The Second Time
The first time wasn’t like this. But this time, I knew right away, even before I was late, and long before the blood test confirmed it. Two days before I was due for my period, I was up late watching ER and was suddenly, uncontrollably crying when a mother lit herself on fire in front of her young son in the ambulance bay.
“That doesn’t mean anything. It was just sad and you were tired staying up so late,” my husband said.
But I knew. I never cry.
So I thought that the second time I would feel everything more, earlier, and with the expertise of an experienced mom who knows what is going on in her body. But the crying jag was the only thing I felt. The early weeks passed and there were no sore breasts, no waves of nausea at the smell of fish in the lunchroom, no bloated, crampy feeling in my pelvis.
“Michael, do my boobs look bigger to you?” I fling back the shower curtain and step out of the tub. Shaving at the sink, he looks tan against the gleaming white tile all around. He hands me a towel with his free hand.
“No, not really.”
“You’re not even looking. I feel like last time they were a lot bigger by now. And they don’t hurt.” I move the towel down from my head and start scrubbing over my shoulders, arms, and still flattish stomach.
“Emmie, there’s a big range of normal. You’re already all stretched out from before, so it doesn’t bother you. Stop worrying so much.”
“But it’s just that I don’t feel anything.” He swishes the razor around in the scummy water. “Everyone I know at work who had a miscarriage said they didn’t feel pregnant...”
“That’s just anecdotal evidence. Feelings aren’t necessarily reliable. Go look it up in my old OB-GYN text if you’re that nervous about it.”
With a sucking and muffled pop the water starts down the drain. Michael straightens his tie and turns to go. “I have a double tonight, so I won’t be home until tomorrow morning. Kiss Sophie for me.”
“Bye, Doc.” I’d have kissed him good-bye, but he was already gone.
“Mamama. MamaMA.” Sophie’s insistence forces me to open my eyes. I have been lying on the couch trying to doze, but really I was just thinking and trying to feel something in my belly to reassure myself. I guess I could feel good about being so tired, but who isn’t tired with an eighteen-month-old to chase after?
Sophie is standing in front of the television trying to push her Baby Mozart video back into the VCR. Maybe I dozed after all; it must have ended a few minutes ago, because the static is on now.
“MamaMAAAA.”
“Okay, Soph.” I hoist myself up off the crumpled beige cushions and turn off the TV. “How ’bout a story?”
She toddles over to the basket of books by the fireplace and pulls out The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “Mamama.” She holds it out to me and smiles.
I pull her onto my lap on the couch and she scrunches down, rubbing her cheek on my stomach. It makes her stick-straight, baby-fine hair stand up with static. She’s getting tired, too.
“Baba. Baba.” She looks at me and says it again: “Baba.” Then she stretches her arms as far as they will go around my waist and plants her face where my bellybutton would be if she could see it. “Baba.”
“Baby?” I ask her, slow and singsong. “The baby lives there in Mommy’s belly?” We’d been talking a lot about how babies live in their mommies’ tummies, and how big sisters are loving and gentle with little babies. She never had shown much interest before, other than lifting her Dolly up for a kiss.
Sophie looks me straight in the eye for a moment. Somehow her eyes stayed blue, even though Michael’s and mine are hazel. For a second she looks much older, like she really does know. She smiles and bobs her head up and down. “Baba!” Again she snuggles into my stomach and pries open the board book.
I think of calling Michael, but he wouldn’t think this is news enough to have him paged.
There’s a lump in my throat and the writing on the first page is blurry. “Thanks, Soph,” I whisper and kiss her soft brown hair. I clear my throat. “In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf.”
Over a steaming bowl of mashed potatoes Michael asks, “How are you feeling today? You seem to be better the last few weeks. Not so uptight.” He pours some gravy over his potatoes and chicken and looks up at me. “And not so tired.”
“Well, it helps that I’m starting to show. And at sixteen weeks, my energy is back. There shouldn’t be much to worry about anymore.” I watch Sophie drop another piece of chicken neatly into her mouth. “And really, that night with Sophie made me just know.”
