Finding Bliss

by Dina Silver

  “You have a uterine abnormality,” he told me. “It’s quite common really, and varies among women. Yours is shaped more like a T than the typical pear shape.”

  I shook my head. His words were clearly spoken, but made little sense to me. All I heard was: “In addition to your size-ten shoes, you have a strange uterus. Basically, you’re kind of freakish. You’re abnormal. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”

  “What exactly does a T-shaped uterus mean? Is that why I’m having so much trouble getting pregnant?” I asked him. “Will I be able to get pregnant?”

  “Generally speaking, uterine abnormalities don’t affect your ability to become pregnant and give birth. However, it may be more difficult for you to carry your baby for the full nine months of pregnancy. It’s really hard to say at this point.”

  I pondered his explanation, but couldn’t worry about carrying a child before I actually conceived one.

  “This is going to sound stupid, but is there anything else I should be doing to get pregnant other than having sex?” I asked.

  He smiled at me and my T-shaped uterus.

  “I’ve tried using ovulation kits once or twice, and lying with my feet elevated after sex,” I continued. Little did he know I’d nearly perfected my post-intercourse headstand.

  “You can always try artificial insemination if you’re feeling discouraged.”

  And with that suggestion, our mission began—and our fun newlywed sex ended.

  Over the course of a year, Tyler and I tried four artificial inseminations, during which time I became addicted to pregnancy kits. My doctor had warned me not to use them, insisting that the results would be skewed, but I was obsessed. The insemination process consisted of me sitting on the examination table waiting for José, the lab technician, to roll in the ultrasound machine, which was basically a dildo with a camera. By law, José was not allowed to insert it inside of me, so I was left to do the task myself…with José cheering me on. Once the wand was in position, my body would tense up like a cat being forced to wear a sweater. I became immobile and frozen, unable to move or breathe comfortably, just praying the whole thing would end quickly. Pride had become a distant memory…as had fun newlywed sex. Even as a young girl I had always been modest, never one to flaunt my cleavage or wear short skirts to accentuate my long legs. Yet, there I was at the ripe old age of twenty-nine with my legs spread and my crotch on display for anyone with a white lab coat.

  Once the condom-covered magic wand was inside me, José would begin his hunt through my ovaries, looking for those golden eggs. He needed to confirm I was producing enough, and that they were big enough to do the job. After confirming my eggs were good to go, the technician would get them gussied up for their date with Tyler’s sperm.

  That same day, Tyler would also have had to go to the clinic and leave his “deposit.” As embarrassing as the procedures I had to endure were, I’m not sure there’s anything more humiliating for a man than walking past a crowd of people and into a room to leave a sperm sample.

  “Good luck, honey!” I’d say, giving him a thumbs-up.

  “I hope this kid appreciates my hard work,” Tyler would joke.

  “We’ll make sure they know how much effort went into their conception.”

  “Maybe we should leave the porn out of it,” he said.

  “Agreed.”

  Once Tyler did his job, a nurse would take Tyler’s sperm, wash them in the spin cycle, give them each a spritz of cologne and a tequila shot, and then load them into the turkey baster that would eventually be inserted into my waiting vagina. So this was how babies were made. After Tyler’s sperm were inside me, the nurses would instruct us to have sex the next day in case there were any drunk, lazy sperm that didn’t feel like cooperating. After each insemination, I bought pregnancy kits by the cartonful, and had them hidden everywhere in the house. I was willing to pee on anything that would give me the results I was looking for.

  My moods swung wildly, but the one thing I could count on was getting my period each month—and losing hope every time. During this time, Grace gave birth to a beautiful little girl named Francesca. I planned her baby shower and hosted it at my home. While she sat and opened gifts, my heart broke with every little bib and pink layette she held up in the air for a picture. Grace and I had always talked about starting a playgroup and how our kids would be best friends, just like we were. Only, by then I was a year behind.

  Although Tyler and I had both been tested for every possible thing that might be preventing us from having a child, the doctors had found nothing concrete and simply labeled our problem as unknown. He was as supportive as he could be, but I knew it frustrated him to see me upset and have his manhood questioned. And while he’d told me repeatedly that he was fine with all of the doctors’ visits and procedures, I would occasionally catch him sighing and rolling his eyes when I’d mention some new test we had to endure. There was really no way to sugarcoat the fact that he had to masturbate in the doctor’s office while everyone outside knew what he was doing. So aware that they were basically waiting to greet him as he exited the room, semen sample in hand. He and I had laughed about it at first, and he’d tried so hard to pretend it wasn’t humiliating. Early on, we even made up a few nicknames for his sperm sample, such as Tea Time with Tyler and A Few Good Men, but those had long since been forgotten. Our sense of humor had started to fade by failed attempt number four.

  “Good luck, honey!” I’d say, and Tyler would walk past me with no retort.

  Alas, none of the inseminations worked, and we were told that in vitro fertilization or adoption would be our only options.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Kimberly James is on line two,” my assistant Rachel’s voice rang through the intercom. “She says it’s urgent.”

  I placed my coffee down and glanced at the clock; it was a quarter after seven in the morning. What urgency could this woman possibly have at this hour? “Put her through, and send Robert in here, please,” I said as I reached for line two. “This is Chloe,” I answered.

