When I was eight months pregnant with my daughter, my mom took Lior and me to a baby furniture store in Mishawaka, Indiana. Most of the furniture was handmade by woodworkers from the Amish community of Goshen, Indiana. Cribs, rocking chairs, beds, hand stitched clothes: this was no Bye Bye Baby or Ikea, but it also carried none of the snobbishness of boutiques that populate wealthy urban areas or their suburbs.
The prices were steep, though. And I felt a tinge of guilt being 36 and having my parents pay for high end baby furniture, “Mom, we can just go to Target?” I whispered out of the earshot of the salesperson who looked up from her crocheting. I noted that she did not have a computer, but mimeographed billing paper.
“It’s our pleasure,” my mom said. And I knew it was. Finally, I was married. Finally, I was having a baby.
We settled on a large wooden crib that could transform one day into a toddler bed and a wooden dresser with a built in changing table that could one day "transform into a dresser once the child or children," the saleswoman said quietly, "grew out of diapers." Her low tones were homage to the superstitious Jewish tradition I was honoring of not counting my chicken before he or she hatched. I entered both my marriage and my pregnancy with unbridled optimism with twinges of "tomorrow is never promised." Therefore, the Amish would not begin crafting the pieces until the baby was born. The due date was February 7, 2013.
However, plans changed and Maya came into the world early in January. The owner of the shop and her friend drove the crib and the dresser to our apartment in Chicago themselves and put them together with their own set of tools. As Maya startled from the electric screwdriver, I told her that one day she too would be an independent woman who would put together her own furniture.
The crib and the dresser were beautiful. But alas, the irony of a perfect fit is that you hope that they will be perfect somewhere else. Shortly after Maya was born, I was hired to teach at an international school in Israel, where my husband is from and is a tour guide.
The heaviness in leaving my family could be measured by the weight of the crib, dresser, and rocking chair handed down to me by my brother and sister in law, also purchased from that same store. The school offered a shipping allowance, and they were taken by freight across the Atlantic, down the Mediterranean, to our home in Netanya.
It took five months for the items to arrive. In the end I wished I hadn’t shipped them at all. The changing table/dresser, the beloved dresser, had been badly damaged. There was a lengthy, deep, cracked slice down the side of the wood. The part to transform the crib into a toddler bed was bent and no longer usable. I called the shipping company. They offered me $100. “Your insurance deductible is $1000. $100 should cover the damage.”
Early births, moving across the world, damaged furniture are all cataclysmic events when they occur, but eventually they fade into memory, only evidenced by a forehead line or two and hidden by facing the furniture in strategic directions.
Which brings me to seven and a half years later.
The crib we hadn't seen in years. We had given it to a friend to borrow. The damaged dresser was just a regular dresser. My son was about to turn five and my daughter was seven. No diaper had been changed there in years. We used the changing table portion to store books, dolls, and other children’s accessories. But the dresser had begun to smell. While the children were out with a babysitter, I took it completely apart to clean it. I couldn’t find an obvious culprit, but I was hopeful that the thorough washing would help.
However, the truth is, there was more that needed to be done than clean this dresser.
It needed to be flipped. There was no reason to keep the changing table side at the top.
You may be asking what was the big deal? Why didn’t you just flip it?
It’s heavy. Pure Amish wood.
Why didn't Lior help you?
I had kept a secret from most of you. Not because I wanted it to be a secret, but because I felt ashamed and foolish. Because it happened right before Covid-19. But mostly because I felt a bit stupid.
This piece wasn’t written as a cry out for sympathy or empathy. Nor was it for you to tell me I was not stupid. I wrote it because this is what writers do, we write, and also because I do think to some degree secrets like these are unhealthy, or at least unhealthy for me. They are dishonest. They are fakebook. I also think that when you keep even minor pain hidden, you turn other more innocuous incidents into dramatic ordeals. Or at least I have that tendency.
From 2016-2019, Lior and I had been trying to have a third child. I always said that I would never use reproductive technology. Well, in January I turned to reproductive technology. The physician, who is supposed to be “the best” told me that I was in great health, that I looked more like I was 30 than 43, but even still because of my age I only had a five percent chance of conceiving a healthy child and that it would cost $12,000. (I’m not an Israeli citizen. Israeli citizens get a few attempts at minimal cost).
There were two things here that should have led me to the door never to return: five percent and $12,000. Instead, I said, okay, great, when do we get started?
Because here’s the thing. Trying to have a third child was totally irrational. There was no good reason for me, especially, to have a third child. If I were to make a pro-con list of having a third child, the con list would have been a mile long; the pro list would have been a sticky note. It didn’t matter. I wanted to try and Lior was supportive.
Five percent. If it happened to five percent of women, why shouldn’t I be one of them? It was way better odds than winning the lottery. Besides, Halle Barry, Susan Sarandon, Christie Brinkley, Celine Dion, Gwen Stefani, Uma Thurman, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Geena Davis, Mary Stuart Masterson, Cameron Diaz and Marcia Gay Harden were all my age or older when they had children. How did I know this? I googled it and maybe spend too much time reading celebrity news.
