A Year, Frozen in Time

For the last few months, I’ve watched as the days tick by, drawing closer to today, May 10th. Somehow it’s been a year since having my second egg retrieval and gaining nine new embryos in a line of seventeen. Of the nine there was just one that survived, and the last one standing was you…

Over the summer, in the weeks following treatment, we lived life. We picked blueberries and let Ross stay up late to catch fireflies and see his first fireworks. We sailed toy boats in the middle of Central Park and dedicated two months to raising several dozen monarch butterflies. We splashed in the waves on the beach and dismantled the nursery to begin a new chapter of our lives. With boxes still waiting to be unpacked in our new house, we picked out a door jamb and drew the first of many lines to mark Ross’ ever-changing height. When the weather turned colder, we filled a small backpack with essentials and held Ross’ hand as we introduced him to his new preschool class and teachers. We picked apples and pumpkins and enjoyed sugary apple cider donuts outside on picnic tables. We visited his auntie at the zoo to meet her favorite penguins and marched in the hometown Halloween parade. Fall gave way to an early winter snowfall. As is tradition, we made our annual visit to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and walked through twinkling Christmas lights until our hands and feet were numb from cold. We got on a plane to see family in Florida and wore Mickey ears for our first trip to “Mickey Mouse’s house.” We waited for Santa to come and we put birthday candles on another cake, this time with a Toy Story theme.

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And now, it’s spring again. In the last few weeks, we’ve painted Easter eggs and shared a picnic lunch with friends, soaking in the warmth of the spring sunshine. It is all these moments and more that have kept me afloat because, despite all of the smiles and happy memories, this has actually been a really difficult year. Throughout all the changes in season, we have spent quite a lot of time struggling to accept painful realities and feeling weak in the face of our obstacles. We’ve cried many tears and grieved significant loss. We’ve questioned this second surrogacy journey and anguished over the aching void in our family. There are no photos to commemorate those moments, but we carry the burden of them just the same. So much can change in the span of 12 months, but not always in the ways we hope.

In a normal situation, I would have received an embryo transfer myself shortly after the retrieval last May. If we were successful, this baby would already be in my arms. Ross would already have a sibling who’d be a few months old. Even when we completed that second treatment cycle a year ago, we believed we’d be doing an embryo transfer during the spring of 2019, but that possibility was lost to the endlessness of the surrogacy process, and we are still so far from where we need to be. Any day now I will open up the mailbox to a new bill for $600, the price of keeping our embryo on ice for another year.

There is never a day when I am not reminded of what could have been. In this year I have attended more baby showers and bought more gifts for second (or third) children than any other year of my life. Ross has watched as almost every single one of his friends has welcomed a new baby at home. The words brother and sister were added to his vocabulary, despite my reluctance to explain them to him. Pictures of toddlers holding their newborn siblings pop up on social media with frequency and feel like a punch to the stomach. And, above all, one of the hardest environments to be in this year has been the preschool community, where pregnancy, babies, and postpartum issues are bonding experiences. They are such normal topics of conversation that there is never an event that goes by when those subjects aren’t discussed.

At church, people are increasingly quick to point out that we don’t yet have a second child. They want to know why? And when? And, do we know that it’s past time already? Recently at a young families group I stood outside a circle of no less than five pregnant women. Isn’t it wonderful, all these babies? someone nearby remarked. Among the remaining women, each one had given birth within the year except for one, whose youngest child was still just 18 months. And then there is me: forever standing on the outside, even for the months that I was expecting. The most that I can ever hope for is to masquerade as a member of their exclusive group.

The truth is that the “baby life” seems to be very far away from where we are today. Over this last year we exchanged the crib for a toddler bed, purchased our last box of diapers, and packed away the final remnants of babyhood scattered throughout the cabinets and drawers of our house. Every time I open the storage closet, I’m confronted with relics of another life, and I wonder what the circumstances will be when I unpack them again– will I be preparing them for a child of mine? Or will I be doing what I perhaps should have done all along— giving things away to someone who can use them? Having everything so close, ready and waiting, often feels like tempting fate.

This part of me, the part that still turns down the wrong aisle to avoid walking by a pregnant woman in Target, is messy and ugly, but it also feels forgotten and invisible from the outside. It’s something the photos will never reflect, and it’s too inconvenient or uncomfortable to acknowledge, so it gets lost as life goes on.

It’s been a whole year with you now, but a whole year without you, too.