Alice Rabbit Becomes Unbearable

Alice Rabbit Becomes Unbearable
by Charles L. Dodgson
Published: January 29, 2007

New York, Jan.29 -- Local woman Alice Rabbit, convinced that she is likely already pregnant, has bravely forgone caffeine, alcohol and fake sugar. Rabbit, who was interviewed shortly after feeling incredibly nauseous and after a day of somewhat strange lower abdominal stomach cramps and an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion and a frequent need to urinate, claims that these facts alone indicate a positive pregnancy status. When asked how Rabbit could be experiencing pregnancy symptoms only a few hours after possible conception, there was no response. Those who know Rabbit claim that she is spending an inordinately large amount of time checking ovulation calendars, thermometers, cervical mucus and early pregnancy symptom threads on the internet and are becoming concerned that she may not emerge from such obsessive undertakings for approximately two more weeks.

Same Old . . .

The husband is currently working on a screenplay - a ridiculous comedy (I say ridiculous in the best possible way). Without giving too much away, it opens with a man and his lady friend. A charming young lady. She is absent minded and ditzy, with melon sized breasts. We learn that she has finally gotten the opportunity to star in an engaging, intellectually stimulating movie (porn) and is leaving our hero. She wipes her tears on her enormous breasts and our hero is left in a state of loneliness and despair. It actually is quite funny. However, I do find it somewhat troubling that my husband is writing about female characters who are dumb as rocks with absurdly exaggerated bodies who pine to be in porn. Should I be worried?

There has not been much exciting to report over here. Had a lovely weekend. Dinner with pregnant friend on Friday. Fiancé is nice, Irish and laughs at all her jokes. Felt quite pleased with myself as I handed over gifts of onesies and tiny socks. I’m your local recurrent miscarrier! And yet, I can rise above it and give gifts! Then movie with other friends on Saturday. Coffee afterwards. Discussions of never telling their future yet unborn kids (or presumably, conceived, but one never knows these days) of Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy because they are all lies! Lies! I was somewhat befuddled by this and tried, albeit lamely, to defend the whole santatoothfairyeasterbunny thing because, as a child, I found it, well, fun! And charming! And thrilling! But I managed to feel bemused by the entire conversation. I kept saying,“But it’s about IMAGINATION!” I wasn’t really getting anywhere. Then we went to see a Broadway musical - a show that basically reenacts a bizarre, wonderful, unnerving, plotless documentary of the 1970s. I enjoyed it immensely. Oh, and yes, there is the whole trying to get pregnant thing. I guess we’re going for it–although at times I feel like I am hanging onto the banister with all my might while being pulled down the stairs, screaming and crying that I can’t–it’ll just end badly! Besides, I’m too fat! I have too much work to do! We don’t even have a two bedroom apartment! But alas, the bottom line is that I really do want to try - even though I am scared half to death.

Hermey Needs to Make a House Call

Can you hear that? That sound that is vaguely reminiscent of small rodents trying to build tiny mansions in between your walls? That’s me, chomping at the bit. Today is the day I break open the first package of ovulation predictor sticks. I’ve used them before, prior to having the endometrial biopsy and found the whole thing a tad irritating. Limiting fluids for four hours, not going to the bathroom for four hours, hanging out in a work bathroom for three minutes waiting for results, is not exactly what I’d call thrilling. Ah, dreams are made of this. In addition to using the little predictor gizmos, I’ve also been obsessively consulting Dr. Google every five seconds: the connection between folic acid and miscarriage, MTHFR and miscarriage, miscarriage statistics, stress and miscarriage, standing on your head and miscarriage, going to the circus and miscarriage, what to do when everyone you’ve ever met is currently pregnant and miscarriage. Because I enjoy self-torture, I’ve also been watching an absolutely insane amount of television about babies. First it was "Bringing Home Baby!" or some other equally inane title. It covers those first twenty-four hours after the family returns home with the newborn. Riveting! And yet, I watched and I watched and I watched. I attempted on several occasions to bring the husband into the fold, "Come look. Ha ha ha. They’ve just gotten the baby to sleep! Wow. Now the family is eating. Looks like chicken. Oh no! The baby is crying." Strangely, he wasn’t at all interested. Then I began watching programming on twins–identical twins, identical quadruplets, identical quintuplets, whatever. The husband did make a brief appearance during the show about identical quads. He took one look at them, shuddered and muttered something about "scary teeth." "You’re horrible!" I squealed. "Those are the most adorable little girls!" And then I looked closer and their teeth really did look somewhat sinister–a tad pointy and jabby. There are FOUR of them and they are IDENTICAL. They really could DESTROY you even at age six if they really wanted to. And all they’d need is to take a few quick bites with those maniacal choppers. Once I pointed out that they were pretty witty for age six, the husband was a little more lenient on the lack of good orthodontia. Wit, oh that is something he can always get behind.

