anyone supposed to give a baby away they want to raise? I’ve kept all of this bottled up the whole time Carolyn has been pregnant because there were more important things for me to manage than these emotions. The only question that remained was whether my fist would punch a hole through the wall or if I would simply make a dent. Yet I know a lot of people will think we will simply be relieved this is over. We should just get on with our lives as though nothing ever happened. I don’t know how we’ll ever be able to do that.”
“‘The best way out is through.’ Are you familiar with that Robert Frost poem?” Kevin asked.
“No,” said Sean quickly. Once again, Sean looked cranky that Kevin was citing a passage from spirituality or literature that he didn’t know. He looked at me, the language arts teacher, as if I ought to know the line, but I hadn’t a clue.
“It is a line from the poem ‘Servant to Servants,’” Kevin said. “It’s about a woman who shoulders a big burden of work.
By good rights I ought not to have so much
Put on me, but there seems no other way.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it
He says the best way out is always through
We looked at him for a few seconds, waiting for him to explain to us what he meant.
“When I consider the options that have been available to you, those lines seem to fit your situation,” he said. “You see, you could have made the choice to terminate, because it would have been easier. You didn’t because that would have been wrong. You could have made the choice not to reach out to the Morells, because it would have been easier to protect yourselves from the people who could hurt you the most. You didn’t because that would have been unkind. You could have refused to develop an attachment to this child because it would have lessened the blow of his departure. You couldn’t because you love him. Now you are faced with the unknown. What lies ahead? Your surrogate could miscarry. The Morells could take the baby, never allowing you to see him again, and your actions could be exploited by others for personal gain. All of that could go wrong, but my guess is that you’ll get through those possible disasters.”
“Well, of course we’ll survive them,” I said. “We’ll still be alive, and we’ll still have our family and our work. But through? What do you mean by through?”
“You have to face it, all of it, all the emotions,” he said. “When people tell you that you should be feeling a certain way or behaving in the way they would, that’s not where your focus should be. Whatever you are feeling, if it’s sorrow or grief or that you want to punch your fist through the wall, all of that is completely justifiable. Don’t restrict the way you feel to fit someone else’s agenda, someone else’s idea of conduct. The best way out is through these emotions. Fully experience them, fully feel everything you feel. Only if you do that will you be able to get to the other side of this traumatic experience. The best way out is through. You will get there, and in the end you’ll be all right.”
We knew Kevin was right. We’d been fighting and kicking every day as new developments occurred. We had yet to surrender to what was coming. We didn’t need to fight it. We would get out, some day, but first we had to go through.
Would we ever get past “the through”? Time would tell. I was sure scared of what was coming with the delivery and prayed again that I would have the strength to get through it.
SEAN
I am a long-distance runner. At the end of the race, getting through means keeping focused and sticking to the plan I made, fighting through the pain and the urges to give up. We needed to find the willpower to get through to the end, wherever it might be. When I focused on the goal and all we needed to do to get through, I was less likely to fall into despair. The key element I needed for me to “get through” handing the baby boy over to the Morells was to focus on the gift. If I could keep the idea that this
was a gift and place it alongside the pain, I believed I could honor this child and the Morells while still acknowledging a profound personal loss. There was dignity in this approach, but it would take every ounce of energy in that moment for me to achieve this balance.
As I wrapped my mind around holding these two ideas simultaneously, I knew Carolyn and I were moving forward, despite everything, and closer to being able to let go. As we approached the end of the pregnancy, we had other signs our family was moving forward. September 22 was Drew’s fifteenth birthday.
There had been precious few celebrations in the last few months as we tried to keep a low profile around town. But we had allowed the world back into our lives when we finally gave interviews to the many media sources that were interested. We were on the front page of the local paper, on numerous national and international broadcasts, and the story had gone viral on the Internet. The night before Drew’s birthday had been a crazy scene in our home. While we were completing an interview with a pair of journalists on our patio, another waited on our driveway, a network was setting up cameras for a live national interview in our living room, and an international camera crew was on the front lawn.
Even though the media world was swirling around our situation that week, on September 21 we would give our son the best possible birthday. Carolyn’s mother was in town, so both grandmas could join us too.
Drew selected the restaurant, and as we sat at the table and shared “Drew stories” there were eyes on us. But no one bothered us as we celebrated. After dinner we all came home for cake, and in keeping with Savage tradition, Drew sat at the kitchen table behind the cake to have his picture taken holding up the number of fingers for his age. Of course, at age fifteen he needed some help. I crouched behind him, and as he held up his ten fingers I held up five over his head, totaling fifteen. Our son was fifteen. Hard to believe.
Carolyn and I made our way to bed at about 9:30 P.M. We were exhausted, and we knew that the next morning we would be doing another live national interview for a morning show. Carolyn was in the bathroom, and I was pulling clothes out for the next day when she screamed and came flying out from the bathroom.
“I think my water broke!”
“We need to get to the hospital,” I said.
“Sean, grab the phone. I need to call Dr. Read.”
I ran to get the phone and brought it to her. I paced the floor quickly, doing nothing close to productive. Then I grabbed the bag she had packed for the hospital and positioned it next to our bedroom door about five feet from its previous spot, like that was really helpful.
Dr. Read told us to get to the hospital. This was the real deal.
Within minutes, Carolyn and I were in the car. As we made the drive, it hit me.
“Carolyn, we cannot have the baby on Drew’s birthday. This is not fair to Drew or fair to us. We can’t have this happen on the same day that has one of our best memories. This would be cruel.”
“I know.”
My hands clenched the steering wheel so hard that I thought I might break it off of the car. I hated that we couldn’t control this. If Carolyn’s water had broken, they had to deliver the baby.
