Never mind nevermind.

Nope. Not a miscarriage. Something much worse. M and I spent the night in the hospital last Thursday night, and M had surgery Friday morning. She's through it and for the past few days she's been resting comfortably at home.

So what happened? Well, she had an ectopic pregnancy, which means, in this case, that a fertilized egg implanted in her left fallopian tube instead of in her uterus. We think this is because of a chemical or structural fault resulting from a ruptured ovarian cyst ten years ago. Anyway, an embryo implanted there and started growing.

On Tuesday night, M woke up with a heavy blood flow, and we were very sad about this, but assumed that it was a usual miscarriage, the kind that's very common for early pregnancy. The plan was to rest up and try again in a few weeks; we though the worst was over.

Thursday night, she left a dinner party at our friends' house complaining of nausea and terrible cramping, and we got her home and into a bath, gave her some painkillers and started worrying. I got ready for bed. In the night, M got up to go to the bathroom and passed out very violently, hit her head and turned stiff and blue. I started panicking, but she came to and said she felt much better. We called up our friends and asked them to come over, and they stayed with us for a while as M continued hurting and occasionally losing consciousness. She was by this time pale yellow in the face. Eventually, she said she needed to go to the ER. This is, for someone who hates doctors as much as M does, the nuclear option. We knew it was serious. I'm very VERY grateful that we went to the hospital instead of just trying to sleep it off, because if we'd done that, the doctors said, I might have woken up Friday morning without her.

At the ER registration desk, M had some more unconsciousness and vomiting, and we spent many worrisome hours in the ER room waiting for her vital signs to stabilize, waiting for the results of blood test, waiting for some pain medication, and waiting for an ultrasound, which was very painful and invasive, and revealed not very much because her whole abdominal cavity was full of blood. The ER doctor (after more waiting, but also, blessedly, some morphine) explained that M was likely to need surgery, and fairly quickly, because she was bleeding out into her belly. When the on-call ER gynecologist showed up to explain, he turned out serendipitously to be the OBGYN who we'd already arranged to use for the pregnancy, so he already sort of knew the situation -- and now he's clearly the best choice for our reproductive needs from now on. He explained the ectopic pregnancy situation and the plan for the surgery: he'd go in and clean out the blood, assess the situation and quite probably have to remove the damaged fallopian tube. And that's what he did. I called important people and they prepped Emilie for surgery. She had, being her, quizzed the doctor as to her rough chances of something going horribly wrong and of her not surviving, so when I kissed her goodbye and sent her to surgery, it was hard not to consider the possibility. I was really glad that our friends were there to distract me by playing twenty questions.

In about an hour, we got the post-surgery report from the doctor, so we went and had a happy breakfast, and returned to find M feeling as well as she could be expected to feel. For the rest of Friday, we stayed home stoking the fireplace, with friends taking turns looking after M (and me), and repeatedly explaining everything to her through the haze of anesthesia and pain medication. People have brought food, loaned us the use of heating pads, made coffee, fed the dog, and made us feel very loved. We're in good shape now.

It's funny how people assume that we're very sad about losing the "baby" -- which, at the time it became a tubal suicide bomber, had neither a heartbeat nor an anus. I'm just happy that my wife is still alive and healthy, maybe even healthier. She's getting her color back, getting frustrated at being stuck in the house, forcing me to leave her alone for a few hours at a time.

M being alive is the best possible Christmas present. And in a year when I think I'm getting snowshoes, even!

Oops. Never mind.

Yesterday morning the blood results were in, so the doctor called to congratulate us on what looked like a healthy pregnancy. But unfortunately earlier that morning M woke up having miscarried in the night. The physical pain wasn't much, but since we'd done what we said we wouldn't and gotten excited too early, we were both surprisingly messed up about it.

The worst thing I ever experience is the sound of my wife's tears coming from the other room.

So we took a sadness day yesterday and stayed home from work (and stayed work from home, in my case). Walked the dog, followed each other around, experimented with levels of hug tightness, watched movies, ate pizza, built a fire.