Eggs, Planes and Far Off Places

When I was living in California as a teenager–I lived around the corner from a girl a year older than myself. She was adopted. And she drank, messed around with boys, dyed her red hair black, got a tattoo. I did none of those things. I spent most of my days curling my hair with my cordless butane curling iron (which I found fascinating), putting together kicky outfits (lots of turtlenecks and knee length straight skirts) and seeing how long I could last on one large chocolate chip cookie and a single diet coke (as it turns out, not that long). I found out later that she slept with a boy that I was dating - had sex with him on a couch the next morning after a party. This was the boy I made hide in the closet when my mother unexpectedly came home–even though we weren’t actually doing anything and hadn’t actually done anything and wouldn’t actually do anything in the future, either. She also introduced me to Amnesty International, an awesome alternative rock station and U2. After high school she moved to San Francisco, enrolled in college there, lived with roommates and got pregnant. The father was a young, incredibly good looking skate punk with long blonde hair. Sometime in between, she also worked as an "escort", walking on men’s backs with high heeled shoes. She assured me that no actual sex was involved. She found a very wealthy family in Manhattan to adopt the baby and moved in with them until she gave birth. She returned to San Francisco, had an affair with a woman, dropped out of college and worked in a cheesy tourist trap on Fisherman’s Warf. Around this time I decided that upon graduation from college I would take a solo month long backpacking trip through Ireland. She decided that she should come along with me. I was less than enthusiastic. However, she sent a plane ticket, likely paid for with money from the Manhattan couple. But I didn’t ask and we flew to Dublin. On the flight she informed me that she was pregnant. Again. This time, she was a surrogate, using her egg and the couple’s sperm. She was constantly nauseous, hungry and tired. You know, pregnant. She wanted to go to the wax museum and I wanted to see the tower where the opening of Ulysses takes place. She wanted to sleep and I wanted to go to the Abbey. She wanted to stay in bed and breakfasts and I could only afford hostels. I was thrilled, in the end, that she was only there for a week and I had more than three weeks to myself. I was really too young, too selfish, too weirded out by the situation to be anything but annoyed with her. And I knew she was doing it solely for the money. And I found that distasteful. Sometime passed and she came to visit us in Seattle. She was pregnant again. And again as a surrogate. She was critical and harsh, as she usually was and it was beginning to wear thin. And so after she left, I began ignoring her letters, her phone calls. I don’t know what became of her. More than ten years later, myself and my husband have become one of those couples–much like the recipients of her babies–contemplating adoption, in vitro, surrogacy. How strange that I would have known someone on the other side. And although I was so judgmental at the time, so disgusted by the very idea that her motives were anything but altruistic, my view of her has softened. If the end result is the same, if a couple who wants a baby gets a baby, does the woman who puts herself through the process of egg retrieval or surrogacy need to be doing it for only the most saintly of motives?

This is Southern California

Their house was white. Squarish. And shaped in a “u”. With a large courtyard in the center. And a pool. Turquoise. Flat. Motionless. A few palm trees were planted, strategically, at each corner.

They were coltish. The two of them. Tall, angular, thin, tanned. My father worked with the mother. The daughter had just come back from her father’s. She had her suitcase opened up on the bed. The clothes were in neat rolls. But her underwear was folded and placed on top. And there were large blood stains in the center of each one. She told me that she had gotten her period, for the first time, at her father’s. And her eyes narrowed. And she looked at me suspiciously. I didn’t really understand much about periods. Her long perfect brown hair swept over her shoulders. And then she told me about how she’d seen David Bowie in concert. And that David Bowie had one brown eye and one blue eye. I’d never been to a concert. I can’t say that I even really listened to much at that age. I was both fascinated and repelled by her. I wanted to be her and I also wanted to be as far away from her as possible. Her intensity scared me. I’ve been thinking of her and that house and her mother a lot lately. And I cannot really understand why. I don’t even remember her name. And it was just a brief moment a long time ago. But something about her frankness, something about her openness about her own body and the fact that she didn’t really know me made me want to get closer to her, like you do when you are close to the edge of something, to see if you might fall off. I wonder if I’ve been thinking about this, in some strange way, because I again feel like I’m flirting with some kind of danger–something intense and scary and unknown. That is, getting pregnant again. And as I draw closer to the time, the optimal time, when I know that it is possible that I could get pregnant again, I am both repelled and drawn to it. What if it works out? What if it doesn’t. Do I want to take the chance again? Wouldn’t I rather just run away? Wouldn’t I rather adopt? Have I properly mourned the loss of the pregnancies that weren’t? Have I properly dealt with the possiblity that I won't be able to have my own biological child? Do I need to?

