Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021
3:22 p.m.
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You have spent the last fourteen years building a life that could support a child. You wanted to do it right; you wanted to make sure your child didn't want to kill themselves like you did. You swore your child wouldn't teach themselves to stop crying like you had to. Your child wouldn't have to cut themselves because they weren't given empathy or coping skills. You arranged the scaffolding carefully, thoughtfully; you acquired degrees in child development, you practiced not being an asshole to kids, you practiced not screaming at them when they were infuriating.
You finally have the scaffolding in place. You are with your partner of a decade, your career is established, you have a nest egg saved up, you're in your early thirties. All the boxes ticked off. You're not getting younger. It's now or never.
You're six months into trying to conceive when a pandemic hits. You stop trying for a little while, because who wants to bring a child into this mess? And part of you hopes you're overreacting, hopes this will pass quickly and quietly. It doesn't. You're still not getting younger though, and your career is established enough that you can work from home and insulate yourself until vaccines are a thing. You resume trying. Six months into the pandemic, you're pregnant. You are every inch as happy as you imagined, and then some. Growing a tiny life absolutely delights you.
You're six weeks pregnant when you start spotting and cramping. Google tells you those are telltale signs of miscarriage. Or it could be totally normal. You can't get through to your doctor, you've been on hold for an hour when you have to leave for work. You go to work but hide in your office. Your husband calls and calls and calls to try to get you an appointment. You cry in your office.
Later that afternoon they manage to squeeze you in. You steel yourself for the worst, thinking of your friend who has had two miscarriages. You think of your mother and her miscarriage before you were born, your almost older sibling. You think of your grandmother and her miscarriage.
The silence screams in your ears as you wait for the ultrasound technician to find good news. You hold your breath until she says, "there's the heartbeat!"
You think, "it's all okay now."
It isn't.
You read that finding a heartbeat dramatically lowers the rate of miscarriage. You find a number of miscarriage calculators and you track your rate of miscarriage day by day, watching it drop 1.2% for every day that passes. You look forward to week 20 when the rate of miscarriage becomes zero, and that joy is short-lived when you realize the rate of miscarriage only drops to 0 because after week 20 it is technically considered a stillbirth.
After week 20, the rate of stillbirth creeps steadily up until you deliver a healthy baby, or a dead one.
You are carrying Shroedinger's fetus until then.
At fourteen weeks you get shingles. Your frantic Googling gives you conflicting information: shingles is probably fine, maybe, but the same virus that causes shingles causes chicken pox and also causes your developing fetus to have like a ten percent chance of bone deformities and blindness.
Also, you're fat, and your blood pressure is too high, and according to Google and also multiple doctors your baby is totally fucked because of that.
Also in case you forgot, there's still a pandemic. Every extra appointment you have to go to is an exercise in deep breathing to calm you down, but don't breathe too deeply because you're sitting next to some asshole who doesn't understand social distancing or how to wear a mask correctly.
You're sardined into this room once a week where despite signs in the lobby that detail how to wear a mask covering your mouth AND your nose, you fucking dipshits, about half the people in the room are still like "what pandemic?" and "but my freedoms!"
Your blood pressure is higher each week. The doctors insist this is because you're fat and also a bad mom, and has nothing to do with the dumbass sitting across from you who took off their mask to cough into the air, then touched the pen and the clipboard without sanitizing a goddamn thing.
You can practically see the covid dripping off every public surface.
Your hands are perpetually dry from the alcohol based hand sanitizer.
You are still expected to work full time, which for you means meeting everybody else's needs for an entire office. The parents, the kids, the staff.
Meanwhile, you are still agonizing over this tiny thing which is completely dependent on you. This thing you wanted more than any other thing you've ever wanted. You are careful to give up everything you love: no drinking, no smoking, no raw fish, no fish high in mercury even if it's cooked, no soft cheese, no hot dogs, no undercooked beef.
Beef is the only fucking thing you want to eat, probably because you're slightly anemic (and fat) and every piece of red meat you put in you has to be burned to a crisp, lest your baby end up with listeria or parasites or botulism or brain damage or whatever other fucking danger du jour you're trying to avoid.