Michael gives a close-mouthed cough and swallows. “Well, I’m glad you feel better, anyway.” He doesn’t believe me about Sophie. Just an emotional reaction to the release of hormones, he said. At least he hasn’t rolled his eyes.
I swallow another gravy-ful scoop of potatoes and the phone rings. Michael pushes back his chair and it scrapes across the oak floorboards. “One night away from the hospital and the phone rings while we’re eating,” he mutters, shaking his head.
I spoon a bite of mashed potatoes into Sophie’s open mouth. Really, she’s too big to be spoon-fed, but she won’t do mushy things herself—too messy. Sophie is a very meticulous eater: no cute pictures of a spaghetti-sauce-faced tot in her baby book. Each piece of fruit or chicken is picked up from the high chair tray in a perfect pincer grasp and grabbed neatly by her four front teeth. I practically never have to wipe her face, and the dog is eternally disappointed in his vigil at her feet.
“Emmie, it’s for you. It’s Naomi.” He stands with the phone on his chest, brow creased in the middle.
My stomach flips at a rush of adrenaline, and for the first time in this pregnancy I feel like I’m going to throw up. Naomi is the nurse midwife; there’s no reason for her to call this late except with the result of the AFP screening test.
I hadn’t wanted to do the birth defects test this time around, but Michael had insisted, straightening his tie and attaching his beeper to his belt. “Why not take full advantage of everything modern medicine has to offer? It’s foolish not to.” Foolish was often the word that came up before appointments with Naomi. Michael would have preferred going to a regular obstetrician, but I put my foot down about the midwives: I was adamant about having the most natural birth possible, and their track record for having fewer complications and cesareans was much better. Even Michael can’t argue against statistics. Facts win fights.
A week ago this argument was abstract, floating around the house in whispers while Sophie slept down the hall. The light from the window was still predawn gray. “But last time it was wrong. It came back positive and we worried ourselves sick for days until the ultrasound showed the mistake. Worried for nothing.”
Michael sighed. “It’s important to know. If the baby would turn out to have spina bifida, we can be prepared with the whole neonatal surgical team at the birth to try to fix it. Better safe than sorry.” He pulled on his crisp white lab coat and kissed my forehead.
I followed him to the bedroom door. “And if it’s Down’s?”
“That’s a big if, Em. Let’s wait until the results.” And just like that I was getting the test; he was thumping down the stairs.
I take the phone from Michael, and the black receiver is smooth and hard in my fist. My mouth is dry. “Yes?”
“Hi, Emily? This is Naomi.”
I swallow. “Hello.”
“We have the results of your AFP screening, and they aren’t quite normal. They’re one in seventy-five.”
“What does one in seventy-five mean?” I ask. Michael closes his eyes, and I know that it’s bad again.
“It means a one in seventy-five chance your baby has Down syndrome. But remember, there are false positives twenty-five percent of the time. And yours was wrong last time, so let’s just schedule an ultrasound and have a look, okay?”
Michael takes the phone and pulls some strings; Naomi will come along to the ultrasou
nd at Michael’s hospital tomorrow during lunch so that we don’t have to wait and wonder and worry, and so that Michael can come along to see the baby too. With both of us going, we’ll have to bring Sophie; there’s no time to get a sitter.
He hangs up and puts his hand on my back, rubbing slowly up and down. “At least this way we’ll get in there without having to wait a week for the traveling tech to get around to the midwives’ office.” Michael blows out a deep breath and moves the hair out of my eyes. “Here, play with Sophie. You know it will make you feel better.” After a minute in the kitchen Michael hands me our daughter, hands freshly wiped, although they barely needed it. “I’ll put your dinner in the fridge for later if you get hungry.” Sometimes he does know what I’m feeling.
Sophie clasps and unclasps her fists rapidly, flashing her fingers at me. “Baba, baba!” she squeals and laughs, clapping. She wants to hear about what little babies are like.
“OK, then go get Dolly and we’ll talk about babies.” I put her down so she can find her doll. Dolly is a small, plush baby doll with a pink sleeper and nightcap from which a few yellow loops of yarn peek out. The knotted top of her cap is dingy gray from being chewed on sometimes. Sophie never goes to sleep without Dolly.