Carolyn called the Morells to let them know that they needed to get down to Toledo. The maternity ward was ready for us when we arrived. They hooked Carolyn to the baby monitor while we waited for Dr. Read. The sound of the baby’s beating heart filled the room while I sat on the couch next to Carolyn’s hospital bed. It was 10:00 P.M.
“Oh man, Carolyn,” I realized. “We’re scheduled to do an interview with a TV crew tomorrow morning at the house.”
“Call the producer to cancel. I think they will understand.”
I called and discovered that the crew was already on its way from Chicago. They agreed to turn the truck around. I apologized.
As we waited, my mind went to Drew. What would he feel like sharing a birthday with a brother he would never know? Suddenly I was really pissed at God. After everything we had gone through, and would go through in the future, how could He possibly connect this date to the delivery? We had tried to be good and faithful servants and taken the hard but noble path. I did not ask to be spared the experience—just to be spared this experience on this day.
When Dr. Read walked in the room, I stood and said in complete seriousness, “You have to wait one hour and forty-seven minutes to deliver this baby.”
“Sean, I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s possible. If the baby is in distress, we’ll have to move quickly.”
She asked Carolyn a series of questions and said she was going to order a few tests.
A short while later, after reviewing the test results, she returned.
“You will not be having the baby tonight,” Dr. Read said. “The tests show that your water didn’t break and that the baby is still doing well.”
I was so relieved and thanked God for the reprieve. That night I was pleased to have to walk the “amateur walk of shame” that happens when you arrive at the hospital pregnant and leave the hospital the same night still pregnant. I immediately called Shannon to tell her to turn around. “The baby will not be born tonight,” I said and apologized for the inconvenience. Then I called the TV network, and they turned their truck back around again.
The media was certainly a presence in our lives now, and we were trying to handle it as best we could. On September 24, two days after the false alarm, I arrived at my office about 6:15 in the morning to get work done prior to meeting Carolyn at our local publicist’s office for a series of local and brief television interviews. Just as I did every morning, I glanced at our local paper, The Blade, and I saw the front-page headline with a picture of us. But then I saw another headline, and I clutched the paper as I saw what I had hoped would never surface. The article was about the Catholic Church and the issue of IVF: “In Vitro Fertilization Poses Ethical, Religious Dilemmas.” “Oh, here we go,” I said out loud as I quickly read the article line by line.
The paper had obtained a statement from the Diocese of Toledo calling IVF “morally unacceptable.” My interpretation of that statement was: what Sean and Carolyn Savage did in undergoing IVF was “morally unacceptable.” The statement went on to explain the Church’s position: in vitro fertilization is morally unacceptable because it replaces rather than assists the marital act, the diocese said.
One part of the statement especially infuriated me:
Human life is something precious. A new human being who comes into existence at the moment of conception, is meant to enter into this world within the context of committed marital love, a love which finds its fullest expression in the intimacy of the marital act. Any technique that severs the creation of a new human life from this most intimate context is not morally acceptable and ought never to be done.
I felt that this statement was laced with arrogance, and it put a knife right into our backs at a very vulnerable moment in our life. I imagined my response: Dear Diocese, Carolyn and I have had a committed marital love for seventeen years. We wanted to have a family with a number of children that we could raise to be faith-filled, productive, and good members of society. We needed help having those children. That help we believe came from God through science. Our daughter born in March 2008, is beautiful and adored and an IVF baby. When Carolyn and I first looked into her eyes the day she was born, we saw God’s creation!
I called Carolyn immediately, and we talked about the article. We agreed that what hurt the most was what was missing from the statement. We chose life on February 16, 2009. In deciding as we did, we upheld the Church’s teachings on the beauty and sanctity of human life. Why was that missing from the statement? We are members of the Church, and hurting members at that. Yet our very own church was not there to support us in our time of greatest need. Is this how Jesus would have handled us? I don’t think so.
As I traveled to the PR firm for the interviews, the hurtful articles would not leave my mind. The words cut through me like a sharp knife. Over the years, Carolyn
and I took to heart our stewardship responsibilities to the Church by giving our time, energy, and resources. Ministering to the youth through coaching sports, raising funds for parish expansion, and giving to worthy church causes was embedded in my being. Carolyn had dedicated much of her career to being a teacher and then a principal in Catholic schools. Now, in a public forum, we were being called out by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to account for our “morally unacceptable” behavior. It really hurt and we felt abandoned.
Despite feeling abandoned by our church, we understood those who judged us were very distant from Carolyn and me, high up in the Church hierarchy. At St. Joe’s, we received council and prayers from our clergy and support from our fellow parishioners. The people of St. Joe’s were there for us. We knew we would remain members of the Church with its flaws because the Catholic Church did so much good locally and throughout the world. As word spread about our situation to places across the globe, prayers and support poured in. These warmed our hearts and touched our souls. Carolyn and I were humbled that people responded in such a loving manner. As I arrived at the PR firm for the interviews I saw Carolyn waiting for me near the front door of the building, and it hit me that this may be the last day I ever see my wife pregnant.
CHAPTER 18
Reaching Toward Joy
CAROLYN
THE BABY WOULD BE born any day, and I focused on one concern: I wanted to be fully present for every moment and have that brief period as a kind of movie that I could play again and again whenever I felt like it. I knew that our moments in the delivery room might be our only time together, and I wanted that movie to be a joyful one, one with a happy ending. We were going to take photographs of this event for us and for him. I didn’t want to be a wreck. I wanted those pictures to show us as we truly felt. Despite everything that had happened, his presence on earth was a gift. When he was older and he had a chance to look at the faces of the people who brought him into this world, I hoped he would see that we were honored to give him life and that we loved him with all our hearts.
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