Cynthia’s Story: Not Wanting to Give up Hope

This piece originally appeared in Sou’wester Literary Journal and is published with permission. Please visit Sou’wester Literary Journal for more information: http://souwester.org/

Did you know that 1 in 8 couples worldwide has trouble getting pregnant or sustaining a pregnancy? In honor of World Fertility Day, we’re sharing Cynthia’s story about loss. Infertility does not discriminate and we hope this story can help others know they are not alone.

Beautiful Fruit  – By Cynthia Singerman

I kept calling the nurse’s hotline. I was spotting, but it was still sparse, little dots that tainted the toilet water when I peed. Not yet, they kept saying. It wasn’t enough for me to go to the office for more bad news. It felt like the last three years of my life had been punctuated with bad news, at least when it came to pregnancy. There were such high highs—the blue line on the most accurate test I could find at Walgreens. And the low lows of saying goodbye to someone not meant for me. Long visits to various doctors and the ever-present ticking clock of a body not cooperating, not performing the way you think it should, louder and louder, like a constant drumbeat of a heavy rain.

That day it was also raining, pouring sheets on the rooftops. Not like where I grew up, where the rain comes in hot flashes in the summer. The kind you dance in. No, this is a cold, steady rhythmic rain, the kind you hide away from. The weather matched my mood, a brewing storm since last week. Last week when the doctor told me the heartbeat was so soft and slow. When she shook her head and said things didn’t look good.

Call back, the nurses said to me now. Call back when it’s heavier, like a tidal wave of red. So I kept going, kept moving. I remember I drove to the interior designer’s office across town. We were renovating our bathrooms. Yes, I was lucky enough to live in a house with multiple bathrooms. Yes, I was lucky enough to renovate these bathrooms. But being lucky and feeling lucky are two completely different things.

“But being lucky and feeling lucky are
two completely different things.”

The rain had not stopped, and I kept wishing I hadn’t gone. My brain could not focus on tile and grout and wallpaper. I don’t even remember making choices, my mind blank as a white wall. I wasn’t even in my body. I was floating somewhere in space as I nodded and agreed to whatever the designer suggested. I didn’t ask questions, I wasn’t listening. I went to the bathroom and shoved toilet paper in my underwear to stop the thick scarlet river from gushing down my legs. I said, sure, fine, whatever you think, and ran to my car without an umbrella and fumbled for my keys as drops pelted my face until I could barely see. It was time, the nurses said.

The doctor and nurses stayed late so I didn’t have to go to the hospital. They did the DNC right there, holding my hand, telling me everything would be okay. It was okay, kind of, as I lay there high on Fentanyl as I felt the pressure in my abdomen. In a few minutes, it would all be over. I had been pregnant. Then I wasn’t. There was only blood. I cried and the nurse squeezed my hand and I said how nothing seemed to be going right and she said it would and I tried so hard to believe her. Because it seems so easy for everyone else, because it always does when you’re in that much pain, even though some things might be quite hard for other people. But you’re so stuck in your own misery that nothing seems as hard as your own shit.

At least. Everyone keeps saying this. At least you got pregnant. At least you have eggs. There is such a need to provide the antidote to my sadness, to paint glossy veneers over my loss. Losses. Two pregnancies, I write this in the blank space on the form when I return to the doctor. I am filled with blank space now. No live births. I want validation, not the cure. I want to scream my experience to the sky, to strangers, to the sea. To swim in my pain and honor the way it felt to drown, just for a little while, before I float back to the surface. I want someone to float beside me and tell me it’sterrible, to acknowledge my sadness.

We weren’t even trying. I hear this too and I hate it. Of course, I’m a hypocrite. I remember thinking those same dumb thoughts. If it happens it happens. We’re not, not trying. Oh, how arrogant and naïve I was, basking in my privilege that I did not yet know had already been stripped from me. Because the months go by and then you really know you are trying because shouldn’t it have happened already? Those voices from your youth screaming, if you have sex you will get pregnant. But you’re not pregnant. And you bite your nails and clench your jaw and eat dinner with couple after couple sharing their procreation news. And you grin and stretch your lips across your teeth and shriek, “Oh my God!” And you hate yourself because you have to swallow an unbearable lump of jealousy down your throat, where it sits and hardens in your chest before eventually sliding down, big and indigestible, into the pit of your stomach. And night after night, you toss and turn, not wanting to give up hope.

“And night after night, you toss and turn,
not wanting to give up hope.”

You tell yourself over and over again everything will be fine. There will be a time when the scar still throbs, but it’s a dull ache. And you can turn your face towards the sky and close your eyes while the sun turns your lids the color of flaming poppies. You hum a song about wildflowers, and everything feels better, just for a second. A minute. A moment. When your belly finally bears beautiful fruit.