I pull Sophie into my lap on the couch, and she holds Dolly in her lap. She lets Dolly flop over, though, to show me her fingers. “How many fingers does a baby have? One two three four five six seven eight nine ten!” I touch each of Sophie’s fingers as I count them off in a voice much more animated than I feel.
Sophie giggles and claps, then kicks her feet. “And how many toes does a baby have? One two three four five six seven eight nine ten!” Her giggles turn into a belly laugh as I tickle each toe.
“And what do big sisters do?” I sing out. Michael was right: Sophie’s laugh always makes me feel better. You can’t help but smile even just remembering it.
Sophie grabs Dolly and hugs her tight, rubbing her cheek against the doll’s cloth one. “That’s right: we LOVE them!” And I hug Sophie tight. This is our game.
Sophie wriggles out of my arms and hands me Dolly. I take the doll and make a show of rocking it back and forth and giving it a big kiss, which makes Sophie squeal again.
“MAmama. MAmama.”
Sophie has a million ways of saying my name to mean different things. This one means “again.” She almost doesn’t need more than the four words she knows; I always get her point. Sometimes Michael needs a translation, though.
“Again? Ok!” And we play the baby game five or six more times until she starts to rub her eyes. “Soap time for Sophie!”
I look up and Michael is standing in the doorway of the kitchen watching us, a little sadly. “Can Daddy do bath time tonight?” he asks softly.
“Dada!” Sophie is crawling toward him, definitely tired if she’s not on her feet. I’m glad she was agreeable to this change of routine: Michael could probably use a dose of Sophie’s laughter too.
I watch the rain travel up the passenger side window in an arc as the car speeds down the highway to the hospital. Everything is gray: car interior, pavement, guardrail, sky. “I’m not sure I want to keep having all these tests.”
“Emmie, it’s an ultrasound. That’s hardly a test, and there’s really no risk.”
“The risk is that we make a decision because we’re scared. That we do the wrong thing. That we—”
“Shh,” Michael interrupts, eyes on the rearview mirror. Sophie’s asleep.
“I just don’t want to worry about this anymore when it’s probably wrong,” I hiss in a stage whisper.
“That’s totally irrational.” He glances over and meets my glare. Backpedaling. “I mean, it just doesn’t make much sense. The test is what will make us stop worrying by showing us conclusively that everything is normal.”
“But I thought an ultrasound wasn’t conclusive, just another piece of the puzzle.”
“True, but an amnio is.”
I shudder at how casually he can toss around the idea of a giant, cold needle poking through my stomach and into our baby’s cozy nest. I pull the visor down and flip up the cover over the vanity mirror, adjusting it so I can see Sophie in her car seat. “But what will we do if it is positive for Down’s?” This time my whisper is real; I can barely choke out the sentence.
Michael keeps his eyes on the road. “Em, we’ve talked about this before. When we thought it would be a problem the last time. Now it should be even more obvious what we’d do, because it’s not just us anymore. It wouldn’t be fair to Sophie for someone to take away so much of the attention that she should have.”
“I just don’t think—”
“Emmie, come on. It’s just an ultrasound! Why are you so insane about everything this time around? Talk about the second time being different from the first ...”
I bite my lip and look up into the mirror. Sophie’s head is hanging to the side; her eyes are closed and her mouth makes a straight little pink line over her chin. She’s holding Dolly loosely in her lap. “Because the first time I didn’t know what it meant.”
Michael is bent over the tech’s shoulder, peering at the computer screen. His back is to me and he is quiet. “Michael, move. I can’t see the baby. Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” I start to sit up for a better view.
The technician pulls the sensor off my slippery belly and sets it on the desk. “The doctor and midwife will be in to see you shortly.” The door clicks shut.
The room is dim so that everyone can read the computer screen images better. When Michael turns to me, I know. “What is it?”
“The neck measurements are off. The doctor will tell us it’s consistent with Down’s.” Michael sighs and sits down on the round leather toadstool that every doctor’s office has.
