My friends Jessica and Adam had a baby girl Monday night. She was a surprise. Well, she wasn’t a surprise—just the fact that she is a she. Adam and Jessica are those strong types who have been able to handle two surprises in the delivery room. As for me? I needed to know my son’s gender the minute it was possible to do so.
When I talked to Adam at 11:15 yesterday morning, he said, “Come on over.”
“When are visiting hours?” I asked. He said until 7 p.m.
I explained that I had to pick up my son from camp at 11:45 a.m., then was watching my son’s friend starting at 1:15 p.m., for a couple of hours, then needed to take my son to his soccer camp from 4:15 to 5:15 p.m.
“I will definitely be there,” I said, but explained that I might have to wait until my husband got home from work at 6 p.m.
I couldn’t wait that long.
I retrieved my son from camp and rushed over to the hospital, eager to have at least 45 minutes with Jessica and her baby girl before I needed to be home.
After telling me about her labor-and-delivery ordeal, Jessica, sweet as a person can be, asked about me, about how the egg-retrieval went on Saturday. I told her that this IVF cycle has been so debilitating that I’ve been thinking that, when I go in on Thursday for my embryo transfer, if there aren’t any viable embryos from this attempt, if there is only our frozen little boy from our first cycle to transfer, I will choose to transfer just him, even though transferring one embryo will halve our chances of having a child—and even though our insurance will cover six ovulation inductions, so I could stimulate my ovaries four more times, trying to get two embryos for a second transfer, then two more embryos for my third and final transfer, making our chances the best they can possibly be. I had discussed this with my husband, and he’d agreed.
But then I walked into the hospital room and saw her tiny, sweet, sleeping face and her adorable little toes. I saw how gentle my son was with her, carefully petting her feet and her knee.
So I told Jessica that I’d changed my mind about just transferring one embryo, about giving in to two weeks of IVF-medication hell, about reducing our chances of having a baby and of my son having a sibling. I explained that, now that I’d seen her daughter, I’d decided that, if I have to stimulate again, I’ll stimulate again.
Her eyes welled up, and she said, “I know. After she was born, one of the first things I said was, ‘Oh, M.K. wants a girl.’”
Then she was teary-eyed, and I was bleary-eyed, two hormonal women, one having just given birth and the other desperately wanting to be in her shoes in nine months.
I feel guilty that one of Jessica’s first thoughts, after learning that she had a healthy, perfect, 10-fingered, 10-toed baby girl, was of sadness for me because my husband and I had a baby-girl embryo transferred into me on June 10, but she wasn’t meant to be. I wish that Jessica would have been self-centered, baby-centered and family-centered, for days upon days after delivery, before thinking about me and my infertility.
Some infertile women become jealous. I admit to staring longingly at babies. I admit to getting emotional around them when on IVF meds. I admit to having felt bitter that 16-year-old crack addicts can get pregnant over and over, but I can’t. But I have always, always been happy when the people I love, my family members and my friends, have babies.
Because Adam, Jessica and their almost-four-year-old son were a family of three, while my husband, my son and I are, most often, a family of three, we spend a lot of time together—a mom-and-tot preschool class last year, the boys’ first Cubs game, swim lessons, gymnastics classes, and mom-and-kid playdates. For a while, their son made Jessica pretend she was me on a regular basis, as in, “Mom, be M.K. when you read me this book.” He also pretended that my son and I were often with them, experiencing various other events.
We’re like family, both real and imaginary. So, in this case, I feel such intense happiness that Adam and Jessica and their son, who has grown up with my four-year-old son, have this daughter and sister to love. And, I know that they will share her with me, my husband and our son. And, because they are that sweet and generous, I can’t stop crying…