by Suzy Becker
“It’s all pretty miraculous. The best part of my job.” He smiled. “Do you have any questions?”
I asked about flying and miscarriage, miscarriage risks in general, and any miscarriage risks specifically associated with my ectopic pregnancy. The answer was I had nothing to fear. He came out from behind his desk to congratulate us. We were graduating to normal-people ob-gyn care.
I left for Detroit several hours later. My specially purchased one-suitcase-fits-all was twenty-five pounds overweight, so I ended up putting all my shoes, toiletries, and several other items in a separate carry-on.
I promised Lorene I’d let the escorts lift my heavy suitcase, but when Sheila Potts pulled into the handicapped space at the first Barnes & Noble and explained, “I have spinal stenosis, Judy,” I knew Lorene would have made an exception.
“It’s Suzy,” I told Sheila.
Sheila led me to the customer service desk. “I have an author, Suzy Becker, I Had Brain Cancer, What’s Your Excuse?” Sheila told me how much she’d enjoyed the book while we waited. “How’s your husband— wait, hold that thought!” The customer service guy was back. I signed a pile of books and Sheila took me to the café. “You’re entitled to a free beverage.” I ordered my usual, then remembered the baby, feigned a sip, and tossed it into the next trash can. At least it was free. Luckily, Sheila never missed a free beverage, so I ordered a decaf at the next Barnes & Noble and grabbed a water chaser at the third.
When I got to Chicago, I established a routine that worked pretty well throughout the rest of the tour: On arrival, I unpacked and ironed my clothes for the next morning, checked my e-mail, called Lorene, requested my wake-up call, then watched late-night TV until I fell asleep.
I’d do the early show, have breakfast, and then I often had the rest of the morning free so I could exercise nonvigorously (an outdoor walk or a tread in the gym) and do a little work. If you’d asked me at the time, I would’ve claimed no morning sickness. However, the sight of those book-tour clothes still turns my stomach. And while most food tasted fine, as soon as I finished, I’d make a mental note to never eat whatever it was again, plain bagels excepted.
Most afternoons, I was able to fit in a nap. Then I’d pack up, grab a dinner I could eat on the plane, head to my evening event, and it was on to the next city.
If I hadn’t seen the blinking light in my belly, I would’ve sworn I was carrying this baby in my butt. My boobs, previously sympathetic to the idea of pregnancy, really blossomed, but my stomach wasn’t having any of it.
Every few days I considered playing my pregnancy card, but I always thought better of it. Once I said something, there was no taking it back. And it was much easier to not think about miscarrying when no one knew you were pregnant. Besides, assimilating my new public identity as a “survivor” left very little room to contemplate my new secret identity as a pregnant person.
I had never thought of myself as a survivor. True—I didn’t die, but all I’d survived was brain surgery, not being stranded on the side of a mountain, left for dead in a park, or extreme poverty or abuse. Meanwhile, I was meeting real survivors by the dozen every day, listening to their stories, unforgettable stories: the postal office employee with brain cancer whose buddies collected a wad of cash ($3,500) and gave it to him on his last day of work, along with their pooled paid leave time (four and a half months). There-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I stories; please-e-mail-me-in-two-months-so-I-know-you’re-still-alive stories.
The snow started to fall just after I woke up in Minneapolis. I considered my good shoes, then dashed out of the hotel for a coffee anyway. Sally, my escort, was waiting in the lobby when I got back. She glanced at my wet hair and offered me a tissue for my runny nose.
“I figured out, we were classmates at Brown,” she said. “Don’t worry”—just the opposite; for whatever reason, I instantly liked her— “no one ever remembers me.”
“Me either,” I said. We chatted nonstop on the ride. Between the car chat and the caffeine, I was revved up for my morning show.
Sally’s mother called to say she thought I was adorable. “I’m pregnant,” I gushed back. Sally hugged me. “It’s really too early to tell anyone, but if I were home, Lorene and I would be talking about it all the time.”
