Good News, with a side of regret
About ten years ago, when I switched from being someone convinced that I didn't want children to someone who did, I began dreaming of my child. I could picture her perfectly; she has dark curly hair, like her dad, and big huge blue eyes, like me. She's beautiful, of course, so much so that people stop us on the street to tell us so (my mother tells me that this happened to her with me).
When my husband and I began trying to conceive, back in the early fun days, we talked about names. We decided we would name her Victoria Anne--after her aunt, who only lived for a few days after birth, because my mother in law didn't know that thalidomide could cause defects. Anne is also my mother's name.
Then of course, we embarked on the nightmare journey of infertility. Throughout the struggles, I clung to the idea of little Tori (the way we would shorten Victoria, much less common than Vicky) and she helped me get through.
When we finally did get pregnant, and then found out it was twins, we got very excited. My husband, while not a "I must have a boy to carry on the family name" kind of guy, confessed that he would love to have a son, someone he could share his enthusiasm for trains with, and call his buddy (although he calls the dog his buddy, so he might need to think of something else).
It seemed like we could have everything we wanted in one fell swoop--one boy, one girl. After all the years of suffering and weeping during the infertility treatments, and my horrible sickness these last two months, we awaited the preliminary results of our CVS testing all day today with bated breath.
It is with great joy that I tell you that we have two wonderfully healthy....boys.
Being the self-centered person I am, it took a minute for me to get to grateful--grateful that there are no chromosonal abnormalities present in these two tiny lives. I felt a pang of regret so strong at first that I nearly shut my heart down.
It's awful--living here, in this place completely lacking gratitude. I'm sure lots of you reading this are like, "Jesus Christ BITCH, first all the complaining about the sickness, and now--we would KILL to have two healthy babies, whatever they are!" Maybe it's because I'm an alcoholic--alcoholics classicly suffer from a strong sense of entitlement--or maybe it's just because I'm human, I don't know. But damn it, I wanted a baby girl. I really did.
Moxie told me, a long time ago, that she knew that she wanted a baby girl so badly that she decided not to know the sex of the baby when she was pregnant. And when El Chico was born a boy, she couldn't regret anything, because he was there, in her arms, and she was in love. I thought about that, briefly, right before I asked the sex of the babies. I thought maybe I shouldn't know. Maybe I should wait and see.
My husband, wonderful, darling man that he is, keeps telling me he's sorry--like somehow he caused this. He also said, "Hey, maybe the results are wrong--maybe they did the same placenta twice!" meaning that when they did the extraction of tissue during the CVS that they didn't manage to get it right.
It's possible. Plus the results we got today are preliminary--only 95% accurate, as opposed to the results we'll get next week, which will be 99.9% accurate.
But I doubt it.
Even if it was wrong, it would be just like God to give me one healthy boy and one unhealthy girl. At least, that's what the God of my Infertility would do. The benevolent God that I've tried to believe in these last few months doesn't play games that way.
I know one thing for sure; I am lucky. I'm lucky that I got pregnant from my first IVF. I'm lucky two embryos stuck. I'm lucky that even with my age, my husband's age, and the use of ICSI in that IVF, that both babies are healthy.
I know that we could do this all over again--we have 14 frozen embryos, for God's sake--but we can't afford to do PGD to find out if they're girls, and we can't afford to have three children. I also cannot bear the thought of being pregnant again. My husband said maybe we could adopt a little girl, and maybe someday we will. I don't know.
Tori will live on in my heart. And I'm not going to feel bad for regreting losing her. Over the years I've learned, through many painful lessons, that what I want the most is not neccessarily the best thing for me. Years from now I know that my heart will be bursting with love for my boys, and I will be so glad that I had them.
But right now, I think I'll go cry a bit.
