The Wedding

The “Promise” in Compromise

I love weddings.  By the time I was a bride at 38, I’d had a lot of time to plan my own.  Suffice it to say that I had a healthy wedding list long before I had a groom. 

I “re-met” the man I would marry at a wedding.  I’d known Joel when I’d lived in Chicago, before I moved to Miami.  When we lived in the same city, we had a mutual friend who kept us posted on what the other was doing.  Joel and I saw each other at a party or a dinner a few times a year, but we were not particularly good friends.  To be honest, I had a bit of a crush on him even then, but one of us was always dating someone else and it never worked out.  Then, I moved away.

Our mutual friend got married in Florida, so it was her wedding that led us to “re-meet” one April morning in Florida.  By then, I lived there and Joel was visiting for the nuptials.  I remembered why I liked him right away and we spent a lot of time at the wedding talking and getting reacquainted.  Then came the long distance phone calls and the plans to visit one another.  Eventually, I got on a plane to go back to Chicago for a weekend, a place I had happily left only three years earlier.  It wasn’t long before our “re-meet” turned into a full fledged long distance romance.

Our first exercise in planning something together was a New England vacation after dating three months.  It went very well.  One night, on the way to dinner, we talked about the type of wedding we each had pictured for ourselves. 

“I don’t like big weddings,” he said.  “I think they should just be small events, maybe with only family. “

I shuddered.  I clasped my hands in front of me, and pretended to impale myself with a sword of disappointment, all the while making a sound like I was about to throw up. 

He laughed.

I was stunned and momentarily concerned that he didn’t love the wedding scene I’d been writing in my mind for years.  I brushed my worry aside.  Yes, if we ever got that far, we’d have a problem.  In terms of weddings, he was a small and I was a large.  But, surely he would come around to my way of thinking if it came down to it. 

“I want a big wedding with all the people I love and who have been rooting for me, there to see the whole thing,” I pronounced. 

Before I knew it, we’d been dating a year. I thought it was time to get serious and talk about marriage.  The relationship was going well and we saw each other every month.  When I asked him what he thought would happen with us, he said “it’ll all work out,” in a way that didn’t sound condescending; he sounded calm and confident.  But, we still lived more than a thousand miles apart and he didn’t want to get engaged until we lived in the same city.  Though I hated to admit it, I could see his point.  I was fed up with my job and was ready for a change (again!) so I left Florida and moved back to Chicago to be with him. 

Nine months later, back in Miami for a vacation, he proposed.  Finally, I had the chance to plan the wedding of my dreams.  Only, I had to wake up the fact that our dreams were quite different. 

“I won’t get married in front of 200 people,” he insisted.  “I won’t walk down an aisle and make it a show.  I want to have a small wedding with close family only.”

“I’ve waited for this all of my life,” I said. “I want my friends to see me get married.  Some of them are like family.”

I was getting nowhere.  People were asking about a date and what to wear; how could I tell them they wouldn’t even be invited?  For weeks, I begged him to let us have the big wedding I’d always planned.  “Fine,” he finally screamed one night.  “Have your fucking circus of a wedding!”

He wasn’t kidding. He felt a huge event was more theater than marriage.  I wanted that performance.  I had looked forward to a dramatic walk down the aisle with all eyes on me. 

I could feel my friends’ and family’s eyes on me now, wanting an explanation.  What could I say?  That I couldn’t boss him around?  That I actually had to listen to him and sometimes he got what he wanted just because he wanted it?  That it was his wedding too?  Why was I ashamed to admit that I couldn’t tell him what to do?  Somehow, if a husband doesn’t do what the wife wants when the wife wants, it’s assumed that she’s making all the sacrifices and he’s a jerk.  Why is a wedding only about the wife’s fantasy? 