I look to Sophie, who is playing with Dolly in a corner. She bounces her up and down. Dolly, it seems, is learning to walk.
“Now what?”
“An amnio, then we’ll know for sure.” The midwife and the OB, called in for our now high-risk case, echo Michael’s words. The leather-faced obstetrician is a friend of Michael’s, and is willing to skip lunch to get our amniocentesis done today.
“Take Sophie out to the lobby.”
“Are you sure you want to do it by yourself? I know how you feel about needles ...” Michael looks tired.
“And I don't want her to be the same way, so I don’t want her to see my reaction to this. Naomi’s here, so I’m not alone.” I close my eyes, and swallow the lump in my throat.
I don't open my eyes until the door clicks shut again. The thin little blonde tech is back, opening packages of needles and vials of liquid.
“Just close your eyes and breathe deeply. In and out. In and out.” Naomi takes my hand, and it is like the night Sophie was born. But before I close my eyes completely, the doctor turns up the lights and they reflect off the long, silver line of the needle. I breathe.
There is a burning to the side of my bellybutton that Naomi tells me is the anesthesia. Then I feel another sting, and a weird pulling feeling inside me. I can’t see it, Naomi is keeping me calm, but I know what it feels like, anesthesia or no. Something is being pulled out of me, slowly.
Back in clothes and shoes, I walk over to Michael and Sophie. I reach for her, but Michael shakes his head. “No strenuous activity for the rest of the day. I’ll take Sophie to my mother’s so you can rest while I’m at work tonight.” Opening the door into the hospital hallway, he looks me in the face. “Are you okay?”
“I guess so. I’ll be better when the waiting is over, I think.”
I am upstairs in our bedroom cleaning when Michael gets home from work. Day four of waiting, of using housework to keep myself busy whenever Sophie is asleep.
Michael walks to his side of the bed and clears a spot to sit down on. Sophie’s laundry is piled all over the rumpled yellow comforter, and he drops fistfuls of tiny socks back into the basket. He sets his watch and beeper on the nightstand and turns toward me.
“How was work?” I ask, reaching for the socks. A mock sigh. “I had these all sorted out, Pigpen.” I smile and look up. Michael’s haggard face is like a photo negative of a night sky: under his eyes are dark crescent moons in a pale universe. I freeze.
“Jim—Dr. Barton—came by today. He wanted to talk in person about the amnio results. Em, it’s Down’s.” He looks down at his fingers kneading the yellow folds of the comforter like they belong to somebody else.
How nice of Jim to be so sensitive to Michael, to have added the personal touch. I can see them stepping aside into an empty conference room to murmur to each other. Maybe Jim touched Michael’s shoulder. All this, while I was scrubbing, dusting, folding, sweeping. Alone.
“Maybe it’s wrong. Maybe the test is wrong,” I plead with Michael across our bed. I lurch into motion again, pulling the arms of one of Sophie’s shirts back and folding it in half. I smooth it flat and grab for another.
“The test isn’t wrong.” With the palm of his hand, Michael sweeps away the wrinkles he has made. The creases are gone, but he continues the motion, back and forth, staring at the bed.
“But it just doesn’t feel—”
Michael is on his feet. He whirls around to face me. “Would you stop it with the feelings already? The test is right. You’re wrong. Let it go.” His pinched voice finally cracks and he stops.
I fold faster and the stack of pink, yellow, and white onesies grows taller. I breathe through my nose in a hiss.
Michael sighs and his voice comes out softer. “Maybe you were right about the way you felt earlier. You said the pregnancy felt different and were worried about miscarrying. Maybe you were supposed to.”
“How come when you argue with your so-called anecdotal evidence, it’s okay?”
“Emmie, that’s exactly my point. You can use intuition or feelings or pangs or whatever you want to call it to argue any side, any point. But you can’t argue against the test results.” Michael gathers up the rest of Sophie's clothes. “It doesn’t take a doctor to see that.” He heads for the door, but I grab his arm.
Both Sides of My Skin Page 3