Eight Years

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” —Mary Oliver

My husband and I began trying for a baby the weekend of my best friend’s wedding. It was 2013. Back in those days, health insurance didn’t have to cover pregnancy unless you bought a rider and paid for it for a full year. We’d had our rider for a year, and it was time. I knew we’d get pregnant right away.

I sat on the floor, reading a book and blow drying my hair, fantasizing about the maternity clothes I’d wear when my mom called. She said she had lost the ability to read. She was having trouble with her words, too.

I told her it was probably just normal aging.

I worried it was a stroke.

We went to the wedding.

It took us four months to conceive the first baby. I told my mom on her 64th birthday. The baby was due on my birthday. It was beautiful symmetry. I met my mom at the mall to shop for maternity bras the next day. Petite people with large breasts know that they’re bound to misbehave early. “They need a proper cage so they don’t eat me,” I told my mom. She laughed. She forgot how to say bra and kept calling it a boob restrainer.

I bought books on homebirth. I started making my baby registry. I drew a comic of the baby talking to my husband. And then I started bleeding.

It was a miscarriage. One of those supposedly small tragedies no one is supposed to talk about. It’s not small when it’s you.

Conventional wisdom is that you’re supposed to wait 12 weeks to tell the world you’re pregnant. That way you don’t inconvenience them with your ugly emotions or with the messy realities of life should you lose the pregnancy. Pregnancy in a sexist society, as most people learn, is primarily about managing other people’s emotions by subverting your own.

What no one tells you is that miscarriage grief is vast and deep.

What no one tells you is that there is no safe moment in pregnancy.

What no one tells you is that your baby might die after 12 weeks, after 20 weeks, before birth, after birth, before you.

To be pregnant is to straddle the line between life and death.

We pressed on.

We took my mother to a cognitive clinic. They said it was Alzheimer’s.

But it wasn’t Alzheimer’s.

Her next doctor told her it was depression. It wasn’t.

We demanded answers. We wanted tests. We wanted curiosity from her providers. This was a brilliant woman, a writer, the most well-read person I had ever known. She was losing her ability to speak. If they didn’t care about her, wasn’t that at least interesting?

We never got an answer from her doctor. The answer finally came from a speech-language pathologist: primary progressive aphasia. A rare and poorly understood dementia.

I read that she would eventually be mute and I panicked. I would have panicked more if I had read that she would eventually be incompetent, unable to care for herself, and then dead.

We went to the beach. My mom joked about being demented. Because she had dementia, you see. Haha, mom. So funny, mom. She asked me to learn how to do her makeup, so that I could do it when she was no longer able. We both knew that was not going to happen. But it was a way of pretending that there would be some sort of normalcy after all of this.

We kept trying for a baby.

Nothing happened.

We hit the year mark and got blood tests. Everything was normal.

According to my Amazon history, I bought 91 pregnancy tests between year one and year two. And still, nothing happened.

My mom went to the Indian Market in New Mexico, and to see her family in St. Louis, and then to Italy.

When she came back from Italy, she could only speak single words.

My birthday came, and my mom made me a cake. I took a pregnancy test in a CVS the next day. And I broke the paper towel holder in a fit of rage. There was a priest standing by the door when I came out. I touched my face as I nodded at him, then saw my bloody knuckles.

We circled the drain on year three.

The year my husband and I got married, my sister in law got pregnant. I went with her to the IVF clinic. I hated it. I hated the patronizing way they spoke to and about pregnant people. I hated the pictures of babies. I hated that she had to be there. I never wanted to be in a place like that. And that’s how I made it almost all the way to year three without going to an awful fertility clinic of my very own.

I started acupuncture instead. And then I gave up. My mom was practicing detachment, “releasing things with love” left and right, talking about the suffering of human existence. I hated that, too.

I hated a lot of things.

But I decided to join her in resignation to suffering. Got rid of the pregnancy tests, the fertility calendar, the weird sperm-friendly lube, all of the horribly trappings of infertility.

