Simone
by Jennifer Lang

“Mommy, am I your favorite?” four-year-old Simone asks while we’re snuggling on the sofa one day. She looks deep into my eyes, awaiting an answer.

“What makes you ask that?” I say, pondering if I subconsciously play favorites. 

“Because I’m the smallest and you love me the most, right?” 

I search for words…

It all started one September. I didn’t need a home pregnancy test to confirm my suspicion. I was with child – for the third time – a good year earlier than planned.

Unlike most of my friends who felt elated when they found out they were pregnant, I felt heavy. Weighed down with dread.  Any sense of enchantment with my first pregnancy was long gone. With the second, I had spent the first four months stuffing myself with Saltines only to throw up by 9 a.m. Then there was the pain – I despise needles, shots, the sight of blood and all things medical. Add the extra poundage and I found it difficult to navigate. Call me vain, superficial or even a sissy, but I have always been physically active and have resented losing my body’s agility and strength for 40 weeks.

If only Philippe could have a baby this time. In my pre-married life, I fantasized that by the time I was ready to have children men could also get pregnant. All women would do is push a your-turn-my-turn type button on our bodies, a product of scientific advancement. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. If my husband and I wanted another child, I would have to deliver.

“How are you?” Philippe asked during his routine call to check in from work one day toward the middle of my first trimester.

“Miserable. I threw up this morning and again when I changed Daniella’s diaper. And Benjamin won’t leave me alone long enough to make dinner. What else do you want to know?” I wanted him to suffer too.

“Do you feel better now?” he said, searching for something to say to stop my whining.

“What do you think?”

Poor Philippe didn’t know how to help me.

The uninvited hormones were invading my body and, for the first time, I was scared.

Fear settled into my body – my shoulders, my spine, and down the backs of my legs. Mostly, it was in my head. A month before I found out I was pregnant with Simone, my friend Susan* and her husband Alex had their second child, Jeremy. Her pregnancy was relatively easy with the normal ups and downs. But, something went wrong during delivery. The medical staff made a mistake. By the time they rushed her off to undergo an emergency cesarean section, her uterus had ruptured. The baby was deprived of oxygen for an unknown amount of time. While Susan was in surgery, the doctors and nurses attended to Jeremy to determine if there was brain damage and to what extent. 

Over the following days and weeks, I called, made meals and searched for words to comfort them. Susan referred to Jeremy as “damaged goods.” I didn’t know what to say. He couldn't swallow and needed to be fed through a tube in his stomach. I felt sick just thinking about it. With eyes that rolled to the back of his head, this little boy would never turn over, sit, crawl, stand, walk or talk. I shuddered at the sight of him. It didn’t matter who held or cared for him; Jeremy didn’t seem to know the difference.

Every time after I visited Susan, I went home and cried. I tried to share my thoughts and feelings with Philippe, but he didn’t understand. I constantly pushed back tears during our talks. It didn’t matter what he did or didn’t say to me. I became over-emotional, irrational at times. My heart ached for my friends, who had to maintain a sense of normalcy for their 3-year-old daughter. They were in such deep pain, wrestling with the unfathomable. All of our conversations eventually turned to Jeremy. Would he be better off in a facility where he could be cared for by professionals? Should they keep him at home with professional care, as well as a loving family? What would happen to their daughter? They wondered if their marriage could survive this tragedy. All I could do was listen. When Susan had Jeremy, her world fell apart. And I knew mine could too.

Midway through my second trimester, just when the experts say you’re supposed to feel better, I felt worse. The winter holidays were in full swing, but the mood at home was heavy. Philippe and I were fighting a lot – around friends, around my parents, even in front of the kids. Something was wrong.

I worried about our couple. I seldom slept through the night and my mind spun into the early morning hours. I awoke in a foul mood, un-rested and unsettled. I told Philippe we needed marital help. A few weeks later, we had our first appointment.
           
“Look at me!” I screamed. “I can’t believe I’m in marriage counseling and I’m five months pregnant. How could I be so stupid?” I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked back and forth on Dr. Plant’s couch. “How could we be so stupid?” I repeated, knowing if it hadn’t been for my spouse I wouldn’t have been there to begin with. Philippe sat stone-like beside me. The therapist handed me a box of tissues and I wiped my nose, trying to take a deep breath. The intensity of my anger shocked me. I was raw. Empty. Was it really us, Philippe and me? Or, was it those cursed pregnancy hormones taking me over?
 
Over the next few months, we discussed our power struggles over the kids and my feeling that my emotional needs were not being met. Neither one of us mentioned Jeremy. But it was as if his lifeless body was always sitting in the corner of that room. He was always there.

Early January, my doctor called. She needed to discuss the results of my AFP, the maternal serum screening. The test, she said, was found to be abnormal. Immediately, my body stiffened in fear. My mind went into the what-if mode: What if the baby had Down syndrome? What if Philippe and I didn’t agree about the what-ifs?