That Awful Year

It was one year ago on January 6th that I had that first awful appointment with the OB/GYN. I wrote the following, mainly about the first miscarriage, around last October, after the third:

It’s so much. It’s so much. You go to the office. You’re nervous. You talk about prenatal vitamins. You talk about skiing and horseback riding--two things you are no longer allowed to do. You talk about flaxseed. And you are in a hospital gown. And you feel small. You feel warm. Your husband is with you. You have done the dating thing, you’ve done the living together thing, you’ve gotten married. At your wedding, you think about having kids with this man. You think about looking down at a little person’s face and seeing his. His dimples. His dark hair. His big brat eyes. You think about his super test taking skills and how he likes to break into comedy routines in the grocery store line. You think about how as a kid he used to stay inside for hours reading comics. Or rowing a boat around his grandparent’s campground. And you think, you think maybe this little one will be like him. You hope so. You hope he’ll be good at jeopardy like his father. You hope he has his sweetness. You hope he has his weird hyena laugh, which you used to hate, but, but now, now you don’t. And you get onto the table. And the pretty doctor who you have a hard time understanding slides the wand in and begins searching around the monitor. She’s moving it around and around. And the screen is fuzzy. It looks like an old TV screen. And you remember the old TV case your parents had. With the knobs. You used to play in it. The TV glass was gone. You and your friends would put on shows through it--as though you were on TV. And you think about your parents. And you think. And she asks you to go use the restroom. And you come back. And she does it again. And then she goes and gets a better machine. And then she tells you that it seems small. And then. And then the nurse comes in and sticks you for blood. You have to have your hormone levels checked. And the nurse has dyed black hair. And it is graying. And she is wearing heavy black liquid eyeliner. And she has fat hands. And you are told. You think you may have been told that there is no heartbeat. And that it is small. But you can’t be sure. Maybe that’s not what she said. She’s checking your blood. Go to a place in Chinatown on Sunday. Check the blood again. You do. You have it drawn on Sunday. In Chinatown. And the place is crammed with people. And the day is warm. Sunny. It is January. In New York. And you wait. And you wait. The light is blinding. It is pouring through the window. It faces the street. The man sticks you. He tells you that his wife is also pregnant. You think he tells you it’s their fourth. But you can’t be sure. You are having a hard time hearing anyone. Perhaps you have lost your hearing. You can’t remember hearing anything out on the street. Just people. Moving. Moving past you. There is a pastry shop. And carts on the sidewalk. Full of odd fruits. And you walk back to the subway. And you call on Tuesday. You call to find out. You are in the stairway at work. You are trying to avoid having anyone hear you. And the nurse tells you everything is fine. And you double over and let out a sob. A wail. And it echoes in the stairway, a stairway painted a shiny grey. But part of you is confused. A part of you were preparing for the worst. Part of you doesn’t believe it. Part of your body must know. Part of you knows. And you are right. The doctor calls another day. And says she is sorry. It is not viable. And you think that she probably has a list in front of her of patients to call. Charts piled up next to her. Viable. Not viable. Tick, tick. Check, check. And you refuse to have the procedure. Part of you doesn’t believe it is happening. Part of you feels like it’s the last thing you can do for this baby. For this unrealized baby. For your baby. For your little, sweet, baby with your husband’s eyes. And your fat cheeks. You should go through this with this baby. Even though he is dead. You can’t imagine having someone go in and rip him, it, baby, embryo, out. And you try to continue with your life. But you can’t. You start imagining jumping in front of an oncoming train. If you could just jump. In front of. A train. This could be over. This. This black. But you don’t. And so you don’t. And things get lighter. Your hearing returns. And you try again. But, wash, rinse, repeat. And now when you look at pictures of her, this little girl, yourself, before all this, you think about how this will happen to her later and you feel sad for that girl, this Romana Quimby aged nine girl. This girl wearing turquoise striped shirts. This girl stringing up sheets in the backyard between fruit trees to put on plays. This girl who likes to draw tall slim ladies with wings and princess crowns because that’s what her sister did. This girl. This girl who is proud of her humming and whistling skills. This girl who thinks it would be fun to be a secretary someday because she likes the sound of long nails clicking on typewriters. This girl who doesn’t know that she will lose three pregnancies in one year. And that that will be her life. This girl. Me.