  “We need to go back to court!” Kimberly James shouted. “He dropped the kids off last night, and they were a wreck, an absolute disaster. Lukey had dirty socks and wet feet, and Lila had ketchup in her hair!” She paused, waiting for my appalled reaction, which never came. “Chloe, did you hear me? I want you to file a motion to modify his visitation today.”

  Being a divorce lawyer had its perks, and sharing your morning coffee with a lunatic was one of them. I took one of the many deep breaths I would take that day and answered her calmly. “I’m not going to file a motion to modify or terminate visitation just because your kids came home with dirty socks. And the reason I’m not going to do that, Kimberly, is because in order to do that you have to prove to the court serious endangerment or a substantial change in circumstances, not to mention this phone call alone has already cost you two hundred and fifty dollars. Filing a motion to go to court over this and have his visitation modified will cost you an additional twenty-five hundred dollars. Enough money to purchase new socks for the remainder of both their lifetimes, thereby never having to wash another pair.”

  “Put Robert on the phone,” she demanded.

  “Robert is my paralegal. He takes orders from me, not my clients.”

  Kimberly James hung up on me that morning, but it wasn’t the first or last time. A minute later, Robert walked into my office carrying three file folders and two doughnuts.

  I sipped my coffee with one hand and rubbed my temples with the other. “Please remove one of those doughnuts from this office, whichever one you’re not eating,” I said. “I have to be at the fertility clinic at nine, so can you file the Anderson motion at the courthouse this morning?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  “We’re starting our IVF process. I may need to have some blood taken and an ultrasound to examine my follicles, to see how many eggs I’m producing and how big they are. I’m not sure; it’s our fi
rst consult. Glad you asked?”

  Robert tossed his half-eaten doughnut in the garbage. “I’m full,” he said.

  I playfully flung a binder clip at him. “Just file the Anderson petition and see if you can chat up their lawyer about settling. I need some feelers put out there to gauge how serious his wife is about keeping the house. Also, do not take any calls from Kimberly James this week. I’ll handle her.”

  “Okay, boss, good luck with those eggs today.” He smiled. “Time to get cracking,” he said before sauntering out.

  I went back to rubbing my temples and checking e-mails when I heard Rachel’s voice again. “Tyler is on line one.”

  “Thank you,” I said and grabbed the phone. “Hi, honey.”

  “Hey, I can’t make the appointment this morning,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “The Kraft team was supposed to come in at two o’clock, but they just rescheduled for this morning. One of them has to be on a flight this afternoon, I guess.”

  I sighed loud enough for him to hear. I hated feeling like I was putting added pressure on him, but it was our first IVF appointment, and I wanted him there. At the beginning of our relationship, I’d been the primary breadwinner. Responsible for most of the bills when Tyler was in film school, and footing the down payment for the house. He had always been supportive in other ways, though, like putting up with my long hours, sometimes watching me flash in and out of the apartment at midnight, only to shower, sleep, and return to the office by six o’clock in the morning. Or picking up the dry cleaning and doing the grocery shopping each week because I never had enough time for either task. But over time, as Tyler and Mitch’s business became more successful, and he had more money in his pocket to pad his confidence, he had grown less inclined to appease me. It reminded me of how I used to feel when I didn’t have my mother’s attention anymore. When she’d stopped drinking and started focusing on random tasks like cleaning her closet and organizing her eye shadows, rather than cooking dinner for us or driving me to swim practice.

  “Sorry, babe, can’t make it today,” he said.

  I shook my head. I knew why Tyler was putting his job before this appointment; he was losing hope and despised having his virility under suspicion. Maybe I didn’t need him there to hold my hand, but I wanted it. “Okay,” I answered solemnly, hung up the phone, and shrugged it off. What had once seemed like the most romantic notion in the world—having a baby with the man of my dreams—had become a complex labyrinth of emotions, appointments, and self-doubt. It was a depressing, necessary evil, but what choice did I have?

  “Chloe,” Rachel said as she poked her head into my office. “Your mom is on line one.”

  “Thanks, Rach, I’ll take it.” She was instructed to alert me of all my calls. But my mother always required a lengthy excuse as to why I couldn’t come to the phone, so Rachel routinely looked to me for said excuse. My mother had no understanding of working or what it took to hold down a job and answer to someone else. She never had. So if I were to take her call, I would need to be prepared to talk to her for as long as she wished, which was sometimes more than half an hour. Her highly detailed stories about people breaking into her home and rearranging her closet, only to arrange it back to exactly how she had it, were never brief.

  Rachel regarded me with surprise and went back to her desk to put the call through.

  “Hi, Mom, how are you,” I answered, leaning back into my desk chair.

  “I’m not well. Vivian noticed that some of my blouses had been moved from the back of the closet to the front, and I’m beside myself.”

  My mother was defined by the contents of her closet. All her material possessions were in there. Clothes: some brand-new, some hideously old. Jewelry: the nice stuff that had been handed down to her from her mother, right alongside the crap she bought at Chico’s. Shoes, purses, Precious Moments figurines, and an entire vintage set of Fiestaware that she refused to keep in the kitchen.

