Punched in the Gut

I put off this doctor's appointment for a long time. I told myself that abnormal sperm analysis results were not the end of the world, that people still have children, that miracles happen. I told myself that we would be fine.

Until the doctor told me today that we would not.

We have a 2-3% chance of ever conceiving a child on our own. And no, that's not nothing - but if someone told you that you had a 2-3% chance of surviving a disease or a surgery, you'd feel like you were punched in the gut. Like you could scream to the skies about how unfair this is, how wrong, how very very very very stupid this all is, how unreal, and none of it would make a difference. None of it would change the numbers. Numbers don't lie.

He wasn't mean, the doctor. But he was realistic. I didn't cry in his office, though I know he could tell my eyes were brighter than they should be. I kept it together until I was in the elevator, and then I lost it. Because I walked in there thinking I could still be a mother just like other people, in the same way other people can, like a normal person, and I walked out knowing that I can't. I won't. I can still be a mother, but it won't be normal. It won't be a surprise. It won't be cheap. It won't be easy.

I've been using movie or television allusions a lot in this blog lately, which could mean a lot of things. But today I have had a scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral in my head. You know, after the guy dies at the wedding, and Hugh Grant and the girl who secretly loves him and their friends have to drag him into a side room while he's having his heart attack, and across the room his lover is completely unaware of the whole thing, totally, blissfully ignorant that his life, as he knows it, is slowly ending on the other side of the party. And then afterward, how Hugh Grant has to walk across that long, long room to tell him, and you see him, the widower, laughing gently at a joke being told, and you know - the way you know what is going to happen to Jackie Kennedy's pink suit in Dallas, the way you know that plane really is going to hit that building six years ago yesterday - you know what is coming. You know, but he doesn't. And you can see in his face that he doesn't, and that it's not real, it hasn't happened for him, until Hugh Grant has to tell him.

And then he does.

Beloved does not know what the doctor told me, because he was teaching all day and this is not the kind of thing you share over the phone. So all day, I am walking across that Scottish wedding reception, looking at his face - his blissfully ignorant face - and knowing that I have to tell him this, I have to tell him that we can't have a child the way most people do, and that the reason for this is because of him. I don't blame him. None of this is his fault. What happens to one of us happens to both of us, and I love him and I wouldn't trade him for a guy who could get me pregnant every nine months for ten years. (Good God, what a nightmare that would be.)

But this is hell to tell someone, and hell to hear, and I can hardly bear the fact that pretty soon I will have to leave work and drive home and all the way I will be walking across that room. And tomorrow we will have had this conversation, this horrible conversation, and we will not be the same as we are, as we were when I was waiting in that doctor's office this morning. And nothing I can say will solve it or take away from the fact that he is not fine. He is not okay. I am. He is not. I just don't want that to be the only thing he hears.

Surely this is a nightmare and I will wake up. All babies are miracles. I just never thought that ours would have to be a medical one.