IF YOU WEREN'T WITH HER

... here is what you said:

1. It's excusable for a man, even the president, to say things like, "Grab them by the pussy," and "I did try and fuck her. She was married."
2. It's excusable for a man, even the president, to mock women's periods and publicly call women unattractive, ugly, nasty, a piece of ass, fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.
3. It's excusable for a person, even the president, to mock veterans and disabled people.
4. It's excusable for a man, even the president, to shamelessly walk in on a group of teenage girls in their underwear.
5. Twelve accusations of sexual assault are nothing to be concerned about.
6. It's excusable for a person, even the president, to be on his third marriage, even though God himself said he hates divorce.
7. It's excusable for a person, even the president, to classify all Mexican immigrants as drug dealers, criminals and rapists.
8. Keeping out immigrants and refugees is a good idea, even though the Bible is full of immigrant/refugee heroes, including Jesus.
9. Global warming isn't the threat that 97 percent of scientists warn that it is, citing impending droughts, stronger hurricanes, decreased water availability, and flooding that will endanger infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries and ecosystems.
10. Character is really just "personality," and it doesn't matter for a leader.
11. Trump will be a champion for the "unborn," even though in the past, he claimed to be "very pro-choice."
12. There doesn't need to be tighter gun control, even though the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings and gun deaths, and there were 64 school shootings in 2015 alone.
13. Marriage equality should be opposed, even though this nation was founded on religious freedom and the truth that all people are created equal and are endowed by God with the right to pursue happiness.
14. Paid family leave, child care, and equal pay for women do not matter.
15. Girls and women can be anything they want to be, except they can't.

NEW PASSPORT

I was renewing my passport the other day when I had to make a decision: Should I select the standard 28-page booklet, or go all in and order the 52-pager?

I had spent the last decade as a travel writer and editor and had filled my previous 28-page passport with stamps from all over the world: 27 countries on five continents. But now I had lost my job, to my great distress, and had no upcoming trips on the calendar. With no clear professional prospects and my identity in a state of ambivalence, I was planning to care for my 18-month-old daughter at least part-time, if not full-time, which wouldn’t leave a lot of room for world travels. Watching with a degree of self-pity as my former colleagues continued to share their jet-setting exploits on social media, I thought, in Eeyore voice, I had better get the smaller passport.

But, as thoughts occasionally do, my reverie began to wander into more positive territory. Passports are valid for 10 years, and a lot can happen in a decade. I thought back to 27-year-old Erika, applying for a new passport with her married name, mostly broken in by that point, like a pair of new jeans after a few washes. She had just started a job as associate editor of Destination Weddings & Honeymoons magazine and had the passport application expedited in anticipation of the globetrotting to come. She never dreamed she would land this job, let alone go on to become editorial director of the magazine and three others.

She also didn’t know she would try to start a family, only to keep running into roadblock after crushing roadblock for four years until finally, she would hold the phone, trembling, as the nurse announced that the IVF had worked.

She didn’t know how much you could love a tiny human, despite sleeplessness and endless demands, how she would rush to lift the baby out of the crib and feel her weight and smell the top of her head, how this child would be so much more amazing than anything she had imagined during the dark night of infertility, how each tiny achievement—a roll, a step, a word—would feel deserving of an Academy Award, would be infinitely more riveting than the most radiant island sunset.

And she didn’t know how conflicted she would feel day after day, month after month, as her daughter grew and blossomed while she struggled to keep all of the plates spinning—work and family and household and friends—except the one plate that was crucial to the success of all the rest: herself and her own sense of wellness and peace.

So what will the next 10 years bring? What new gifts, what losses, what struggles, what serendipities? What will happen with my career, my family? Where will I fail? Where will I succeed? What kind of person will Elin turn out to be—what will drive her and bring her joy? What kind of person will I turn out to be?

There’s no way to know. We’re working on some plans, for sure. But the outcomes are beyond our control. And, as my dad always says, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

Is it likely that I’ll travel to foreign countries much in the next couple of years? No. But beyond that … it’s possible. Anything is possible. It doesn’t cost extra to choose the 52-page book, and there’s no penalty for not filling the pages. But they’re there, in case you need them, if life happens to roll in that direction—of wanderlust, of discovery. Fifty-two blank pages of possibility, waiting for the next decade to be written.

I’ll let you guess which option I chose.

