Miranda confessed to me that though she and Joe had waited the recommended six weeks after Carter was born to fool around, sure enough, Joe managed to knock her up on the first try, and already the morning sickness had set in so that her boys were forced to watch even more TV than ever before because Miranda didn’t have the stamina to entertain them all day, let alone feed them. “The nerve of that bastard,”she said of Joe and his evident virility,and then she asked what in the world was taking Aaron and me so long to conceive.
“You don’t think,” she asked, eyes wide, “that you’re infertile, do you? That that handsome husband of yours is shooting blanks?”
As I sat beside him in the car, driving to the obstetrician appointment, listening to the pulverization of snow beneath the wheels, staring at the clouds, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the case. Was Aaron shooting blanks? Was Aaroninfertile?
Aaron, who could do anything, who could fix anything, could not create a child?
Aaron, to whom everything came so easily, had difficulty making a baby?
The thought alone made me angry and annoyed. Angry at Aaron because why, for all the things he was so capable of doing, was he incapable of doingthis?
Why couldn’t he fix this? Why couldn’t he make this right?
Assigning fault seemed to be the name of the game these days, pointing fingers, attaching blame. Whose fault was it that we didn’t yet have a baby?
March 11, 1997
Egg Harbor
What I’ve come to learn after being referred to a fertility specialist is that even though I get my period each month with moderate regularity, my body isn’t ovulating correctly, isn’t always ovulating.Anovulation, it’s called, a word I’ve never heard of before but now think about at every waking hour and when I should be asleep. If I’m being honest, this comes as little surprise to me. My body is simply going through the motions, the preparations of the endometrium—the lining of my uterus readying itself to welcome a fertilized egg—and then sloughing off when no egg moves in. It’s not that the egg wasn’t fertilized by Aaron’s sperm. It’s that it simply wasn’t there to begin with.
Today I began my third cycle of Clomid. After months of this, I have no sense of humility left, no modesty. I’ve paraded my private parts for every doctor, nurse and technician in the fertility clinic to see, while all Aaron ever had to do was drop off a sperm sample and endure a simple blood draw. It hardly seems fair. The first month I didn’t ovulate. Last month we upped the dosage and, though Dr. Landry spied two follicles when he performed his ultrasound—forcing the transvaginal ultrasound probe between my legs so that I should rightfully have felt violated and ashamed, but no longer did, sending Aaron and me home with strict orders to have sex—we didn’t get pregnant.
The pills make me weepy all the time, for no apparent reason at all, though having seen the inventory of potential side effects, I consider it a blessing that the only one I’m doomed to endure is the predisposition for crying. I cry at the market; I cry in the car. I cry at home while mopping floors and folding laundry and standing in the doorway to one of the spare bedrooms, wondering if it will ever hold a child, steeling myself for another cycle of Clomid that will likely end again with my monthly flow.
To counter Aaron’s low sperm motility, as it’s called, he’s switched to wearing loose-fitting underpants (I don’t tell Miranda this), and is tasked with finding ways to reduce stress in his life, stress which neither of us knew he had. He now sleeps until after ten o’clock every morning so that we no longer share our day’s coffee on the dock, which is fine anyway seeing as the eternal winter has trapped us indoors and there are no sailboats to be seen on the bay, none until spring. He takes herbal supplements and when the temperatures aren’t too abysmal will go for a walk or a run, so that our days together are mere hours at best. This too is fine, seeing as we don’t have much to talk about anymore, nothing that doesn’t involve the many things the world is reluctant to let us have: strong, capable sperm; regular ovulation; a positive pregnancy test; a baby.
It isn’t that Aaron doesn’t have enough sperm—he does—it’s that what he has doesn’t swim properly and isn’t able to travel the four inches or so to where my egg may or may not be waiting.
In short, we’re both to blame, though there isn’t a moment that I don’t wonder which of us is to blame more and even though I think it’s me, Iknowit’s me, there is a part of me aggrieved that I’m the only one forced to record my body temperature, to take ovulation tests, to cry in public for no sound reason at all, to travel to the fertility clinic again and again, to be probed so that some doctor or technician can gaze inside me and at my ovaries, while all Aaron has to do is take an herbal supplement from time to time and exercise on occasion.
It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem right.
I’ve come to resent Aaron for this, as I’ve come to resent him for many things.
March 13, 1997
Egg Harbor
I field questions nearly every day about when Aaron and I are going to have a baby, often from my stepmother or Aaron’s mother, calling on the phone when he’s at work, asking not-so-subtly for grandchildren.
When can they expect them? When will there be good news to share?
It’s not that grandchildren are in short supply because they aren’t. Instead it’s that Aaron and I have been married for over two years, and society doesn’t take well to that: two nearly thirty-years-olds, married for over two years without kids, as if there’s something unthinkable about it, something taboo.
Is there something wrong with that?
It feels as if there is.
A married woman of my age without a child is quite the anomaly these days.
I can’t bring myself to say aloud that we’re trying,trying and failingto make a baby because I don’t want pity and I don’t want advice. And so instead I tell Aaron’s mother and my stepmothersoon, wishing that my own mother were still alive because hers is the only advice I want and need.
I spend my days waiting. Waiting for Aaron to wake up, waiting for Aaron to leave, waiting for Aaron to get home so I can again close my eyes and sleep. Waiting for a new cycle of Clomid to begin, to ovulate, to make love to Aaron like robots would do, hasty and unfeeling, and then waiting for the negative pregnancy test results, the loyal, trusty blood.
It’s the only thing I can depend on anymore. That sooner or later, my period will come.
March 14, 1997