What Color is Your Parachute?

I’ve always had fairly vivid dreams. Flying (over inflated sense of self), houses burning (can’t things stop changing already?), flooding (just another natural disaster), old boyfriends (ick). I used to bore my office mate with all the minute details from the night before. I should learn, really, that dreams are really only interesting to the person who dreams them. Except to perhaps your shrink. But then, maybe not even then. As friends of ours are coming to town this weekend, perhaps it is no surprise that I should dream about them. Baby will be in tow. When she announced her pregnancy last January, it was the week I was miscarrying. When he was born, I was miscarrying again. For the third time. Last night I dreamt that as we all sat down to dinner, they wouldn’t let me hold him. I begged and pleaded. But they refused. "I’ve held plenty of babies!", I cried. Rain drizzled down the windows, and the father held him underneath, through the window, in the rain, so that I wouldn’t get near him.

Yesterday I had the appointment with the RE. The husband took the train. And from what he told me, he rather enjoyed seeing all the old stately houses still covered with glittery lights. Even though, as he pointed out it was JANUARY THIRD and somewhat improper to still be celebrating the holidays. We don’t have our lights on anymore, he pointed out. We are very on top of things. Yes, because around here, we like to have our old, brittle, dead trees pulled away from the heater, still covered with lights, but turned off. I should mention that upon our return from our travels, we discovered that the lights no longer worked. Anyway, we were meeting the RE to discuss the game plan. And the game plan, apparently, is to have sex with a little folic acid sprinkled here and there. Not actually during sex, just administered nightly in pill form. I did want to have the doc tell the husband in more detail the workings of the old mother-fr gene mutation (that’s MTHFR to you). As it were, I have MTHFR A1298C, and because I like to live in excess, I have not one but two copies of the mutation. Two, two, two gene mutations in one. Likely from both parents. As medical terminology (synthesizing folate, homocysteine levels) flowed from the mouth of our doctor, my husband, dear man that he is, was having trouble concentrating. He had just been told that sex, without condoms, was in his near future. I did mention that I was willing to do this two more times. Perhaps two times including the IVF with PGD, an option if I have another miscarriage. Even though, I must point out, that there have been no genetic abnormalities detected (karyotyping) in the husband, myself, or the last baby. However, apparently, some genetic issues may not be detected (they only test for, say, 12 genetic problems, when there are 8 more, or some such thing (those numbers are completely made up)). Well, let the good times begin. I will likely get pregnant. It’s the rest of it I so worry about. I do enjoy being tossed out of planes without even the tiniest of parachutes.

Luck.

I’m beginning to wonder if I should take some sort of cleansing bath or walk through burning sage. This year, this year was supposed to be better. No more miscarriages, I told myself. No more dreadful jobs. This would be a year of optimism and light. I should know by now that once I start making plans, even as vague and innocuous as those (optimism and light?) I go down in flames. I landed my dream job. And although the commute is long and boring, I still look forward to getting here. And after a good three days of delayed planes and cancelled flights, missing and lost baggage, fatigue and dirty underwear and long drives through Pennsylvania, I was back home, returning to a city I love and a job that I feel damn lucky to have. Today, my boss came in, shut the door and told me this was not a conversation he wanted to have. I thought he was going to tell me I did something horribly, horribly wrong, involving this recent hearing or my closing brief. For a minute I thought he was going to tell me that someone was very, very unhappy with my performance. I even thought for a split second that there was an issue with the additional day off I requested because of the cancelled flight. Instead, he told me that the woman that I replaced was exercising her option to return, which means, that I am out. He thought I was handling it well, but really, I’m just in shock. He’s doing what he can to find out if there are other positions out there but if not, I’ll be out and she’ll be in at the beginning of March. I knew when I was hired that my predecessor had this option, but it seemed a remote possibility. I was told that she did not enjoy working here. And the human resources person stated at the time of my hire that in all her years of experience she’s never seen it happen. Because I work for a government agency, they provide holds on positions for a probationary period. What’s interesting is that I cannot imagine doing this if I were in her position. When your decisions directly affect another person, such as this, unless I had no choice, I just can’t see myself doing it. With my luck, I’ll finally get and stay pregnant but be unemployed. To have a healthy, happy baby, however, overrides everything else, so I’ll take it.