Coming To Term

Rebecca Nesson — Coming To Term 

It was when my daughter Nico was five months old that things really started to go downhill for me. She had just started to sleep through the night, and I felt like I should be feeling less tired, but instead I was just feeling more and more exhausted. And my progress on my dissertation had ground to a complete halt. I was fat and I had been– 

It’s not like I wasn’t trying to lose the weight. My husband Wayne had gotten me this Wii Fit, [audience chuckles] and I would get on it each day and this little cute animated version of me would tell me, ​“Yes, you are getting fatter.” [audience laughter] But worst part of it at all, was that Wayne and I were really, really not getting along. We were just fighting about all kinds of things. And just stupid things. It would be like I dripped water on the floor after I took a shower, or I didn’t remember to turn the windshield wipers off when I parked the car. 

I just felt like didn’t matter what I did, it was wrong and I just felt like I was being kicked when I was down, and I was feeling pretty miserable. And over the course of the next two months, it just got worse and worse. I was still feeling really exhausted, and I was still getting fatter. My dissertation was still exactly the same length. We were fighting almost every single day. I was just starting to think about escaping. I would think back to what it was like the summer before Nico was born. Everything was so good. Wayne had just moved back from Chicago. He’d gotten a really great postdoc. 

We’d found this more or less affordable apartment in a lively part of East Cambridge. We were so excited to become parents, and we were talking about it and planning, and just feeling congratulatory to ourselves that when it came to big decisions and serious perspectives on things, we just always seemed to agree and we always had. And now, here we were in our kitchen under this way too yellow light and smelling the cloying smell of the laundry detergent of our neighbors coming up from the basement and through our kitchen window, and we were fighting in this really angry stage whisper again about something stupid like why is it that I cannot remember to put the long handled spoons in the right place in the dishwasher and why don’t I care. 

It just crossed some kind of a line for me. I told Wayne that I was leaving and then I just collapsed in tears on a chair, because I knew that it wasn’t true and he knew that it wasn’t true. I couldn’t leave. I was trapped. I was trapped by my love for my amazing little daughter Nico. I was so ashamed of the decision that I had made and of thinking that we were ready to do this, that we were ready to start a family and now here we were, and we weren’t ready and I couldn’t do it. I went to bed really sad and angry that night. And the next morning, I found out I was pregnant. 

So, as you can imagine, I was pretty devastated. I went through the next two weeks in a like resigned, zombie-ish state, just running over and over in my mind the dismal set of options that I had, and thinking about how could I bring another child into this unhappy, unprepared family. And then, this one day, this absolutely gorgeous day in September, I happened to have the morning to myself. And so, I packed up my laptop and I walked to the 1369 Coffee shop in Inman Square. I sat down in the coffee shop among the whole laptop set that was there. [audience chuckles] 

I was feeling pretty good. I was getting some work done, and I was actually just feeling pretty normal when I felt something really unnormal start to happen to me. And so, I got up and I rushed to the bathroom as fast as I could. But by the time I got there, I was covered. My legs were completely covered in blood. And luckily, I was pretty shocked. So, I wasn’t really thinking about the magnitude of what had happened. I was just thinking about, ​“Oh my God, I’m in this coffee shop bathroom covered in blood.” I don’t have a sweatshirt that I can cover up with. I have nothing to clean up. 

So, I just cleaned myself up as best as I could. I cleaned the bathroom up, and then I sidled out of the bathroom up to where the espresso machine was, where this girl was working, and I said, ​“I’m really sorry, but I think I just had a miscarriage in your bathroom. Can I use your phone?” So, five minutes later, I’m walking down Cambridge Street to the birth center– I’m just really aware of all of these people’s eyes on me, because my pants are soaked in blood. It is sinking in what has happened and I’m thinking to myself, ​“Isn’t this what you wanted? Hadn’t you secretly been hoping for this to happen? And if so, why does it feel so sad and awful?” 

So, when I get to the birth center, Wayne had rushed to meet me there. I look at him, and I can just see the pain and sadness and worry on his face also. But we just didn’t know what to say to each other, and I just couldn’t really accept comfort from him. So, this nurse gave me these gigantic XXL green nurses scrubs to replace my pants and then showed us in to see the midwife. The midwife told us that yes, when you bleed that much, the baby’s gone, but that we had this regularly scheduled ultrasound later that afternoon and she wanted us to go, so that they could see what was left. 

Walking home silently with Wayne in these gigantic pants, I just felt so small. Two hours later, we’re back and we’re waiting for this ultrasound. I’m trying to steel myself for it, because it just seems like it’s going to be such a terrible thing to see. At least, the ultrasounds are these like totally indecipherable, indistinct things, so maybe I won’t really be able to tell what I’m looking at. 

But as the image swims into view on the screen in front of me and I’m looking at it, I’m really hesitant to say anything, but I just have to and I say to the technician, ​“I think I see something moving.” And she says, ​“Yes, that’s the baby’s heartbeat. It looks like the baby’s okay.” Oh my God, [chuckles] the feeling of joy just washing over me. Wayne’s crying. I was just so surprised at the unexpected result and also at my unexpected reaction to it. But when you have that kind of bleeding, everything is not okay. 

So, the next Monday, we go downtown to the hospital for a special ultrasound. And the doctor checks to make sure that the baby is still okay. When he tells us that it is, we decide to walk a few blocks into Chinatown and celebrate with some dim sum. And the following Monday, it’s the same thing all over again. Over the course of the next seven months, we start to have fun. 

We’re eating an obscene amount of shrimp noodles and shumai, [audience chuckles] and starting to enjoy each other’s company again, and really just starting to feel better, so that by the time that our daughter Charlie was born healthy, seven months later, I knew that it had taken her one gigantic, really scary and shocking event, and then seven months of dim sum dates engineered from inside the womb to ensure that she was born into the happy and healthy family that she deserved. And she was. Thanks.