Picked a fight with my husband about how much harder it was for me than him. And then I got really sick. On January 1, 2016, I learned I was pregnant.

We told my mom a few days later. She cried. She tried to talk to me, to give me maternal wisdom, but she couldn’t. I understood what she was saying anyway. I knew she loved me, loved the baby, wanted happiness for us. I knew she’d do anything for us.

I got the flu. I was sicker than I had ever been. I thought for sure the baby would die. My mom went to restaurants and somehow managed to order food for us, in spite of her speech issues.

The baby did not die.

I made a countdown in my planner: 22% odds of miscarriage on this day, 12% on this day, 7% on this day. We made it all the way down to 1%. An ultrasound showed a healthy baby who refused to allow the sonographer to see their genitals. I basked in it all.

Mother’s Day came. My mom got me a mug that said “Best Mother Ever” and a Mother’s Day card with a butterfly that said, “To my mother” because she couldn’t read or understand language anymore. We ate cheese at a park. I talked about the baby while she listened. She was beaming.

And still, the baby did not die.

I made an insane four-page birth plan complete with threats for every level of failed care. My years of dealing with my mother’s doctors had taught me to trust and defer to no one. I wanted a natural water birth. I would not be allowing anyone else to control my body or my decisions. My doctor loved me. His midwives did, too.

The hospital did not love me. My husband and I had to meet with them to get our birth plan approved, as if anyone has the right to tell a woman how to have a child. But they approved it, and we began the countdown.

The summer came. It was so hot. I started swelling. My mom was worried. Every time she saw me she looked at my legs and made disapproving sounds.

I reached 35 weeks. My husband had to travel 6 hours away with our friend Albert for a civil rights case the two were trying in a racist southern town. We took our ailing German shepherd, Zora, with us. My dad bought me Zora when I was a sophomore in college. She went everywhere with me. So she went to the trial, too. They lost the case.

On the way home, I learned that the hospital at which I would give birth had banned waterbirth, was forcing women into medically unnecessary interventions, mandating c-sections, and wholesale ignoring the rights of pregnant people. Surely, I thought, someone would do something.

No one did.

So I started a Facebook group to plan a protest. And it blew up. Suddenly I was leading a coalition of 1500 women while 36 weeks pregnant. I gave scripts and wrote letters and answered questions all day every day. I stopped sleeping. My legs hurt. I called the general counsel for the hospital a sniveling weakling. He told me that they would make an exception for me, but for no one else.

So I told everyone else about that, and they didn’t like it. More people grew interested in our protest. The hospital leadership team agreed to meet with me, and with three of my friends. We abused them. We told them they were stupid, incompetent, sexist. They were. And they backed down. Hundreds of women got the births they had planned.

And suddenly, I couldn’t walk.

We initially thought a blood clot, but then my doctor diagnosed me with cellulitis. The cellulitis persisted right into labor. I was terrified that I couldn’t do it with my legs failing to work. But I could, and I did. I labored for a day. I pushed for four hours.

While I was laboring, my mom showed up in the delivery room. She couldn’t read or talk, but she found a way to break through the hospital bureaucracy and get to me.

Athena Aurora came swimming out of me so fast that the midwife had to catch her before she hit the end of the umbilical cord. They put her on my chest. She was bright pink. She sighed, and went to sleep. She weighed 10 pounds. I was a tiny person. Everyone was amazed that I pushed out this behemoth without any medication, without working legs.

My mom helped me latch the baby for the first time.

I founded a birth justice organization to help people fighting similar fights to the one I had fought. I learned more about birth rape. I learned to breastfeed my baby and, as all new mothers do, to function without sleep. My mom came to visit every few days, and brought clothes and stroked my hair, and occasionally picked fights because—let’s face it—Cheri Villines was no shrinking violet. You fucked around, you found out. During one visit, she managed to communicate to me that she wanted me to send her best friend a revenge Christmas present.