Did I know that in the years to come, he would let me pilot in ways I’d never imagined?  That when I was afraid I’d never sort out my professional life, he was an untiring listener?  That for the years we tried to have children, he let me lead us into doctor’s offices and acupuncture rooms?  That when the doctor said that something had gone terribly wrong, he got to her office so quickly that to this day I have no idea how he did it?  Maybe I knew the promise of our marriage back when were planning our wedding; maybe I was just lucky.  Either way, in the months before we became Mr. and Mrs., I had to learn to put “us” first, even if I didn’t understand why and even if it meant I wasn’t going to get my own way. 

So, we created a compromise fantasy.

When I first told a member of my family that we would have a small wedding ceremony one night and a reception for 150 a couple of nights later, she said she wasn’t sure people would come.  She said, “People are traveling to Miami to see you get married, not to go to a party.”  

One of my best friends said, “I’ve been to your parties. I want to see you get married.”

It wasn’t easy.  I could see their point. 

But, even with all the tension about planning our nuptials, neither my husband nor I wavered in our desire to get married.  To each other.   We were only engaged for four months.  A woman in a bridal shop said she couldn’t see how I could find a dress, much less plan a whole wedding, in that time.  I said to her, “The hardest part is over; I found the groom.  I’ll be fine.” 

We got married in front of 25 close family members on a Thursday evening.  My future brother in law poured the wine; my mother’s sister held my flowers.  A Cantor chanted Hebrew a cappella beautifully as my father walked me down the aisle.  There were no winks to teary eyed sorority sisters, no nods to knowing friends from first grade.  The group who watched me walk down the aisle were his close family and mine; the people who had gotten the calls when we were born.  Everyone stood near the huppah; our cousins held the poles.  My new husband stood beaming beside me, encouraging the small group to come in closer.  He was a very happy groom.  During our ceremony, he scolded me for laughing under the huppah and my father gave me one of his “raised eyebrow” looks.  I couldn’t behave; I was under our huppah. 

After the ceremony, my husband and I had a moment alone before going to dinner with our family.  We were both high with the excitement of what we’d just done.  I asked him if he wished all our friends were there with us. He smiled, kissed me, and said no.  I wasn’t as sure yet; I still had a fantasy to scratch.

Despite my husband’s initial objections, two nights later, we had the wedding reception of my dreams. I put on my wedding dress again, and my husband wore the tuxedo he’d worn at our ceremony two nights earlier.  Our friends and family danced under Miami skies and I felt the magic I had always dreamed of for my wedding. 

Though he hated the idea, Joel agreed that we could be announced as the newly married couple, and I got to walk onto the dance floor and have my first dance with my husband in a room with everyone I loved.  My new husband toasted me.  He talked about love and respect and partnership and said there was no one else in the world he could have done this with. 

The first wedding we went to as a married couple was several months later.  Once again, I found myself doing an appraisal.  I took in the decisions the couple had made, comparing them to what we had done.  It was a beautiful wedding.  Instead of making mental notes about how much I hate a receiving line, I tried to assess the feelings in the room or the emotions the ceremony and reception evoked.  As I looked around before the ceremony, I saw the guests milling about and I felt a tinge of jealousy.  This bride was about to make that dramatic walk down the aisle in front of all of their guests.  She did it; everyone leaned in to see her and she beamed as she took her 45 second walk down the aisle. And then it was over. 

We stared at her back while she and her fiancé performed an intensely personal act:  they began their life of compromise. She circled around him and he stood still for her.  She then stood next to him as he stepped on the wine glass.  I took my husband’s hand as this new husband and wife kissed for the first time and smiled. 

When were dating, living in different cities, I often tried to get my husband to say romantic things to me over the phone.  I’d ask him to say something “sweet and mushy” and he’d say “jelly doughnuts.”  It used to drive me crazy.

Now, on the fifth of every month, the day of the month on which we were married, he insists we eat jelly doughnuts together.   So far, we’ve eaten 29 doughnuts each.  We toast over breakfast, raising our doughnuts in the air, and say “Happy Anniversary.”  It’s sweet, it’s simple and it's ours. 