WHY I WENT THROUGH INFERTILITY

Why did I go through infertility? It’s a question I’ve asked myself innumerable times. In the almost four years we spent trying to conceive, I cried in a lot of bathrooms, I lost friends, my marriage and faith were put to the test. So, why? Why did I have to go through all of that?

In the beginning, I thought I was going to be some kind of voice for the disease of infertility. A veritable light bulb turned on over my head the day I thought of blogging about it, legitimately believing this was a new and genius idea.

Turns out there are lots of infertility bloggers, and there have been for quite some time. The well-known infertility blogger Stirrup Queens maintains a blog roll listing some 3,196 blogs on the subject (and no, mine isn’t one of them). There are infertility bloggers who have done it longer, who do it better, who have done more research and advocacy, who are much more open about their journeys, and who are more committed to keeping their blogs updated regularly.

No doubt I have my little audience, both online and in person, and my story is important, as all infertility stories are. But I never had the total transparency, self-discipline or big-picture thinking to make my blog stand out and really make a difference. Nor did I ever fully “come out” on social media, participate in any awareness walks or facilitate a support group. The most I did was apply to be a contributor to a widely read infertility blog, and I never even got a response.

For the most part, I obsessed in my own head about my misery and tortured a small group of intimate friends with the details of the rise/crash-and-burn of hope I endured month after month.

Before I finally got pregnant, I also liked to believe that if I ever did conceive, I would be a better parent because of my experience of infertility. The thinking goes something like this: Because I waited so long for the parenting experience, I will be more grateful, present, patient, _____________, _____________ — you get the idea.

Even after Elin was born, I must have hung on to this thought, because I found myself expressing it in so many words to a friend. This friend has two young children whom she conceived easily, and we were discussing the topic of whether or not to go back to work. “I just feel like, after trying to conceive this baby for four years, it would be crazy to go back and barely see her,” I said.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how superior and offensive they sounded. The decision of whether to work or stay home is an agonizing one for any new mother, regardless of how long she tried for a baby, just as every mom I know is extremely grateful for her child and tries her best to be loving, patient and engaged.

Another outcome of infertility, I hoped, would be my ability to give hope to other women experiencing it. After all, I got my happy ending — despite my deep fear and half-certainty that it “would never happen” — so it was possible for others to also find their resolution.

The problem with this line of thinking is that conception is no respecter of persons; there is no rhyme or reason to whom she smiles upon. Just because I got what I was longing for doesn’t mean anyone else will.

This came home to roost for me when an old high school acquaintance reached out over a private Facebook message. She had seen my birth announcement and accompanying hash tag, #IVFmiracle, and confided that she, too, was going through infertility and considering IVF as a course of action. Being the big believer that I am, I strongly encouraged her to pursue it. It seemed divine: My bravery in attempting IVF and finding success would in turn give someone else the courage to try it and have the child she otherwise would never have had.

Unlike me, this person openly shared her journey on Facebook: She documented every injection, retrieval, transfer, blood draw, fear and hope. I liked every update, holding my breath and praying she would get a positive.

It wasn’t to be. They had transferred their only two embryos without success and had no more money for additional attempts.

I sent my condolences, assured her I was praying for her and admired her. But it felt so hollow and thin. Of course, her decision to try IVF was hers, but in the aftermath, I could see no purpose or redemption in my own infertility experience, only her heartache.

Why did I go through infertility? I can’t say my faith is stronger (I still grapple with doubts and questions). I can’t say my marriage is stronger (we’ll never get back those years of sex-as-duty/chore/means to an end/reminder of our damaged reproductive systems). Maybe I’m a little stronger, a little more empathetic, but at the same time I still wrestle with bitterness every time I hear someone talk with cavalier certainty about their “next child.”

Anyone who goes through infertility will have to find their own reasons, their own explanations, their own morals of the story.

For me, the answer is in the tiny face I see every morning: the particulars of her deep blue eyes and soft, transparent lashes. How pink her skin is and the fluttering movements of her long little fingers. The faint dimple when she smiles, the subtle way her nose is upturned. Her round belly, her feathery hair, her cheeks for days.

It’s in the exact sounds she makes when she coos and jabbers, the demanding cries that let me know she’s serious about wanting out of the crib. It’s how she loves to lie on her play mat and gaze up at her hanging toys, eyes shining. How she never seems to want to miss a minute and gets mad the second she senses the approach of naptime. It’s how opinionated she is even at 12 weeks, detesting tummy time, splashing her legs curiously in the bath. How she reaches her tiny hand to my lips for a kiss.