She continued to spiral, and I continued to adapt to motherhood.

That could be the end of the story. I thought it was. My husband and I only wanted one baby. And ours was perfect. Our lives made sense. But we started to feel a nagging voice telling us we needed another.

I was scared to go through the infertility horror show again. Our daughter was two and still so little. We agreed to table the discussion. And in the summer of 2019, I took a pregnancy test on a whim. After years of infertility, random pregnancy testing was pure force of habit.

I was pregnant.

Without trying.

It felt like a miracle.

I cried. I couldn’t believe that it could be this easy. I worried that it shouldn’t be.

We told my mom. By that point, she was struggling to understand language, not just speak it. But I gestured to my stomach, made a rocking gesture, and she knew. She cried. She understood it all. She had been there through the infertility.

We told Athena she was going to be a big sister and she began practicing. We bought baby clothes and furniture and designed a nursery. We told everyone I was pregnant. It felt even more special this time, like the universe had picked out a baby just for us, and delivered it without any effort on our part.

We named our baby Ember.

I counted down the days to our 20-week anatomy scan. This is the scan halfway through pregnancy during which you get to spend two hours looking at the baby. I was so excited I couldn’t breathe.

The tech was silent.

She left the room and a doctor came back.

First there was something wrong with her skull. Then it was her feet and hands and brain and maybe there was a missing kidney. Maybe her heart was ok, but they couldn’t see all of the chambers. Her brain was there, at least. Not normal, but there.

I got angry. I didn’t believe the doctor.

I got a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth.

We went back to the first doctor, who sat in the office and cried with us as we learned that our baby was not going to live.

She lived inside of me for four more weeks. I talked to her, sang to her, cried for her, apologized to her.

She died on December 21. The solstice. The darkest day of the year.

Every December 21 for my entire life, my mother had a solstice party. She didn’t have one that year.

My husband and I drove, dazed and half-alive, by a lake shortly before she died that morning. I saw wild geese. They were quiet, like geese never are. And I thought of Mary Oliver, a poet much beloved by both my mother and grandmother. I thought of her words:

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

-over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

This is what Wikipedia says about the embers after which we named our daughter:

"Embers (hot coals) can exist within, remain after, or sometimes precede, a fire. Embers are, in some cases, as hot as the fire which created them. They radiate a substantial amount of heat long after the fire has been extinguished, and if not taken care of properly can rekindle a fire that is thought to be completely extinguished and can pose a fire hazard. In order to avoid the danger of accidentally spreading a fire, many campers pour water on the embers or cover them in dirt. Alternatively, embers can be used to relight a fire after it has gone out without the need to rebuild the fire – in a conventional fireplace, a fire can easily be relit up to 12 hours after it goes out, provided that there is enough space for air to circulate between the embers and the introduced fuel.”

I like to think those geese were there to ensure our Ember was taken care of properly.

We went home. I sat with my mother in law and talked about orchids. And I began bleeding heavily. I had a postpartum hemorrhage. I’ve told the story so many times now that it doesn’t even affect me anymore: I went to the hospital. They ignored me. They didn’t care. They delayed my care. I almost died. But I didn’t.

After hours of begging for care, they gave me pitocin, which induced labor to help me get out the remnants of the placenta.

Laboring when there is no baby is a cold and desolate experience. There was no doula this time. No warm and inviting birth tub. Just a young emergency room doctor who seemed scared when he saw me in pain. He offered me morphine. I wanted to feel it.

I picked up my phone to text my dad. And I learned that my childhood friend, Katie-Grace, had died. I hadn’t seen her in years. But when she learned that Ember would die, she reached out to me. She told me she was kinder to people that day because of Ember. She offered me more comfort than anyone else was ever able.

I put my head down on the hospital bed and sobbed. The pain got worse.

I thought I had to poop. I thought I was sick to my stomach. My husband and I walked to the bathroom, and then I realized the familiar sensation: I was pushing.

Pushing with no baby.

I survived, and labor ended.