The Miscarriage

 

I was lying on my back, with a layer of thin, crinkly paper draped over my bottom half, looking at my ovaries on the ultrasound machine, thinking “How in the world did I get here?”  I never expected to have trouble getting pregnant.  Married for the first time at 38, I thought I’d paid my dues.  It had taken me ten years longer than most of my friends to find true love.  I was sure God wouldn’t deposit me right back to a state of longing, with little control over the outcome. 

I’m not sure when I fully realized the gravity of the situation, that the word “infertility” applied to us.  It was a creeping awareness, like a bell you hear ringing in the distance and then suddenly you are in the bell tower, under the bell and it is ringing so loudly that you can’t believe you hadn’t heard it before.  Only this bell tower has a huge clock on it, and as I run from the sound, I keep looking over my shoulder to check the time. 

My husband and I both got good marks on the checklist.  Did I ovulate?  Check. Are my tubes clear? Check.  Did my husband’s specimen meet the standards?  Check.  Our infertility is unexplained.  I tried to deny it, chalk it up to nerves or fate or timing.  But, that bell keeps ringing and the hands on the clock keeps moving.  My doctor said, “If you were 29 and not 39, I’d tell you to go home and not worry about it.”  But, I was 39, and, I wasn’t getting pregnant. 

I was never one of those people who built motherhood up to be the pinnacle of a woman’s existence.  It looked hard, and sometimes downright boring, to me.  But, I figured that was because it wasn’t my time to be a mother yet; I never intended to skip it.  Joel says we’ll be ok if we didn’t have kids.  We’ll have a different kind of life, not better or worse than anyone else’s.  We can travel more and choose a home in an area we like, even if the schools are lousy. We can retire early.  And, I have to admit, when people hear we don’t have kids, some say, “You’re smart.”

We’ve given it a very good try, full of hope, excitement and pain.  It’d make a great movie, unless you’re a sucker for a happy ending.  First, we tried clomid.  Nothing was really wrong with us that a little hormone pill and well-timed “breedin’ sex” couldn’t fix.  Only, it didn’t.  Then we tried IUI—intra-uterine insemination.  I gave myself hormone shots for the first half of the month to help me create more eggs and then another shot to stimulate ovulation.  It is orchestrated, uber-conception.  Joel’s sample is placed at exactly the right spot—no swimming required on their part—and we wait two weeks to hear.  We got the news we wanted. 

I was at my desk around 1:30 when she called.  I saw Fertility Clinic come up on my caller ID and held my breath.

“Susan,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You’re pregnant!”

I was thrilled.  We’d done it.  It worked.  Just one more boost, the difference between clomid and the shots had done it.  There was really nothing wrong with us.  We felt like we’d won the lottery that day.  God, we were happy.  None of this is covered by our health insurance; an IUI cycle costs about $2,500 and a more complicated procedure, In Vitro Fertilization, costs $15,000 a cycle.  Never have I spent so much to get so little.  But, most of that money was safely in the bank back then.  We were pregnant.  We began to plan and in the next few weeks I bought two baby name books even though I promised myself I wouldn’t until we got to 12 weeks.  We even heard a heartbeat. 

Then I went to my 10 week appointment.  We almost made it to 12 weeks, which is important, because at 12 weeks we could have told people.  It would have been Thanksgiving.  Soon, I would have started showing and we would have been a step closer to having a child.  Our family would have grown from two to three. But, it was not meant to be.   

“I think we have demise,” my doctor said.  She used the word demise.  There would be no baby.  There are some days I wake up and still don’t believe it happened.  My due date has come and gone now and I still can’t understand why it happened.  I live in mortal fear that I’ll never be pregnant again.  That that feeling of joy, shared with so few, is gone never to return.  When people ask if we have kids, I say no.  I wonder if they can see the flicker in my eyes, if they can hear the momentary hesitation.  Almost. Once. 