“Do you want to go back to the hotel and rest?”
“I’m starving!” We ate a big brunch; in between store signings, we visited Louise Erdrich’s bookshop. Then it was time to tape a Minnesota Public Radio interview.
The host was Scottish, very nice and very well prepared. My sniffles were an annoyance throughout the segment and I was very close to pressing the mike-silencing “cough” button so I could take a deep, satisfying sniff, when a drip escaped and landed SPLAT on my book. A red pool spread across the passage I was reading. The producer was out of his chair, back with toilet paper in no time. I got the bleed under control, blotted the page, and we did a new take. This time I was afraid to breathe—much less sniff— in. I felt as if I’d completed an aerobic workout by the end of the segment.
Nasal stuffiness, often with accompanying nosebleeds, is a common complaint during pregnancy.
That night I re-created the drama (which had been lost on the radio) for the NPR listeners in the bookstore audience. And then I was winging my way to Seattle, where Lorene would be joining me for the West Coast leg of my tour.
She couldn’t wait to see how pregnant I wasn’t, but other than that, we didn’t have a lot to catch up on. I had called her at least three times a day, and again before I went to bed each night. Even after my page-by-page, she was excited to be on my book tour.
Les, our escort in San Francisco, was Lorene’s introduction to touring. He loved the humor in my book, which inspired him to try out some of his own material. “How ’bout gay marriage?” he said, looking for me in the rearview mirror. “Next thing they’ll have gay divorce lawyers.”
“Why wouldn’t regular divorce lawyers work?” I had to ask loudly since the windows were open. His car wasn’t air-conditioned.
“You know, she’s not a Suzy,” he complained to Lorene. “She’s more of an Amanda, don’t you think?”
He dropped us off at our friends’ place in Berkeley. We hadn’t seen them since Joshua Tree. Jane was the only person I hadn’t been looking forward to telling. She had said more than once that she wanted me to have everything I wanted, but my having a kid would be the end of our friendship as we knew it. “You think you’ll be different but there’s just no time, you’ll see.” She and David didn’t have kids.
I had told her over the phone before I left on my book tour, figuring we’d return to it in person, but we never had the chance. Jane was beside herself when we walked in. Not about the baby—her cat was missing, and Lorene, Jane, and I spent the afternoon searching and postering the Berkeley hills. As we were leaving, David stopped me on the stairs, “Congratulations, I am so happy for you,” he said. “Don’t worry, she’ll get used to it.” Les was honking his horn out front. I hugged Jane on my way out the door and made her promise to keep me updated.
Lorene arranged massages during our downtime in Los Angeles. “When your partner said ‘pregnant,’ I thought she meant, you know,” the massage therapist pantomimed really pregnant. She rolled up two extra towels, put one on either side of my middle, then proceeded to reminisce for the hour. “When I was pregnant with my son, I got all kinds of extra body hair. Extra body hair, and my skin cleared up.” My old college roommate had told me she craved citrus with her three boys. I was kind of craving wine as she was telling me, but now I filed it with the new information under “Signs You’re Having a Boy.”
Lorene went home and I soldiered on to the southwest (where I was introduced as “Dr. Becker”), Texas, Colorado, and back to D.C., where Lorene met me again. The Diane Rehm Show bumped the book back into the top 500 on Amazon. And then we trained up to Philadelphia.
I had held off telling my dad because I didn’t want him worrying about me flying all ov
er; now I was excited to see him. “Pop-pop, guess what?” Lorene said, and she threw open my coat.
He took a step back and clenched his fists. “You did it!” His eyes welled up. “God, you did it.” He gathered both of us in his long arms. “Can I interest you two in a late breakfast?”
He pulled into a rib joint that advertised breakfast, but breakfast was over. My dad ordered the pulled pork; the waitress turned to me. My ol’ iron stomach had objections to every entree. “Dad, I don’t think I can do this,” I said. His face fell; I’d never been a quitter. We went down the road and had eggs at a mediocre deli, then my dad took us home. Lorene had a four-hour nap. My dad and I went for a walk.