However, just because they birthed the children doesn’t mean that they used their own eggs. They may have had. I didn’t know their medical histories. Or they may have used their own frozen eggs. But I hadn’t realized that when I went through my process.
At this point in time, almost everyone is somewhat familiar with the IVF process, so I’m not going to get into it. My process wasn’t really special, except that it occurred in a different country, which made the communication process at times challenging and aggravating. Some of you who know me well know that my hands shake and that when I’m nervous it gets worse. Lior gave me all of the shots, and an unexpected outcome of the nightly injections was that they strengthened our marriage. He took care in being gentle when inserting the needle, and the one time that it hurt more than just a sting, he worked hard to ensure that the next injection would hurt less. There was a level of intimacy in this process that I’ve never experienced with anyone before, even with Lior during the births of our children.
Given you know the ending, this is probably dragging a bit. The doctor wanted to implant three embryos. I was only interested in two. I just felt three was irresponsible. He reminded me, “five percent.”
Five percent.
The days between the implantation of the eggs and the blood test to see if I was pregnant, I went from telling a few close colleagues to about 20 people. I couldn’t stop telling people. I was just very excited. I COULD BE pregnant.
The reactions from my colleagues to other preschool moms was really heartening. “You have such beautiful children, of course you’d want another one.”
“You are such a good mom, of course you’d want another one.”
No one said, “You are a frenzied, stressed out basket case, what the hell are you thinking?”
Or, “You paid WHAT?”
The final ride to the hospital on the bus was fast. The blood test was faster. The train ride back to work and the cab to school were blurs. I wonder how I was as a teacher that day, the day that I would find out if I was pregnant.
At 6 p.m. the Medical Center called. I gave Lior the phone because inevitably the person on the line’s English wasn’t good enough to explain the complexities of the next steps in English.
Her English was fine.
“There’s no sign of pregnancy,” she told Lior as I listened. “None.”
“Okay,” he said.
“She should stop taking the fertility medication.”
And that was that.
I sent an email to the too many people I told (if you’re wondering why I didn’t tell you, there was a benevolent reason. Don’t be offended. Just ask me and I’ll tell you.)
Sorry that this is a generic email.
I just received the news that the implantation was unsuccessful. Although I am sad, I knew my chances were basically nil for this to work out.
Although I badly wanted a third child, I have everything and everyone that I need in life. For a while there, I didn't think I would get married and have children. I am blessed with a wonderful, amazing, supportive husband and two great kids who I adore and, not to brag, but adore me. I was always worried that I wouldn't be a good mom, but so far, I'm doing okay.
Thank you for your excitement and support. I felt very loved by everyone. And I will be okay.
The next day my period came as it does every month. I called my parents to tell them the whole story. I hadn’t told them my plans because I thought they would tell me what I was doing made no sense; they would have been right. My dad didn’t say much. My mom said what I knew she would say, and she was right: how would I manage a third child with all of my responsibilities? It worked out for the best. It wasn't bashert. (meant to be).
Then, randomly, my mom fell ill and ended up in the hospital with a mystery virus. (Not Covid. Something else.)
A few weeks later hundreds of thousands of people began dying of Covid-19. Life as we knew it changed. I didn’t really think too many people would find this story compelling. Perhaps they still won’t. Perhaps it’s not.
So why? Why did I waste $12,000 on a third child that was never to be born. [Our financial situation is okay. No need to send cash.]
I honestly felt that there was another child out there for us. I know some of you might be smacking your head. But really. It’s how I felt. I can’t say that I feel any differently today. It’s just I won’t be letting those feelings lead me to (more) financial and hormonal ruin. Perhaps a psychologist would say it is simply that because my husband and I were third children, and if our parents had stopped at two, we would not exist. Was my subconscious just messing with me?
Or perhaps this was just a big midlife crisis. When I was single, after reading The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein, I asked my book club if they thought every woman is entitled to have a child? If when I was 30 I was uncertain if having any children was any entitlement, who was I at 43 to think that a third child was any sort of claim that I had to the universe?
I don’t know. It’s just always what I pictured: my husband and I and our three kids.
But I think it’s best to dream big, but perhaps dream in pencil. The best visions can be erased and replaced with better ones, or ones that are perfect but from different perspectives and points of view.
....
The smell wasn’t gone, but a bit less pungent. Perhaps I needed to call a woodworker.
When the babysitter returned from the park with the kids I asked, “Can you help me flip this?”
“Sure,” he said.
Deep breath, strain, turn, and flip. It looked more regal as a dresser with a flat wooden top.
Even better, the drawers no longer stuck when pulled out. As if they too were saying, “It was time.”
I placed the clothes back in the better, but not perfect smelling drawers.
I placed a mirror on top of the flipped dresser so that Maya could see where the knots are when she brushed her hair and where to wipe the leftover toothpaste from her lips.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said admiring her reflection. “It’s very nice. I feel very grown up.”
....