We went home with plans to have a funeral when we were less destroyed, with plans to get footprint tattoos, with plans to honor our baby.

And early in the morning of January 1, John—I call him my stepdad when talking to other people even though he’s not my stepdad, because he is a second dad to me and has loved my mom as well as anyone ever could—called to tell me my mom had fallen.

She ended up in the ICU. She nearly died. She didn’t.

But she emerged different. We didn’t communicate nonverbally anymore. She didn’t understand. It was like someone had sucked the life out of her. Her head injury accelerated her illness.

And then the pandemic hit. We all quarantined. We could only see my mom masked, from a distance. We had to grieve alone. There was no funeral.

My daughter had nightmares. I tried to comfort her, but I had nightmares too.

Sobbing on the kitchen floor became normal. There was no point in waking up the rest of the family. And I no longer had a mom who was call-able.

So we got ducklings. I had always wanted ducklings, and my husband promised me I could get anything I wanted to distract me. I loved the ducks. They didn’t fix it, but they made it 1% better, and that was better enough to keep going.

I was desperate to have another baby immediately. My empty uterus screamed at me. I was producing breastmilk. One thing people don’t realize about baby and late pregnancy loss is that you still experience all of the postpartum stuff, but with none of the joy.

We started trying right away. It didn’t work.

I bought all of my old fertility supplies. Some new ones, too. There were novel technologies for preying on desperate people.

The tests kept being negative.

Month after month.

I gave up again.

I went to see my mom every week—from a distance, in the yard, masked. The worst possible way to see someone with dementia. She didn’t recognize me.

On November 6th, she did. I saw a glimmer in her eyes.

The next day, I learned I was pregnant.

Pregnancy after the death of your baby is a unique hell. Everyone expects the new baby to replace the old one. They want you to perform happiness, to say that things really are happily ever after.

But they weren’t. I was overjoyed, but terrified and still swimming through a swamp of grief. I wasn’t ready, but I was also 37 and too old to wait and grieve and heal.

I went back to the same birth center where I had planned to have Ember. The midwives welcomed me, asked me about Ember, asked me how I was, held my hand.

Then we got the call from hospice that my mom probably only had a few weeks left. I went to see her, mask-free, consequences be damned.

I knew she was dying.

It was December 19.

I talked to her as she got last rites and she did not respond. I thanked her for being my mother and she did not respond. I hugged her, held her hand, told her it was ok to die. I suggested the solstice would be a good time.

I told her all about Ember. I begged her to please go find my baby on the other side and take care of her. I told her I was pregnant and scared.

She sat up.

She pointed to her mouth and made a sound. I thought she was thirsty and offered her water, then chapstick. She pushed both of them away, slammed her fist down, grabbed my hand, and looked me in the eyes.

It was the most responsive she had been in a year.

She knew. I knew.

She died early the morning of December 20, one day before the anniversary of Ember’s death.

We couldn’t have a real funeral because of the pandemic.

I knew I had to find a way to live with this grief, too. I knew my mom would want me to find a way to be happy.

And I settled into it. We began buying clothes. We made it through the 20 week ultrasound. And the 21 week one I demanded. And the 22 and 23, until I finally believed this baby would live.

I realized that I was allowed to be happy, even though I was sad. I could grieve Ember and still make room for another baby.

I learned we were having a girl.

I learned to live with the tension inherent to the fact that, if Ember had not died, I would not have this baby.

We decided to name her Seraphina—fiery one. Her middle name would be Eliana—God has answered.

I felt healthy. I planted my spring garden. I got a COVID vaccine. Jeff got his gallbladder removed. I moved the rhododendron my oldest friend gave me to honor Ember. We were both making space.

I hit 32, 33, 34 weeks. I started having prodromal labor. I knew this was real.

I hit 35 weeks and my legs started to hurt again. Then they swelled, just like last time. But this time it wasn’t cellulitis. There was nothing wrong.