  “Did Vivian notice, or did you insist that the blouses were moved?”

  “I pointed it out to her, but she agreed with me.”

  “You’re paying her, Mom, of course she’s going to agree with you.”

  Mom ignored my comment and instead went on for about twenty minutes, describing which items had been touched and which hadn’t. I listened and did what Vivian did, agreed with her, because I wanted to hear her voice and do what little I could to ease her stress. When I told her we were starting the IVF process, she sounded excited about meeting her grandchild. Her granddaughter to be exact.

  “I’ll buy her a layette,” Mom said.

  “Well, you have some time.”

  “Yes, but I see them on sale all the time, and it doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Such wonderful news.”

  My mom was never skeptical or discouraging when it came to my getting pregnant. She always expressed the same pure excitement about the baby. She never acted as though I wouldn’t have a child, which was exactly what I needed to hear just then.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I arrived at my fertility doctor’s office at a quarter to nine. As I opened the door, heads turned in my direction automatically. I located an empty chair, snatched a copy of Parenting magazine from a side table, and began to wait. Stone-faced women sat, lined up on wooden chairs around the perimeter of the room. Heads down as though they were outcasts at a high school dance. Although every one of us was there for the same reason, no one dared to speak to one another. And while I couldn’t know their exact circumstances, I shared their pain. A few husbands sat, obedient and impatient, pretending to look busy on their cell phones. The occasional sound of a nurse calling someone’s name was often the only reminder that we were there for a purpose. Since I was alone that morning, I thought I would shake things up. Engage someone in conversation. For God’s sake, weren’t we all suffering the same fate? It would seem that a room filled with women feeling inadequate and insecure would be the ideal venue for idle chatter.

  To my left was a couple in their late thirties. Other than scrolling through his iPhone, the husband was nearly comatose, while the wife was slumped over, reading on her Kindle. Every time a nurse called someone else’s name, he’d sigh angrily through his nose, and she’d lean farther away from him. The days of hope and holding hands were over for them. To my right was a beautiful young woman sitting alone and cleaning out the contents of her purse. She glanced over at me once she realized I was studying her.

  I held up my copy of Parenting magazine. “Seems kind of cruel, doesn’t it? That they should flaunt their subscription to this and American Baby,” I said, alarming most of the room by breaking the code of silence.

  She let out a muffled laugh. “My thoughts exactly. It kills me to flip through those things.”

  “I’m Chloe,” I said, extending my hand.

  “I’m Alexa. Nice to meet you.”

  We chatted quietly for about fifteen minutes. It was refreshing to talk to someone there. Though I’d always been eager to hear about other women’s experiences, I hadn’t dared to ask many people about it.

  “Would you like to grab coffee sometime?” I asked her.

  “I would love that,” Alexa said. “I’m free most afternoons around three o’clock.”

  “Lucky you, what do you do?”

  “I’m a writer,” she said.

  “Wow, that’s fantastic. What do you write?”

  “I have a weekly column in the RedEye, and I’ve also written two novels. I’m working on my third right now. How about you?”

  “I’m a divorce lawyer,” I said. I could’ve sworn a few heads perked up at those words.

  “I bet you have some good stories to tell.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Well, why don’t you give me your cell number, and I can give you a call tomorrow,” she said. We exchanged numbers just as a nurse called my name.

  “I have to be in court unt
il four, so maybe after that?”

  “Sounds great.”

  I followed the nurse to an examination room, removed the jacket of my black pantsuit, and waited for the doctor.

  After twenty minutes of me growing irate with impatience and texting my office like the disgruntled husband in the lobby, the doctor came in.

  “I’m Dr. Wilder. Sorry for the wait,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I mumbled.

  He looked at the calendar in front of him. “Let’s see here, so today’s your initial consult. Then it’s about two to three months before we do the procedure. We’re going to get your menstrual cycle back on track with the pill, and then you’ll start your series of shots. It looks like July will be your month. We close down the office for ten days each month to do the procedures, so it’s important to stay on schedule.”

  “So mine will be in July?”

  “Correct. Then during that time you’ll come in every other day to have an ultrasound and get some blood work done. Once your follicles look good, you’ll take your final shot to release the eggs and then come in for the extraction.”

  I swallowed. “I hear that’s painful.”

  “So is childbirth.” He smiled in a way that annoyed me.

  After walking me through the rest of the process, Dr. Wilder concluded with what would be expected of Tyler.

  “I hate to ask, but I assume he’s on board with this?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “He was supposed to be here, but had a last-minute thing at the office.”

  “Wonderful. Well, it was great to meet you, Chloe, and we’ll get you started. Be certain to follow the instructions to the letter and let the nurses know if you have any concerns.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The next day after court, I met Alexa for coffee. I was grateful to have a new friend during that rough time. Grace was always amazingly supportive, but there had been an uncomfortable strain between us ever since she got pregnant that was admittedly my fault. I never wanted to make her feel like I was jealous of her baby or not happy for her; I just couldn’t talk to her about every detail of this process while coveting the adorable, rosy-cheeked baby girl in her arms.