I'm in my ob-gyn's office, feet in the stirrups. Dr. Bakas peeks up over
the paper sheet draped across my knees and pulls his gloves off with a
snap. "So? Do you want a cigarette?"
My friend Bev laughs, as
does the nurse, but I try not to because I don't want to jiggle or move
or do anything to disrupt those tiny little sperm as they make the long
journey up through my uterus to my little waiting egg.
They've
already had to do a lot of traveling. I bought them from the
Scandinavian Cryobank, which shipped them from Denmark. They're from
Olaf (not his real name), who's 22 and blond, blue-eyed, and tall.
Olaf
(well, his sperm) arrived packed in dry ice a week before I ovulated,
so he hung around with me as we waited. He became my dinner companion. I
set him up in his large round container on the chair across the table
from me. I told him about my day.
A part of me thought it'd be
lovely to not have to drink both glasses of wine — and he could have
done more than just agree with me all the time. But then I took him into
the living room to watch TV, and he didn't complain when I kept
changing the channel. We became pals, Olaf and I. We took pictures.
Dr.
Bakas hasn't done this before, though he did see the procedure when he
was a resident. It's nothing, he said to me when I first talked to him
about artificial insemination. We can absolutely do it here.
So now the deed is done. Intrauterine insemination.
It has a higher success rate than the vaginal insemination I could have
done myself at home. And I'll take any advantage I can get.
"If
it's going to happen, it's happening right now, so just lie here for ten
minutes. Let the magic begin," Dr. Bakas says, nodding as he and the
nurse leave. Bev and I look at each other. Yes, I think, I'm getting
pregnant right now.
(I don't know where I got off thinking that
way. I knew even then that my chance of getting pregnant through
artificial insemination was only 5 to 25 percent per try.)
I'm so excited it's hard to remember how reluctant I was about all this.
For years I had stuck faithfully to another plan.
The Plan
The Plan: Live life. Get married. Have kids. (I was hoping for two, but could have been talked into one or five or 20.)
In grad school at 36, I thought, This is good! But where's the rest? The men? The dating?
At 37, graduated, I turned to my friend Rebecca and said, That's it. I'm getting married.
She
had found a wonderful husband by combining hard work, sheer
determination, and a little luck. So I did what she did: Yahoo, Match,
Nerve. Never mind that I'm shyer than Rebecca, and not nearly so
slender, and I don't have her brilliant red hair. Still, I dated up a
storm at 37 and 38. I met many nice men. And at 38 I began to settle in
with Juan, a screenwriter who was between jobs.
He wanted kids,
too — though it became more and more clear that he wanted them later,
after he hit it big. I pulled out a BabyGap ad for strength, put it on
the floor beside me and told him: We need to break up.
And then
one day, watching the high school students in the summer program I run, I
thought back to being 16. And I realized, holy smokes, I'm Thirty-Nine and One Half years old.
The
kids went back inside to their classes, but I stayed in the sun and
twisted a lock of hair around and around my finger. Well, I thought, I
haven't asked Steve out yet. I could ask if he wants to go for a drink
sometime. I also have a date coming up next week with a friend of a
friend of a friend. It's not so bad. Don't panic.
But I was
panicking. Because it struck me that even if I did fall in love right
then, say with Steve (or the guy next week, it didn't matter), and he
fell in love with me, we'd have to wait a year or so to get engaged and
then a year to plan the wedding and then, well, he wouldn't be ready to
have kids right away...I mean, jeez, I'd be 50 before we could even try
for a baby.
I'm going to be alone, single, and childless for the
rest of my life, I thought. This isn't the life I imagined when I was
16, sitting around listening to Love, soft as an easy chair and reading those romance novels, one after another.
He was supposed to have rescued me by now. He was supposed to have surrendered to my feminine wiles long ago: my doe eyes, my blonde tresses.
I stood up, fluffed my tresses, and faced the facts with my doe eyes.
He isn't coming.
I am absolutely on my own.
I'd
suspected this to be my fate even as I dreamed of the other, more
romantic life. When I was a teenager my parents said, "You'd better lose
that weight or you're not going to find a boyfriend." And embedded in
this warning was the fate-worse-than-death scenario that my mother's
sister was living: 40, single, childless.
They shook their heads with pity. Poor Aunty Hanne.
I felt it like a curse on my head. Be thin! Or die alone!
Somewhere
deep inside me I knew I'd be there, at the threshold of 40 and alone. I
just knew it. And I swore as I watched Hanne get older and older that
no matter what, I wouldn't miss out on having a child. Even if I had to
go to some random bar and leave with a random guy and ravish him in some
random motel. Then disappear.
Plan B
It'd
be more dramatic to say that I immediately got on the phone, ordered
some sperm, and got on with it. But it took another several months to
officially move from The Plan to Plan B. Most especially there was the
deep, hollow sadness to be worked through in watching The Plan fail.
Then,
of course, there were things like money to be considered. And Rebecca
helped me with a dirty little secret fear: Up until then it'd been hard
to find a man ...but with a kid in tow, would it be impossible?
Come
on, she said. It's not like the old days. Look around you: Over 40,
single with a baby, is hardly shocking. Just move on with your life. Do
what you want. You have the rest of your life to find a man. This you have to do right now.
Eventually I understood. I am absolutely on my own...for now.
At
the doctor's office, after I keep still for ten minutes, Dr. Bakas lets
us go. At home I lie on the couch beneath my front room window. The
couch where Olaf's sperm lounged for most of the seven days they were
with me. I prop my butt up a little and focus on getting pregnant, just
in case Dr. Bakas isn't right about the instantaneousness of
insemination.
Two days later, while I'm visiting a friend, waves
of dizziness almost knock me over. There's a strange pinging deep in my
pelvis and — most strangely — an awful metallic taste in my mouth. I know I'm pregnant. I just know I am. It may not stick, but at this moment, I know I am.
It
does stick, and my daughter Kaj arrives nine months later, one day
after her due date. My miracle first-try baby. Meant to be, my mother
says.
Kaj is long and thin — 8 pounds, 9 ounces. She's yanked out
of me after 35 hours of labor and a near cesarean (which was most
definitely not part of The Plan or even Plan B). But I can tell you this
for sure: Epidurals are the miracle of the 20th century, and I have the
best obstetrician in the entire world.
Plan B -- a single mom's decision to go it alone
By Uche Francis at 14:01
Pregnancy
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