“I’ve got to stay on top of my game,” he said. He had maintained a regular exercise program for over thirty years, walking or at the gym almost every day since the massive heart attack he had when I was ten. My dad was in great shape, but his heart was a ticking time bomb. “I told Linda I’d like to take my grandkids to Disney World one day.” I was sorry that my being an old mother made my dad an old grandfather.
Lorene went back to Massachusetts and I looped through the southeast. I had become inured, didn’t blink when my Atlanta escort introduced me as the author of I Had Breast Cancer, What’s Your Problem? I was in the home stretch. St. Louis, Kansas City, then back to Boston. I was ready to hang up my survivor’s mantle and go around the world as a pregnant person.
Lorene met me at the airport, holding up the book escort-style. Vita and Mister were in the back of the car. I —we— were home safe, pending the next ultrasound.
It’s A Boy!
Lorene and I were back at the old gynecologist’s. It still didn’t feel like we belonged. This was a waiting room for women who naturally rested their hands on their burgeoning bellies—for women who had burgeoning bellies. Women who relished wearing maternity clothes and went to ultrasounds alone. I sat up straighter and focused on a magazine. “Suzanne?” We were no longer in the land of “Suzy B.”
“We’ll do an ultrasound first, and then you’ll see your doctor,” the nurse explained. “Is this your first—” She hesitated. “Yours, right?” she asked Lorene.
“Oh, no. Thank you, dear,” Lorene said. “My first is twenty-four.”
The nurse laughed and handed me a gown. “This is a little like going on a fishing expedition,” she said once we were situated. Lorene held my hand as the nurse set the scanner on my belly. “We just need a heartbeat. Now, it doesn’t mean anything if we don’t find it.” Oh, please, please . . .
“I hear it!” Lorene said. I couldn’t. I couldn’t quiet my own heart pounding between my ears.
“There it is!” the nurse found it. “One hundred and twenty beats per minute.” I could hear them! “That’s what you want. Did you girls want to know what you’re having?”
“Isn’t it too early to tell?” Lorene asked.
“Look at this.” She made an arrow. “You’ve got a baby boy.”
I looked at Lorene; her face had clouded over. “Wait, what about your vision? I thought you knew it was a boy!”
“I know, it’s—I guess I was still hoping we’d get a girl.” She looked at the nurse. “I already have a son. Daughters are supposed to take care of you . . .”
The nurse laughed. “You can get dressed and head down to the doctor’s office.”
She left us alone. “Lorene, I was so worried he was gone. I couldn’t feel him when he was there, how would I have known if—”
“You wouldn’t. But he’s there.”
“We’re having a boy!”
Lorene cradled my face. “Now get dressed, I don’t want to make her wait.”
“Congratulations! It’s very exciting,” our doctor said, and promptly yawned. “I’m sorry, I’m giving up caffeine. So, how far along are we?”
“Thirteen weeks,” I answered while she scanned my file.
“Now, has either one of you been tested for cystic fibrosis?”
“I haven’t.” I wasn’t sure about Steve.
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t have to be you. How about you?” She looked at Lorene, then went back to the file.
Lorene hesitated. “Me?”
“Either one of you—” She checked her own impatience, shifted into explanatory mode. “You need a double positive, so if one of you—”
Lorene interrupted, “My genes aren’t really part of this picture.” The two of us laughed until it became apparent she wasn’t going to join in.
“I’ll ask Steve,” I said. “But I doubt he’s been screened.”
“It’s the caffeine,” she said, and she handed me lab orders. “Have them schedule your amnio on the way out.” We got ready to go. “Have you given any thought to your delivery?”
Not a one. We still had a week until we were officially out of the miscarriage woods.
Lorene had. “As naturally as possible.”
“Have you spoken with your neurosurgeon? I will need his okay for you to push.” I added it to my to-do list.