We did two more IUI’s, thinking if it had worked once, it could work again.  One produced a chemical pregnancy that only lasted a few days and the other one produced nothing.  

I went to an acupuncturist and lay on a table while she tried to put my body into balance.  Traditional Chinese Medicine believes that the body has an energy force running throughout it called Qi (pronounced Chee).  Qi consists of all essential life activities which include the spiritual, emotional, mental and the physical aspects of life.  By having acupuncture, it is believed Qi is released and my body will be put into balance.  I must be permanently off kilter ‘cause it didn’t work.

People try to help.  Everyone has a story.  A friend of mine, who needed fertility to have her four children (including a set of triplets!) told me that the Bible says when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden alone, they were a family.  A man and woman, without children, qualify as a family.  I try to believe that.  About 40% of the stories I hear are about success with fertility treatment; another 40% of the people try to give us hope by saying that once their friends stopped “trying”, they became pregnant immediately; and the last 20% talk about the joy of adoption.  Virtually no one talks about the other option:  life without children.  This is the option that we are trying to accept. 

After only two months of marriage, a 40 year old friend of mine got pregnant.  It was like a hot poker to my heart.  Was it envy?  Who knows, but it was as real as getting mugged.  It left me shaken and sad; afraid and worried; insecure and aching.  Her happiness was just another reminder:  it doesn’t have to be this hard.  She tried to console me by saying that she knew how I felt because she hadn’t gotten pregnant the first month they tried. We’ve been trying for more than two years.  She encouraged me to do more fertility treatments because we are “running out of time.”  At some point, you stop listening to well-meaning people.  Most of them simply have no idea what they’re talking about.
There was one more thing to try, In Vitro Fertilization or IVF.  Again, there are the shots, but many more of them.  Shots to increase egg production and shots to slow down ovulation.  IVF is science’s way of monitoring and controlling Mother Nature’s alarm clock.  It will still go off but not until the doctor is good and ready.  And, the doctor sets all his patient’s clocks to go off at the same time, picking one week a month for hopeful mommies-to-be to show up to have our eggs “retrieved,” “fertilized” and then “transferred” back into our bodies as embryos.  All of us show up at the same time, our abdomens bulging with eggs, holding our husband’s hands and trying to avoid eye contact with each other.  It’s a game of odds and we all know it.  Some of us will be lucky and some won’t.  There’s no point in pretending we’re rooting for each other.  We’re not.

For women 40 and over, the chance of conception the old fashioned way is about 2% each month.  With IUI, about 20% of our doctor’s patients get pregnant each cycle and with IVF about 40% of the patients in our doctor’s practice get pregnant each cycle. 

When it came time for my “retrieval,” the news was great.  I produced 21 eggs.  In my anesthesia-induced fog, I looked at my husband and said, “isn’t that two dozen?”  The doctor and embryologists were all optimistic.  Of the 21 retrieved, eleven were immature, didn’t fertilize when they met Joel’s sperm or just stopped growing once they became embryos.  That left us with 10.  Three days after the retrieval, we went back to the doctor’s office for the “transfer,” putting the embryos into my uterus. 
We were advised to put in five.  Our embryos looked great.  We were told they did not look like the embryos produced by a nearly 41 year old woman.  We were doing better than average in the egg production and fertilization department, but I was right on course in the miscarriage department.  We hoped we’d have twins, so Joel and I agreed to put six embryos in my uterus and agreed to freeze the other four.  We actually watched them move into my body.  1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6.  Six little blips, like pac man targets, moving into my body.  I sent six prayers with them.  Then, it was 48 hours of bed rest at home and 12 days of waiting.  I tried not to react to every twitch in my breast and every flutter in my uterus.  What felt like my period coming could be implantation; what could be implantation could feel like a period cramp.
Two days before my 41^st birthday we got the news.  It hadn’t worked.  Six embryos—egg and sperm having already met—put right where they need to be and no pregnancy.  You can take the horses to water but you cannot make them drink. 

