We Wanted a Test Tube Baby
The doctors warned us that it wouldn’t be easy. We didn’t know how right they were.
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She showed me how to prepare the injection, how to switch the needles, and how to fill the syringe. I exuded confidence. I didn’t want to show Sarah how shaky I really was. The nurse would do one hip, then I would do the other. She popped the needle in like a dart, drew back on the syringe to make sure there was no blood, then pushed in the hormone. Sarah said it hurt like hell. My confidence began to dissipate.
Sarah slowly turned to her other side, her eyes drilling a warning into mine. Though afraid that I would hit a nerve or a vein, I took a breath and committed myself, plunging the needle in. After checking for blood and injecting the progesterone, I pulled the needle out swiftly and massaged Sarah’s hip. It was a job I never got used to even after giving Sarah 28 injections. I hated doing it. My hands shook and my heart pounded after every one. But I was the best—she told me so.
Very little, however, could dampen Sarah’s mood that day. An orderly rolled her out to the curb, and she slid from the gurney into the car for the drive home. None of that “it won’t work” attitude now. We had to be positive. It wasn’t forced. Sarah perhaps was utilizing some of that maternal feeling, enveloping the three eggs within her in a safe and welcoming home. Dr. Vaughn had prescribed bed rest for the remainder of the day and limited in-home activity for two more days. We had to wait two weeks for our first pregnancy test. Though it was unspoken between us, I knew Sarah planned to spend most of that time as inactive as possible.
For the next week, we lazed around the house. I injected Sarah every day around noon. Her body began making changes, subtle changes. Any tenderness or swelling, each cramp or stitch we would interpret. It could have been the hormones, we supposed, but it also could mean that Sarah was either pregnant or miscarrying, a cruel similarity. Since she had miscarried before, we were that much more apprehensive, that much more susceptible to the uncertainty that the waiting fostered.
A week passed. We were at Day 24. Sarah had a blood test to assess her progesterone level. Pregnant women are supposed to have high levels of the hormone. The blood was sent to Dallas, and we got the results in two days: her progesterone level was high—a good sign. Sarah couldn’t get comfortable. During the next week, she seemed to be doing well emotionally, though her dreams told otherwise. They were filled with mansions and rooms and hallways and walking. I remembered fewer dreams; I slept less.
One night Sarah spoke from her sleep. “The roof’s on fire, get up and check.” I looked out the window into the unilluminated night. “It’s on fire?” I asked. “The roof’s on fire from the cinders of my dream,” she murmured, tossing her head. I thought she had been listening to some bad sixties folk music and caught some kind of mental ptomaine. But I wasn’t doing so hot myself. I dreamed that we were driving up a drawbridge. The bridge lifted as I drove. It raised higher and higher, and I was afraid, afraid we would crash backward into cars or plunge off the bridge. I woke up before we tumbled from the ramp. There was something funny in the dream. In the back of the car, strapped in properly, was an empty infant seat. I shook my head clear.
Neither one of us slept the night before we would learn the final results of the pregnancy test. As the night wore on, the anxiety and lack of sleep made us both sick to our stomachs. Three years of anticipation and grief massed thickly with the last 31 days into one night of joy, fear, anger, and guilt. How could we sleep?
Sarah got up early; I stayed in bed, awake. We kept saying to each other that we’d be all right if it didn’t work out. We hoped we would believe that.
Sarah called Ruby at seven-forty-five. I was still in bed, and Sarah stood next to me with the phone. The moment was glacial. Ruby answered the phone. Sarah’s facial expressions indicated that the IVF hadn’t worked.
Actually, what Sarah’s face indicated was that Ruby had tried to call us but couldn’t find our number. It was unlisted, and she had called the wrong one.
Then Sarah said, “I am?” She beamed, her eyes glazed. She was pregnant. I turned my face into my pillow as Ruby gave Sarah a list of dos and don’ts to follow. Sarah hung up. I looked at her; we both had a look of dumb joy on our faces. We couldn’t believe it had actually worked. We were part of the lucky few. We quickly dialed our friends and relatives. They too rejoiced with us.
In three weeks Sarah would have a sonogram. That would be the real test for me. I wanted to see the embryo. By then we would see the heart beat. That flicker of life was the proof I wanted, the proof to dissolve my doubt.