“I suggest you do an amnio,” she said, “and you and your husband will meet with a genetic counselor at the same time. Just to make sure everything is okay.” Okay? Throughout the past few months – since Jeremy’s arrival and since becoming pregnant – I had wrestled with an ugly feeling in my gut. We were tempting fate with this pregnancy. We already had two beautiful, healthy children. Sure, we’d always agreed on having three, but maybe this wasn’t supposed to be.

I called Philippe at work.

“Here’s the thing. I know what I can and cannot handle. If the amnio reveals some kind of abnormality, I’m ready to abort this pregnancy,” I said, even-toned.

Pause. All I heard was my breathing. 

“Listen, I’m not Susan, and you’re not Alex. We wouldn’t survive what they’re going through with Jeremy.”

“Can we talk about this later?”Philippe pleaded.     

For the few days that followed, I told my mother, my girlfriends, anyone who listened to me that I was ready to terminate this pregnancy if need be. I was not strong enough, nor was our marriage, to handle such adversity.

Nothing Philippe said swayed me. If the amniocentesis revealed a real problem it wasn’t meant to be. After enduring two pregnancies, two deliveries and another four months of nonstop nausea, I felt the decision was mine to make. As primary caregiver, I questioned my ability to care for three kids under the age of six. Especially if the one inside me was a Jeremy.

It took a solid week to receive the results of the amnio. I worked. I went to yoga.
I cared for my kids. And I tried my hardest not to think about it. Finally, the phone rang.

“Everything’s fine. You’re fine. The baby is fine,” the doctor said. “And it’s a girl! Congratulations!”

“So, that’s it?”

“Well, there is a higher-than-normal level of amniotic fluid, but nothing to worry about. We’ll continue to watch it. I’ll want you to do additional ultrasounds and fetal non-stress tests between now and June. Just to make sure the baby and the placenta are growing properly.”

“Does that mean I’m considered high risk?”

“No, nothing like that. You can relax. Everything is fine. I just want to be cautious. That’s my job.”

Still, worry continued to be one of my litany of woes: morning sickness monopolized my body; I was severely anemic; bad leg cramps awakened me in the middle of the night; my daughter Daniella acted like the devil incarnate. I wondered how I would make it through these next months.

As soon as Simone arrived, Philippe hovered over the doctors and nurses. They were speaking softly, conferring, as they examined every inch of her tiny body. That familiar stab of fear seized me. Philippe paced the room. His shoulders hunched. When they handed him the baby, he walked toward my bedside. He leaned down and placed her on me.

“Did you see her hands and feet?” he asked, shaken.

She had six digits – two big toes – on each foot and thumb joints that curved out at the knuckle. I swallowed. I nodded. As long as she was okay otherwise, I thought to myself. Our pediatrician arrived minutes after her birth to check out her lungs, heart and other major organs. Thankfully, they were intact, fully functioning.
 
“She’ll be fine,” I said calmly. Something in my maternal brain just knew she was okay. For the first time in months, I felt quiet inside. If it was only cosmetic, I could handle that. Surgery, they said, could fix it. My baby was here. Safe.
 
Finally, I let go of the pregnancy hormones, the fear, the rage, the resentment toward my spouse. Knowing this was our last, I said goodbye to all the I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-do-this-again sentiment. I was eager to give away all of my maternity clothes and baby boy clothes that I’d been saving over the years. I rested my head against the hospital pillow and my hair splayed out around me. I looked at Philippe, the man I had chosen as my mate nine years earlier, and at my baby. And I recalled my mother’s words of wisdom about marriage: stay together as long as the good times outweigh the bad. Marriage wasn’t easy. Maybe Philippe and I just had to work at it a little harder than others. It wasn’t our first time in therapy and perhaps not our last. I could deal with that unknown. As long as we were a family of five. 

Sitting side by side with Simone, I choose my words carefully. “Sure, I love you the most because you’re my only Simone,” I stammer, hoping it will satisfy my daughter’s need for answers. Does she know something? Something I can’t admit even to myself? I feel in my whole body what it took to get her here.
 
“Just like you love Benjamin the most because he's your only Benjamin. And Daniella because she's your only Daniella,” says my four-year-old sage.
 
“That’s right. You’re each my favorite in your own special way – and you, Benj, Daniella, Daddy and I wouldn’t be a family without one another.”

“Okay. Can you read “Today I Feel Silly,” Mommy? But, can I turn the pages this time?”

*Some names have been changed.

Jennifer Lang splits her time between freelance writing for magazines, writing her own stories, teaching yoga and playing Mom/Wife. A native of northern California, she and her French husband live in White Plains, NY with their three school-aged kids, who always ask her why she doesn't just write a book already. Over the past decade, her work has appeared in Alternative Medicine, Parenting, Parents, American Baby, Real Simple, Woman's Day and Car & Travel magazines, the San Francisco Chronicle and online at www.ducts.org. She is deeply indebted to a few writing mentors who have encouraged her to be more daring, find her voice and share it. The story "Simone" is based on a journal of her third pregnancy that she was commissioned to keep for BabyCenter in 1999.

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