Every baby girl is born with all the eggs she will ever have.  From day one, you have your allocation.  And, if you end up marrying at 38, the days between birth and wedding are days of lost motherhood potential.  I was starting to read the writing on the wall.  And, I was starting to hear another bell: the one that says time’s up, game’s over.  It’s time to quit and move on. 

The definition of insanity is performing the same activity over and over again and expect a different outcome.  When I pull my hair back into a ponytail now, I often see the gray in my part.  The time between the appointments to color my hair is shortening as the time between my periods increases.  My body is functioning perfectly, and I am fighting its pace. 

The doctor told us that not only had I used up much of my egg supply, but the ones left are old.  The few precious eggs I hadn’t squandered with contraception for nearly 20 years are flawed.  This was why we had the miscarriage and why we couldn’t get pregnant again.  The doctor talked about egg donors and surrogates but I wasn’t listening anymore.  I was beginning to accept our family of two.

We used the frozen embryos a few months later.  When the nurse called to say that the pregnancy test was negative I was actually surprised—which was also surprising.  My capacity for hope astounds me.  What made me think this time would be any different? 

I called my counselor the night we found out the “frozen transfer” had not worked.  When I went to my appointment the next day, she said she heard something in my voice mail message that she hadn’t heard before.  She said it sounded like I wanted to be the person I’d been before all of this started.  I think she’s right.  That person is a woman, a wife, a daughter, an aunt, a sister.  She is smart and witty; she is emotional and hopeful.  She is happy and fulfilled; she is disappointed and realistic.  She is not a mother.  I look forward to getting to know her again.

The Baby

One year ago, I sat in this studio and recorded an essay about letting go--letting go of the desire to have a child after five years of trying.  It was time to grow up and face reality.  

A year later I’m here to say this: I lied. I didn’t accept it and even as I read those words I was undergoing one final fertility treatment.  On the day that essay aired just before Mother’s Day last year, I learned I was pregnant. I was so happy I could barely contain myself. As the months passed, all the tests showed us that our baby, our son, was doing well.  I couldn’t wait to hold our boy, feed him, look into his eyes.

By the 36^th week of my pregnancy, my doctor thought I had preeclampsia. My whole body was bloated and I threw up more then than I had in the beginning of my pregnancy.  My doctor sent me to the hospital. 

As I walked out of the elevator in the parking garage at my doctor’s office, the elevator door opened too soon--the elevator didn’t come flush with the ground.  That created a step that I couldn’t see due to my pregnant belly.  I tripped.  As I felt myself falling forward, falling on the boy we’d already decided to call Nathan, I kept thinking: I can’t fall on the baby.   So, instead, I slammed into the wall in front of me.  There was blood everywhere (coming from my nose) and I was alone.

I was transported by ambulance to Northwestern with two broken wrists, a laceration on my nose and a badly bruised leg.  One wrist required surgery while I was pregnant and the other wrist was put in a cast. Thankfully, our baby was OK but I had no use of my hands and wrists.  I gave birth a week later but I couldn’t pick up my son, as my wrists were not even close to healed.  I couldn’t breastfeed—really impossible without wrists—couldn’t change a diaper, couldn’t give him a bath. Heck, it would be weeks before I could bathe myself again!  It was awful.

We finally had our healthy son, but I was a spectator, watching as others cared for him. I felt like a guest in my own home as we needed so much help.   

Only then, did I grow up and face reality.

I was always in the room when he was changed and fed. I did a ton of “skin on skin” with him on my chest and I made sure, above all else, that he knew my voice and the touch of my fingertips. My first day alone with him, when I could really hold him and care for him, was one of the best days of my life.  

My hands and wrists still ache and I’m not sure I’ll ever be that person again who walked onto that elevator that day.  Nathan is 4 months old and I feel like a superhero every time I pick him up.  This Mother’s Day we’ll be celebrating and I’ll be holding on to my baby with both hands!