All Undue Time

Remembering my sweet #MizukoBean whose undue date was this day six years ago.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a 6-year-old boy, my genetic child. Would he have looked like me? Would I have recognized other features from my family of origin in his little face and body?

Yesterday I toured a kindergarten classroom, where V will probably go next September. I gulped back the urge to cry. I was overcome with my luck at having this child. She is not of my body, but she is from my body. And as far as love goes, it doesn’t matter where she came from, only that she is here.

I have an almost-5-year-old girl and almost-1-year-old twins. (So lucky!) but I think of how I do not have a 6-year-old boy. I buried him in the earth of this peace lily 6.5 years ago. The only time it ever flowered was on the eve of my due date. It was perhaps the greatest symbol of hope that I—still reeling from a diagnosis of “even IVF with your own eggs wouldn’t work”—could have received.

In 2013, I didn’t know how much I could love a child that didn’t come from my own DNA; I could only trust the process. I trusted and hung on. But I refused to by maternity clothes until it was indecent. I didn’t buy a crib until I was 28 weeks. I trusted, but I couldn’t believe that there would be a living child, not after everything I’d been through. I nearly died giving birth, but I trusted my Ob to deliver the child that we had all worked so hard to bring earth side. The bleeding stopped. The wound began to heal. And then she was here, a real, living baby who gulped furiously from my leaking breasts. Looking at her in my arms, ashen from blood loss, I understood right then that I couldn’t love a genetic child more. I had almost given my life for her, and I would absolutely die for her.

I used to wonder how and why I would have got pregnant spontaneously with my own eggs. The chances were minuscule. What was the point? After V had arrived, I found my answer: To give me the strength to continue, and to pave the way for egg donation.

Enough time has passed that I can see Bean’s legacy is love. Genes don’t matter. Only love does. I have three kids thanks to an egg donor and a flourishing peace lily. This year, there is still no flower—instead, three new baby plants at its base. It’s like a wink from Bean: “Hey, sibs. I’m still here.”