For all I don’t understand about the years I spent lost in the fog and trauma of infertility, I know one thing for sure: If I hadn’t gone through it, I wouldn’t have had the exact human being who is Elin Reese. I would never have known her, this perfect, squishy, unique, individual baby who is a combination of one particular sperm injected by hand into one particular egg in a laboratory. She is worth every tear, worth every penny we spent, worth our long wait. Her very life is why I went through infertility. 

BIRTH STORY

I was just. So. Pregnant. I had fantasized about the magic of pregnancy for four years — imagined how cute I would look in maternity clothes, how much attention I would receive, how I would glow.

Reality couldn’t even begin to live up to my daydreams. I started to swell sometime in the late second trimester; my feet and legs were twice their normal size. I bought a new, bigger, pair of shoes. Then I had to buy another new pair, another size up. My maternity clothes stopped fitting; my belly hung out of the bottom of shirts, and the pants were too tight. My wedding ring stopped fitting. In all I gained 65 pounds.

I still cringe when I look at this picture.

I was in pain and discomfort every way there was to be in pain and discomfort. My swollen feet felt tight and sore; my left heel was numb. My back hurt and was covered with acne, my breasts ached, and I had a strange stabbing rib pain. I couldn’t sleep. I got hemorrhoids. I was sweating like a professional athlete; I craved Coca-Cola like a junkie. I was stressed out, over it, exhausted. I missed alcohol and running and high heels and deli meat. I began to look with envy at girls I used to be like: fit, free, fun. I was Jabba the Hutt on the sofa, unable to summon the energy to shave my legs, let alone have sex with my husband. Oh the irony.

My due date came and went. One day past; two. A week. I kept slogging in to work. Coworkers looked at me with surprise, then pity: “You’re still here?!”

I went in for my 41-week OB appointment on a Friday, and blessedly, my blood pressure had finally elevated to a level high enough to cause concern. I was strapped to a monitor undergoing a non-stress test when my OB walked in and said, “You have preeclampsia; you’re going to the hospital today to have a baby.”

Philip and I looked at each other with excitement and terror. This is it! As desperately as I didn’t want to be induced, I was flooded with relief. No more pregnancy misery. Time to finally meet our daughter!

I went back into work to finish tying up loose ends; Philip came home and cleaned the house. We cooked a nice dinner, finished packing the hospital bag. I took a shower and blow-dried my hair. It was surreal.

Selfie in the hospital elevator

The maternity ward of the hospital was quiet when we arrived at 11 p.m. In the labor and delivery room, the nurse got right to work and quickly began rubbing me the wrong way. She told me to remove all my clothes and put on the hospital gown. “Even my underwear?” I asked.

She scoffed. “Did you get pregnant with your underwear on?” she retorted in her smoker’s voice. She fumbled with the IV, having to place it twice. She thought she had started the Pitocin two times but actually hadn’t. She struggled to make notes on the computer (“they make these things for the kids”) and kept muttering to herself the whole time she was prepping me for the induction. Nothing about her made me feel calm or reassured.

It was a very long night. Being pumped full of fluid, I had to use the toilet every two hours, which meant having to call the awful nurse to unhook me from the machine every time. I tossed and turned, making the baby’s heart-rate monitor slip out of place, which meant the awful nurse had to keep coming in to readjust it. The straps around my belly were itchy, and I was anxious.

At 7 a.m. a new nurse started her shift, and she was WONDERFUL — totally chill and competent. Her name was even Alyssa, my sister’s name, so it felt meant to be. She began to check my dilation (3 cm at that point) and pump up the Pitocin drip.

Some time in the morning I began to feel contractions, and they intensified quickly. They were coming every three minutes, and unlike my expectations, I was in constant pain. There was no rest/relief in between, only slightly less pain. I asked Philip to press firmly on my lower back, which helped some, but at one point both he and Alyssa had stepped out of the room, and I was breathing through the contractions alone. Lying helplessly on my side, staring at the wall and sucking in air as deeply as I could, I felt wave after wave of period cramps times a thousand. Strapped to several monitors and hooked up to an IV, I couldn’t walk around to assist with labor or use any of the yoga positions I had learned, not even cat and cow. This is insane, I thought. Why am I trying to be a hero? As soon as the nurse returned, I asked for the epidural.