From:
Suzy
Subject:
IT’S A BOY!
Date:
April 20, 2004
He’s got a good heart (120 bpm), two brain halves, two femurs, two kidneys and two antennae. Just kidding, but he looks, no offense to either of us, like an alien. Have you ever been screened for cystic fibrosis? I’m thinking not. All (it’s a lot!) for now, love, xoxo, Suzy
That night, Lorene felt the baby kicking. I would’ve said gas. What to Expect said we were both right; early movements are often mistaken for gas.
“I’m kind of relieved it’s a boy,” I said.
“I’ll love another boy, but I will say, David gave me a run for my money in his teenage years.”
“I guess I worry about the two-mom part, you know, not having one of us who can relate to his experience.”
“You mean sex? Kids don’t talk to their parents about sex.”
“I meant all of it.”
“Moms raise sons all the time. I raised a son. We have plenty of guy friends. You could’ve had a daughter you couldn’t relate to . . . ”
She was right. I’d worry about the amnio instead.
I had a girl. She was beautiful, lying next to Lorene on a white pillow. I went to get my camera and when I came back, their heads were wrapped in turquoise and purple tissue. Just their faces were showing. The baby had little glasses just like Lorene’s.
I checked the clock—6:40—and rolled over. Lorene was facing me. “I don’t want that woman delivering our baby. Too hurried, too humorless, too—”
“Neither do I.” And as long as we were making a switch, I wanted someone who delivered at the hospital where I had my brain surgery, on the very off chance I popped my cork while pushing.
April 16, 2004
To Whom It May Concern,
Ms. Suzy Becker is a patient under my care. From my perspective, it is fine for her to undergo a normal vaginal birth of her child and specifically, I have been asked to comment if it is alright for her to push during delivery. I see no problem with this.
I wish her a smooth delivery and the joys of parenthood.
Warm regards,
John Finn, M.D., Ph. D.
By the end of the day, we were the newest patients of Dr. Bunnell. We had our first appointment two weeks before she was scheduled to perform my amniocentesis, and we both liked her just fine. As she escorted us out of the office, she introduced us to the rest of the obstetricians in the practice since the odds were just as good one of them would be delivering our baby.
Our insurance company sent us our Healthy Babies package and we got our first Safe Beginnings catalog in the mail. Sometimes it still didn’t feel real. We could have been somebody’s marketing-list error.
Or maybe I wouldn’t let myself think it was real. Not until after the amnio.
It’s easy to see why the amnio is a highly over-complained-about procedure:
(a)
(b) It car
ries a risk* of miscarriage.
* Admittedly small, but it’s 100% when you’re one of the 0.3%
(c) Your future is riding on the results.
But if you could, it’s really just a glorified shot.
I had attended my sister’s, so I knew what to expect. Lorene, of course, came with me to mine. Dr. Bunnell discussed the procedure, and then we waited while the technician found our boy. I looked into Lorene’s eyes while Dr. Bunnell prepared to insert the needle. “She’s in,” Lorene said. I hadn’t felt a thing. “She’s out.” You’re kidding! It had me thinking, maybe having a baby is an over-complained-about procedure, too . . .
Dr. Bunnell and the technician were laughing at the screen. “Did you want to know the baby’s sex?”
“We know—boy.”
“Definitely not! She just did three somersaults, spread-eagle.”
I forgot I ever wanted a boy, if I ever wanted a boy. I must’ve wanted a girl all along. I pulled Lorene toward me. “We got a girl!”
“A girl. A girl? Oh, no.”
“No? You said you wanted a—”
“Yes, but I raised a boy. I know what to do with a boy. What am I going to do with a girl?” Everybody in the room laughed, and Lorene started laughing, too, wiping the tears out of her eyes.
We called Steve before bed, and left a message, “It’s a GIRL! Really! We had the amnio today. It went fine. Love you!”
Lorene said, “Oh, thank God.”
“What?”
“We would have never agreed on a boy’s name.”