You read about when babies are supposed to kick. The women in your pregnancy group have all felt their babies kick from like week 14, the bitches. You read anywhere from 18-26 is normal for a first time mom, except for when it isn't normal because actually it means your baby is dead.
You read up to a third of miscarriages are "missed" miscarriages, as in you don't have bleeding or spotting. The baby just fucking dies and your stupid body doesn't know, just keeps trucking along like all's well. You think about this as you change positions and hold your breath and jiggle your belly, wondering, is this gas or is this decomposing tissue?
Your baby mercifully starts kicking around week 21, and strong enough for her dad to feel around week 23. Your baby mercifully starts kicking and (mostly) never stops kicking.
But still, pandemic. You read that getting covid during pregnancy means best case scenario, they deliver the baby early and put you on a ventilator. This is still earlyish days, so monoclonal antibodies aren't a thing. Mostly they roll you to the prone position and hope for the best, and they can't even do that if you're pregnant lest you squish the baby. Depending on how far along you are in the pregnancy, your baby may or may not have a solid chance of survival.
You read that week 24 is viability week, because babies born at 24 weeks have a 50/50 shot at survival. You count down the days until week 24, celebrate silently when you reach it, but don't celebrate too hard because a 50% chance of death is still pretty high.
When you're about halfway through your pregnancy, the vaccine rolls out, and technically you are both a frontline worker and a healthcare worker. You're not emergency room staff so you're not in the first phase of rollouts, but you're in the second. You get your first dose of vaccine at 29 weeks pregnant, your second dose at 33 weeks pregnant. It scares you shitless to get the vaccine, because it has rolled out so recently there is still minimal data available on the safety during pregnancy, and the organizations you would hope would take a firm stance on recommending or not recommending the vaccine to pregnancy all just say "well it's your choice".
"I mean, pregnant women shouldn't be STOPPED from getting the vaccine."
It feels like a big fat "idk figure it out lol".
You get your covid vaccines and you're glad you do, because two weeks later they find a cyst in your daughter. The doctors can't tell you that it's hurting her, but they can't tell you that it's not hurting her either. You are 32 weeks pregnant. You debate whether or not to schedule a maternity photoshoot, because if your baby dies you will never be able to look at those pictures ever again.
Your doctor wants to see you every week for monitoring, he refers you to a high risk doctor who wants to see you twice a week for monitoring. You are now spending your entire week in and out of appointments, and god you're glad you got vaccinated because this cunt sitting next to you just breathed her covid breath all over your purse.
You try to be happy for your baby. You are happy for your baby. But your happiness is tempered with fear. Everything is terrifying. The pandemic is terrifying. Other people are terrifying. The baby aspirin they are making you take because you're a fatty with high blood pressure is terrifying. Every appointment is: the cyst hasn't killed her yet, covid hasn't killed her yet, proceed with cautious optimism.
After forty agonizing weeks and one day, you allow them to induce you. Your team wanted to induce you at 38 weeks, then 39 weeks, because you're fat with high blood pressure, but you fought it tooth and nail because you read babies need those extra two weeks to develop their brains and lungs. And yeah sure babies born at 38 weeks are technically full term, but they have like 3 times the risk of developing asthma or some other shit later. At forty weeks you are induced, at forty weeks and one day you finally have your perfect beautiful amazing baby. She is born and she does not cry, she just looks around, aimless, until you speak.
She knows your voice.
And you have triumphed. You beat covid, and you beat asthma, and you beat that weird shingles bone density thing, and you beat her fucking surprise cyst. You beat every moron who doesn't think the pandemic is really a thing, you beat every idiot who doesn't believe in wearing a mask to preserve someone else's life and safety. You beat the rate of spontaneous miscarriage and missed miscarriage and stillbirth, you beat premature birth, you beat high blood pressure and gestational diabetes. You feel like you have had to fight every fucking thing in your life to keep her safe.
Then your best friend tells you that oh, actually, despite getting her tDap and covid vaccines, no she won't be getting the flu shot like she told you she would. Even though your regular doctor, pediatrician, and her doctor all recommend it. Even though there are years of data indicating how safe the flu shot is. Even though this is the one thing you asked for help with, and you never fucking ask for help because you don't get help.
You don't have the energy to fight anymore.