Placing the epidural was uneventful, even though I was fearful and shaky. Soon a warm sensation began to spread over my legs, and I could feel my whole body relaxing. I quickly slipped off to the second greatest sleep of my life. (The first was after a transatlantic flight, when I was stuck at Heathrow for hours unable to get a hold of Philip, who was already in the U.K. Finally I ended up taking the world’s most expensive cab to our hotel and dropping my jet-lagged ass into the glorious white bedding of a Marriott Bed®.)

I slept for hours while Philip paid bills online and watched a Tigers game; thanks to a catheter, I didn’t even have to wake up to pee. When I awoke, I found out I had progressed significantly, dilating to 7 cm, with the baby at a -1 station. I commented to Philip that this seemed too easy — I had labored primarily in my sleep. The nurse had me shift to my side to help the baby drop even more, and we just waited for the green light to push.

Eventually I started to feel the contractions to some degree again, but I didn’t click the epidural button because I felt it would be helpful to have a sense of when the contractions were coming. At 5:40 p.m., I got the go-ahead to begin pushing. Everything was going so smoothly, I thought, I’m not going to have much of a birth story to tell!

When I started pushing, it was just Philip, the nurse and me in the room. Philip held one leg, and the nurse held the other. I was supposed to hold underneath both of my thighs, arch forward with head to chest, take the deepest breath I could, and bear down with all my might, like I was trying to evacuate the biggest turd in the universe. The nurse counted to 10, and I was basically holding my breath that whole time straining. I would do this three times in a row, then rest.

This carried on for a while; time began to feel fluid. The effort of pushing and breath-holding was tremendous — and kept intensifying. The first step was to get the baby past my pelvis. It required series after series of pushing. Just when I thought I couldn’t push any harder or feel any more exhausted, the next round of pushing took me to a deeper level of exertion and fatigue.

I was aware that I could somewhat lift my legs on my own; the epidural had worn off quite a bit. The OB was in and out of the room, but Nurse Alyssa promised to stay, even if the baby was born passed her shift, which would end at 7 p.m.; she felt confident the baby would be born by then.

At one point the OB started joking with Philip, and I snapped at them both to stop talking — I was not in any mood for jocularity! (Philip told me later that the OB even sculpted the baby’s hair into a mohawk when she crowned.) By the time the baby was past my pelvis, the OB had joined us for good. She drilled me like an NBA coach — telling me to push harder, longer, to go again. She was raising her voice and getting excited, telling me I was the best pusher she’d ever seen and that I was getting so close!

With every push I thought, This HAS to be the one; I simply CANNOT push one more time! But each time I finished my series of 10 counts and flopped backward onto the hospital bed, gasping and crying, the baby still wasn’t out. She had crowned, and it was like they say: a ring of fire. I was soaked in sweat in the most intense pain of my life; what was the epidural even doing?!

They asked me if I wanted a mirror, but I said no. Still, I could see a warped reflection of myself in the light tile overhead. I saw the dark hair on the baby’s head poking out, and it hit me with a force that I had no choice but to push her out! We were too far in to switch to a cesarean now. I never said, “I can’t,” but I thought it and felt it; I was overwhelmed with the impossibility of what I was trying to do. “Just vacuum her out!” I cried out desperately.

“I could,” said my OB, “but I’m not going to!”

Later I would liken the experience to the one other great physical achievement of my life — running a 15K race. Once you’ve begun, there is no choice but to finish; there is no turning around or going back — you have to just keep running forward, even though you’re completely out of gas and the finish line is still miles and miles away.

Finally, after an hour and 20 minutes of pushing, I hunkered down and pushed with every last ounce of strength. “Don’t stop — keep going, keep going!” the OB cried, and I did. I was completely out of breath, out of stamina, out of my mind; I had no idea who all was in the room or what they were saying or doing. Splayed out naked on the bed, I pushed like I didn’t care if this baby split my body in half.

And at 7 p.m. on the dot, out she popped. The room exploded — “What a BIG BABY!” everyone cried! I collapsed back on the bed awash in extraordinary relief. They immediately put her on my bare chest and I saw her face: She wasn’t crying; she looked confused, but she had chubby pink cheeks, a rosebud mouth and streaky red “angel kisses” on her eyelids.

I had pictured the moment a million times, how all the years of failed fertility treatments and disappointment and pain and gritty determination would finally culminate in this eruption of love and triumph, but all I could understand was that I was SO RELIEVED that she was out!

She didn’t stay on my chest long; the OB was having trouble delivering my placenta and needed me to focus. “Then Philip is going to take her skin to skin!” I said. He peeled off his shirt and held her little bare body under a blanket; he told me later she pooped all over him!