It's back to work today, having learned important lessons about important things. Thanks, briefly fertilized ovum!

Sickness and health

I’ve got a bugger of a cold now that semester’s over, as if my body decided that I finally had time and energy to devote to illness. M, on the other hand, has enough hCG coursing through her to stop the period of an elephant, apparently. We’re waiting for the blood work.

In order to distract myself from the moments when I stare out the window in panic thinking “I’m going to be someone’s dad! I can’t even sink a hook shot!” I have been coming up with nicknames for the maternal-foetal unit:

• “M&M”: i.e. M + Embryo
• “The Host”
• “The Astromech”: after an old nerdy roleplaying game in which humans fight each other by driving enormous armed androids
• “Wubbobubbin”: explanation neither warranted nor possible
• “Masterblaster”: Who run Bartertown?

I’m getting a little impatient that I can’t tell anybody. That’s why the blog is a good outlet. We’ve got about an 85% chance of not miscarrying, so the chances of a baby with a late August 2011 birthday are pretty good. 2011! Someday some professor will be shocked to realize that her students were all born in the teens. Twenty eleven. Four centuries after the death of Simon Forman and the first performance of Winter’s Tale. Three centuries after the invention of the tuning fork. The kid's due in the same month Obama turns 50.

Attempts at confirmation

We’re now at something like six positive pee-stick results. M’s nothing if not thorough. She is, however, prone to second guessing. So an actual medical professional will be weighing in today. Apparently there’s a thing called “chemical pregnancy” which means you’re not withchild after all, but rather with-beaker-full-of-chemicals. Or something.

I’m working at home today, through a cold. Out the window there’s a snowstorm sweeping over the mountains toward us, framed by leafless tree-branches. Bare ruined choirs and all that. A nice melancholy winter day. Hopefully I can crank out a few pages before talking to a doctor about things like cervical distention and yolk sacs.

So, in the past year: a possible mini-stroke, the appearance of gray hairs behind my ears and in other odd places, a new prescription for cholesterol medication, buying a house, a total of three mortgages, going up for tenure, and a possibly successful attempt at procreation. Oldness, decay, gravity. It’s a good day for a snowstorm.

Poppy Seed

I can't tell real people about this, so in a streak of wholly original thinking that has never occurred to anyone before, I am throwing it out anonymously to strangers on the blog.

A few weeks ago we pulled the goalie and started having unprotected sex (or “danger-tang”) for the first time in our lives. After an ill-conceived experiment with spermicide that revealed heretofore unsuspected allergies and is best forgotten, the sex has been kind of amazing, which is an interesting side effect. And somehow I think I turned a corner, from vigorous ambivalence about parenthood to active excitement about the prospect. Maybe some idiot-making brain hormones kicked in or something, but having a baby seems like a really good idea. We settled on a name for either sex, invested in prenatal vitamins, stuff like that.

Yesterday I was having a not-great day. Anxious about a book chapter deadline, struggling under a pile of essay marking, with a kink in my neck that was wrenching my spine. I went Christmas shopping and paid more than I should've for a present, and grumpily picked M up from work. She'd had a great day, apparently, and I didn't begrudge it her. I just wanted to go home, get back to work, and have a glass of wine. But she says "I got you a present, too."

"What?"

"Unwrap it. Take off my sweater."

Suspecting that this might be getting pleasant, I complied, and tied to M's abdomen with ribbon was a piece of oblong pink plastic smelling faintly of pee. With two lines visible through the little window and not one. So my knees got a little wobbly and we went to the store to get more pregnancy tests and booze. I can only imagine what the checkout guy thought our evening was going to look like.

Anyway, M passed (failed?) two more pee tests, so it looks likely that there is an embryo (we missed the blastocyst and morula stages—they grow up so fast!) the size of a poppy seed burrowed somewhere in the nutrient rich goo of M's bits. As she pointed out with fascination this morning, our potential offspring is the size of something that gets caught in one's teeth.