We became sloppy with birth control. The chances of conceiving, I thought, were low, even for couples who were trying. I never thought I would actually get pregnant. Until there I was, taking test after test, and then stupidly bursting into tears.
After 12 years, I thought I understood how much my husband wanted a family, but I had far underestimated his desire. In those few days he was the happiest I had ever seen him. As for me — I was nauseated, depressed and afraid. But my husband’s joy began to be infectious. By the time of our first prenatal appointment, I felt a glimmer of something else. Not happiness exactly, but curiosity, even excitement.
Then came the ectopic diagnosis. The embryo was in my left fallopian tube and had to be “resolved” before it grew large enough to cause massive internal bleeding. I was given methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug, and after six days of cramps so painful I feared my insides would fall out, the doctor told us the dose hadn’t worked. She would need to give me a second, larger dose. If that were to fail, they would have to do surgery to try to remove the fertilized egg; if that failed, the entire fallopian tube. In the meantime, we had to hope it wouldn’t rupture.
Two weeks of waiting, cramps and clots, all with the threat of massive internal bleeding hanging over me. Yet by the time the second dose of methotrexate succeeded, and my husband declared he was done with “the kid thing,” something in me had shifted.
I thought I had known the recipe for enduring love. Ours had been staked on the mutual respect of our individual needs, so I believed. I had thought that doing something you didn’t want to make someone else happy was the surest path to resentment. But now I understood what my husband had known all those years he had put aside his own desires to support mine — that love changes what we think we want, expands the scope of our desires beyond the realm of the individual.
And it was not entirely true that I did not want a child. There had been moments, like hearing my husband talk to himself in the shower, when I was overcome by an unbearable, unnamable feeling. The desire for more of him, more of us. Going through the ectopic pregnancy together, awful as it was, only confirmed this for me.