I laid on the bed shaking violently while the OB told me to push out my placenta. I tried, twice, but I was weak and completely out of it. Finally she pulled it out by hand and began stitching me up. I found out later I had a second-degree tear. I could feel the pulling pressure of the stitches, and I just couldn’t stop trembling. I was vaguely aware of the staff in the room hazarding guesses as to the baby’s weight; they were chomping at the bit to put her on the scale. I heard estimates of nine or 10 pounds, but I didn’t believe it — there was no way I had vaginally delivered a baby that large!

The nursing staff wanted to take the baby to the NICU to do a blood test, so Philip accompanied them. The room cleared out fast, and Alyssa said goodbye. I squeezed her hand and thanked her for staying by my side; I found out later she had to remain an extra two hours doing paperwork after the baby was delivered.

Before long I was alone with the recovery nurse, who was in and out and not very talkative. I asked her for several blankets; I was so cold and still shaking hard. I laid still under the piles of blankets and reveled in my relief. Elin Reese was born! She was safe and big and healthy. I had done it!

The nurse offered to bring me some snacks. I hadn’t eaten anything but one popsicle in 20 hours. I munched on some graham crackers and string cheese and drank tiny containers of apple juice and fruit punch. I asked her for more juice — I couldn’t drink enough.

I heard someone in the hall exclaim, “Eleven pounds, 11 ounces!”

“Are they talking about my baby?!” I asked the nurse in disbelief.

“I have no idea,” she said.

Someone came into the room and announced that Elin was in fact 11 pounds, 11 ounces. “Did you actually see the scale?” I asked.

The person hadn’t. I said I wouldn’t believe it until I had heard it from the horse’s mouth.

Soon Philip and the NICU nurses returned with Elin and confirmed it was true. I just couldn’t register it! I had figured she’d be big — Philip and I had both been almost nine pounds, and Elin was eight days overdue. I had brought three-month-size pajamas for her just in case the newborn ones didn’t fit. But almost 12 pounds?! That was insane! No one saw it coming. I had always measured right on schedule and didn’t have gestational diabetes; she had kept her size a secret from us all. Suddenly I felt like my relatively uneventful birth story had a unique twist: I had delivered the biggest baby I’d ever heard of among my friends!

They put Elin to my breast so she could start nursing. I had no idea what I was doing, but I liked having her so close. The NICU nurses told us we would have to supplement her with formula because her blood-sugar level was borderline and she was so big and would therefore need more sustenance than I could provide with the meager amount of colostrum my body was producing. We were upset — we never intended to use formula — but they were insistent, threatening that she might have seizures if we didn’t supplement. They even tried to take her off my breast to give her a bottle of formula. I relented and said we could give her some formula after I was done nursing.

After we fed her, we were transferred to the recovery room, where we had another wonderful nurse, Anita, for the first night. She asked me if I wanted Percocet or Motrin, and I said yes. She hooked me up with all kinds of goodness for my war zone of a crotch — disposable underwear, Depends-size sanitary pads, frozen diapers, witch hazel, Epifoam, a peri-bottle full of warm water. She brought in a breast pump so I could get as much colostrum out as possible, which we fed to Elin with a syringe. She helped my naked, swollen, wrecked body limp to the bathroom and measured my pee (she told me I had to urinate at least four ounces or I would have to get another catheter, which motivated me enough to eek out that exact amount).

When she would leave to care for other patients, I would feel panicked — here was this baby we had to keep alive, all by ourselves! What in the world were we supposed to do with it?!

We bumbled our way through breastfeeding and helplessly guessed at how much formula to chase it with. I met with two separate lactation consultants at the hospital. Philip reminded me to order meals from the cafeteria, and I devoured them. My sister- and brother-in-law brought me a Jimmy John’s no. 12 sandwich, which tasted like it had fallen from heaven. We quickly learned Elin had no interest in sleeping in her bassinet, so we took turns holding her through the night. Due to her large size, she was a legend in the hospital. Every staff person who came into our room said, “So THIS is the big baby!” I was delirious, exhausted, bloody and in serious pain, yet it might as well have been my wedding day — that’s how romantic and special and amazing it all felt.

We stayed a second night in the hospital and were discharged around 7 p.m. the following evening. We put Elin in pajamas, and it felt like the closing of a chapter to unwrap her from her hospital blanket for the final time: Now we turn the page to life at home.