Hatching by Jenni Quilter

Author:Jenni Quilter [Quilter, Jenni]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

9

• • •

AT NORTH FARM

The second time through IVF was more studium, less punctum. The imposition of needles and routines felt more manageable. I didn’t burst into tears. I grew comfortable ducking routine questions about my life. I didn’t return to the acupuncturist in midtown; I didn’t have time. The first time was in summer, when work was slow, but now it was autumn, and I was in the middle of a busy semester. My reading of the message boards tapered off; I felt like I had learned nearly every story there, and now it was just the pain of repetition. In the waiting room, I was able to read my book, rather than look at the women. More follicles, more crosshairs. I could’ve used one of the frozen blastocysts, but the doctor told me that if I wanted a sibling, it was better to do it again now than try in a couple of years. What strikes me now is how little I hesitated doing it all over again. I ordered more hormones. My body was constantly bruised, constantly healing from the injections. The second operation, Shahzad was there to pick me up. ICSI again. For whatever reason—hormones, stimulation protocols, stress, the lack of tea, and acupuncture—the embryos this time around were fewer, and less robust. There were three of them. Rather than wait five days, until they could become blastocysts, they decided to implant them at three days. One, the embryologist said, looked really good. He gave me another picture. I did not put this one on the mantelpiece; I knew better. I hid it away in a book, until I knew.

The night before my pregnancy blood test, I came home from seeing a film, giddy with the news that I’d been awarded a six-month writing residency back in New Zealand, which was to begin the following July. They’d rung me in the lobby of the theatre, and I felt the rare vertigo that comes when you feel your life changing right in front of your eyes. I wondered what else might change as swiftly. At the pharmacy next to the subway station, I bought a pregnancy test, and back home, peed on the stick. Five minutes later. A horizontal and a vertical line: a window. I was stunned. I had felt absolutely nothing: no implantation cramps, thirstiness, or nausea, no swollen breasts.

I knew to constrain my excitement. I would have to wait: wait for an appropriate set of hCG blood results, wait until eight weeks (when the chance of miscarriage fell a significant percent), then to thirteen weeks (for the first round of fetal testing), and then onward through every testing and developmental milestone, to nine months. I was not out of the woods. I was never going to be out of the woods until I had a baby in my arms. I rang my father. I told him the good news about the residency and the pregnancy. “Oh, Jenni,” he said, and I could hear the pain in his voice.

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