Dr. Vaughn wanted to continue the progesterone injections. Sarah switched to having them injected in her arms; her hips had worn out. The arms were more painful than the hips. But she was keeping this baby, and if that meant getting shots that might prevent miscarriage, so be it. We still analyzed the slightest cramp or physical change as a symptom of pregnancy or the precursor to miscarriage, but we were more relaxed about everything. Sarah had shots for ten more days. She calculated that she would have had a total of 53 injections or blood draws in a little more than a month. She was ready for them to end. With the shots over, there was nothing to do but wait for the sonogram. All the results to date were good, and I treated Sarah as if she were pregnant, meaning that I was overprotective.
When it came time to do the sonogram, we were sent to Dr. Byron G. Darby. We held our breath as he dragged the scanner across Sarah’s abdomen. The image on the screen transformed from blobs to defined shapes and back to blobs. Darby focused on one shape while adjusting the machine’s contrast. It looked like a black bean. It was the gestational sac. Darby looked for the heartbeat or a nub or an embryo. Neither was there. He said it was still too early to tell. As for Sarah’s pregnancy? He called it an “unequivocal maybe.” He wasn’t negative, though. It was just too soon to tell. He mentioned that another one of Vaughn’s IVF patients had had the same thing; the embryo was visible a week later.
I asked if the sac’s position was good. Darby said it was in an excellent place in the uterus. I asked what would happen if the sac were empty. Sarah would probably start to miscarry. He would see us again in a week and would let Vaughn know what was going on. He joked that Vaughn was trying to get his patients in earlier and earlier. It was simply too soon to know anything.
Dr. Vaughn called that afternoon. He said that the sonogram was good or bad news. Either it was too early to see anything or the pregnancy was bad. We would just have to wait another week, hoping that Sarah was pregnant, and if she were, that she wouldn’t miscarry.
That was a long week. As it progressed, so did our confidence. Sarah didn’t miscarry. We both were sure she was pregnant. Our appointment with Darby was on Monday, July 22. The fifty-ninth day since we began in vitro.
Monday came. After leaving Dr. Darby’s office, Sarah made it to the elevator before she started crying. I remember reading something about Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped. The people walked around but they seemed dead. Their expressions were glazed, they were shocked from the enormity of the blast. That’s how I felt when Darby quietly turned to us and said that the sac was empty. There was no embryo, no baby. It was a blighted ovum. In about one out of eight of all pregnancies, the embryo doesn’t develop. They don’t know why; it just happens. He said he was sorry. That was it.
On the drive home Sarah began to blame herself through the tears. She felt somehow responsible, that something was innately wrong with her body. My guilt was reborn; I was responsible. We succumbed to such punishments in a search for blame. But we knew we couldn’t really blame ourselves. Looking for purpose only did one thing; it unearthed my faith. That trickled back after I quit asking why.
Our cherished intention simply was denied, turned awry for reasons we would never understand.
We couldn’t blame Dr. Vaughn. No matter what happened, we wholeheartedly believed he had done the best he could with the skills and knowledge at hand. Were his intentions any less than ours?
I still had my doubts about the program, but the science of in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer came down to one hard reality. A 13 per cent chance was better than nothing. Ask those four couples who had ongoing pregnancies.
They had made it; we had failed. Our desire was like that fragile gestation sac, never filling, a potential deliquescing into emptiness. The emptiness hurt. But like that sac, it was absorbed back into our system, and time began its slow dissolve of joy and grief.
So that was that. We had some IVF syndrome, I guess you’d call it. Despondency, a few dreams wracked with frustration and anguish, tears out of nowhere. For 28 other couples like us, IVF had become a cruel joke or an unfulfilled hope. We wouldn’t be the last.
There are two sides to a coin. Our friends Jeff and Claire had a ten-pound boy; Kevin and Mary a nine-pounder. Whoppers, both of them. We couldn’t help but smile, and though we might feel a pang for a second, our friends didn’t begrudge us that. In fact, their babies germinated hope in us.
We want to try IVF again, while we have the chance, before our age prevents us from trying. IVF gives us hope. It’s a qualified hope, sure, but that’s what God’s for, right? And what’s not under his purview, statistics get.
We’ll accept those statistics, IVF’s meager offering. We have made our choice. We want to have children. It is, after all, the only choice we have.
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