I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(27)

That’s partially why I was able to focus mainly on logistics: Was someone at home watching our two-year-old son? Was I allowed to change out of this hospital gown and into a real shirt? What’s the stuff being injected into my IV?

About a week after I got home, I was on the phone with my brother, a white coat himself, when it hit me how severe the situation had been (and maybe still was). I was sitting on the floor, my back against the sofa, the half-full drainage bag leaning drunkenly against my hip. My son climbed the cushions behind me, rolling a little Thomas the Train. I held the phone between my shoulder and my ear, so my hands were free to swipe the alcohol pad across my thigh, draw up my dose of blood thinner, and give myself one of the twice-daily heparin injections I’d sworn to the doctors that I could handle myself if they let me go home.

“You know, Mom and Dad were kind of freaked out,” my brother said.

“Mom and Dad like to freak out. It’s their hobby,” I answered, stabbing the needle and depressing the plunger.

He paused.

“No, I mean—they thought you were going to die,” he said, like he was explaining the plot of a confusing storybook to a child who didn’t get it. They’d been discussing whether they should offer to help John raise our son in the event of my demise. I’ll say this for my family: We’re planners. Semper paratus.

He was right. It really was that serious. Intellectually, I knew it, but something in my head kept me from fully feeling it. I got a sense of calm from my wishful self-protection—like if I just acted casual, everything would be fine. If you’ve ever spotted someone creepy coming up alongside you in a parking lot and kept right on walking, polite as you please, you know what I mean. It’s a mental trick: If I start running, that must mean there’s a reason to panic, so I just WON’T run, and therefore this situation WON’T be worth panicking about. It’s as if you think you can tap into an alternate universe by using the powers of your behavior, changing what is into what could be instead, taking danger right out of the equation. That doesn’t work unless you’re a wizard.

I acted as if everything was normal. Just keep walking. There’s nothing to panic about.



* * *



I got to ditch my tap after a few days and quit the blood thinners after a few weeks, but as the pregnancy progressed, complications continued to arise. Month after month, bed rest after scare after bed rest after scare, it became harder to ignore my rising guilt. I’d brought this little life into being—insisted on it with ever greater scientific meddling—only for my own body to threaten it. I was doing everything as right as I could: drinking plenty of water, showing up for every monitoring appointment, exercising just enough but not too much, resting on my left side as instructed. Still, things kept going wrong. Bleeding when there shouldn’t have been bleeding. A heartbeat that didn’t sound the way a heartbeat should. I wanted to say to the doctors, “No, you don’t understand. I’ve read all the books. I’ve done this before. I’m a very good pregnant woman.” Couldn’t they see how I followed the rules?

In my eighth month, my perinatologist said the baby was in trouble again, because the fetal measurements from week to week weren’t up to snuff. Was I eating enough? Yes. Taking my vitamins? Yes. Well, something wasn’t working right, because the baby wasn’t growing.

“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry, baby,” I whispered under my breath, tears rolling from my eyes into my ears, as the doctor pointed to the little creature on the ultrasound, curled up sleeping, probably hungry. Poor baby, stuck with me.

“If you can’t get some weight on the baby,” she said, “we’re going to have to operate. We can’t let this baby starve.”

We can’t let this baby starve.

I climbed down from the crinkly paper tablecloth, stood up, and nodded. Like a lunatic, I kept nodding as I pulled on my maternity jeans in the exam room afterward, crying silently and mouthing, “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.”

And so I drove to Piece of Cake, my favorite bakery, and picked out a “slice” of carrot cake. If you’ve never been to Piece of Cake in Atlanta, what you need to know is that they bake enormous layer-upon-layer cakes that look like iced top hats, and then they whack them into—oh, about fourths, maybe fifths?—and box up the pieces. Those whopping wedges of cake shouldn’t be single servings any more than a twelve-ounce slab of cow should be a “steak” for one, but if I’m going to bet my health and the health of my unborn child on cake, I’m not going to fool around with some flimsy two-bite cupcake.

I slapped that box of carrot cake onto the counter by the register and said, “I’ll take this . . . and a fork.” Then I went out and sat in my car in the parking lot, watching traffic whiz by on the busy road. I heaped a hunk of carrot cake into my mouth, clamped my quivering lips closed, and chewed. Listen, baby—this is cake, and it has carrots in it, so it’s also full of vitamins. It’s like dessert and salad at the same time. You are going to LOVE cake. I’m eating as fast as I can. Hang on. Forkful after enormous forkful, I chewed. I sat in my car and cried and ate cake for all it was worth. It was worth everything.

You tell me my baby will starve unless I pound some calories? I will pound calories like a motherfucker. You watch.