They were just…swelling. Doing what they had done before. Bodies love habits.

We went to another ultrasound, because I was still worried. It showed low fluid. This is the sort of pregnancy complication that can be either total bullshit used to scare you into a c-section, or absolutely real and dangerous. I didn’t know which one this was. I stayed in the hospital overnight to get fluids. The next morning, my fluids were up.

But I was not taking any risks. I was 39 weeks. We decided to do a natural induction at the birth center.

It worked. I went into labor.

And then it stopped.

They gave me another dose of their induction cocktail.

I went into labor again.

It stopped again.

Labor got more intense.

Then it stopped.

This lasted for two days. I got to seven centimeters, then labor stopped completely.

Emotional dystocia, we thought. Trauma undermining the ability to open oneself to whatever labor had to offer.

I didn’t want this.

We went to see Dr. Badell, the same doctor who diagnosed Ember. I asked her what she thought I should do.

“You’ve suffered enough. This baby is healthy. Let her be born now,” she told me.

I agreed to a medical induction at the hospital. I was terrified. I’m a natural birther. I’m the woman who labored with my dead baby in a lonely hospital bathroom with no one but my husband. Who birthed her 10 pound baby in a tub with just a midwife.

Maybe that’s why, for 8 hours, it didn’t work. I labored but I didn’t dilate.

I closed my eyes. I talked to Ember. I asked her to help me. I saw her. She was there. I know she was. I saw my mother, too.

And then I saw my grandmother, my mother’s mother, whose own baby died shortly after birth. “We can do what prophets say,” she yelled at me from across a lake.

I didn’t know what that meant. But then my water broke.

And the labor that was a 10 on a 10-point scale suddenly became 100.

I went somewhere else. I don’t know where it was, but the veil between here and wherever our departed loved ones go dropped. I went there to get Seraphina from Ember, and my mother, and my grandmother, and my aunt. All of them, all the women I have known and loved and lost, were there. They were the only reason I could get through a pitocin labor without medication. What I felt was such brutality that they had to come down and support me.

I know this to be true, and I don’t care if you think it’s crazy because it’s what happened.

I pushed Seraphina out. She was blue. And white. She cried, though, and I sobbed that she was alive. They had to revive her and give her oxygen, but then she came right back to me.

There was a true knot in her cord. Something I’ve since learned carries a 20 percent mortality rate.

But not for her.

Not for Seraphina, who lived, thanks to Ember, who died.

This is the part of the story where I am supposed to wrap everything up in a neat package that feels comfortable and reassuring. It’s where I’m supposed to tell you everything is ok now.

It’s wonderful now. But it is not ok.

My family will never be complete. There will always be someone missing.

There is no meaning to be had in this suffering. Ember did not die so Seraphina could live. She died. And Seraphina lived.

The only thing life offers us is the promise of change. Two solstices ago, I was grieving my daughter. Last solstice, I was grieving my mother. This solstice, I will grieve both while holding my new baby.

All we are ever guaranteed is an offering of the world as it is, suffering and joy and indifference. Tragedy does not happen to make us better. God did not kill my baby so I could become stronger. He did not take my mother to teach me a lesson.

Tragedy has only the meaning we give it, and so we must choose that meaning wisely.

Suffering makes us human. Being human is the only gift we are guaranteed. Grief is not a process, but a permanent experience. Grief is love’s last offering. We should run to it, rather than from it.

Last month, I was cleaning out my mom’s house and came across a pile of items marked for me. It included a statue of a mother with three babies, and a tiny handmade leather pouch. On the back, my mom had written an incantation about the power of dreams. And then she had written “Ember.”

She had no ability to write, read, or understand much of anything by the time Ember died. I have no explanation for this. All I can conclude is that it marked the last page of this eight-year chapter, permanently binding my mom and my babies, especially my Ember, together.

Time is an illusion. Sometimes it folds back on itself. Sometimes it seems not to exist at all. These past eight years feel as though they happened all at the same time. Maybe they did.