“Does red hair run in your family?”
It’s a question I’m asked every time I venture outside with my daughter.
The bold side of me longs to snarkily reply, Well, red hair is a recessive gene, so it would have to, wouldn’t it?
Most people, it would seem, don’t understand what a recessive gene is. If they understood that the gene for red hair has to be present on both genetic sides—a copy from each (traditionally, at least) parent—then perhaps they would be confused by my emphatic, Nope!
I got a crash course in genetics when I learned that my eighth chromosome (the eight largest) is inverted, meaning the middle section is flipped 180 degrees: if you think of a chromosome as a barcode, instead of reading ABCDEFG, mine reads A-FEDCB-G. In practical terms, this means that I am genetically unstable, unable to create embryos that grow into babies. With my own eggs, I’m doomed to miscarry over and over again.
Scrambled DNA barcodes aside, with my Irish heritage I probably do carry the red hair gene. But my daughter didn’t inherit her flaming locks from me—she got one copy of the gene from her dad, and the other from our egg donor.
Most people conceive with the help of only one other person, but I am a mother thanks to many people. An embryologist injected 28 sperms from my husband into 28 eggs from our kind and generous egg donor. Six days later, a reproductive endocrinologist transferred two embryos into my uterus. After months of invasive tests, trans-vaginal ultrasounds, and blood draws, it was confirmed I was pregnant. Months of painful injections and messy medications followed. That summer, I was diagnosed with a placenta disorder and was monitored closely by a team of ultrasound technicians. Eight months after transfer, my daughter was born, safely guided through my abdomen by my Ob/Gyn’s hands. The same hands which subsequently worked for hours to stop a massive hemorrhage and save my uterus—the only part of my reproductive system that works—and, ultimately, my life.
The writer Elizabeth Stone said: “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
Everyone agrees that parenting is hard. But pregnancy and parenting after reproductive trauma is an untamed beast. In some ways, the hardest part of the ride is over. A few are able to ride bare-back into the sunset without a backwards glance; but most of us regularly wrestle with the bucking.
We have to remind ourselves that it’s okay to complain about our hard won pregnancy. That it’s to be expected that pregnancy and birth announcements still knock the breath out of you. That it’s possible to be simultaneously delighted that your baby is healthy, and anxious because of miscarriage, infertility, giving up the genetic connection, and a traumatic birth.
We parents after reproductive trauma remind ourselves that the joy of holding our beautiful, precious baby we fought to have is so great that we’d experience every last damn bit of pain all over again to have them, because we love them that much.
And sometimes we do do it all again — the scores of injections that bruise and welt, the invasive medical procedures that sting and burn your insides, the hurdles of disappointment that we barely clear; the suffocating shame, the dejected rage, the screaming grief; and the PTSD that grips your throat with each pregnancy or birth announcement — and pay the eye-watering sums of money to an infertility clinic or adoption agency for a mere chance — there are no guarantees — at adding to our family. We learn to be patient. Outwardly, we grit our teeth and smile. In private, we mourn incomplete families. In time, we move on from what could have been, and learn to accept what simply is.
Sometimes our journey brings a new understanding. Everyone assumes I had sex and got pregnant with my daughter and that I delivered her vaginally with no issues. Everyone assumes she and I share the same genes. I never realized that parents via adoption and surrogacy must experience similar assumptions too.
So we rely heavily on others like us — people we may have met only online, but whom we consider good friends — to tell us it’s okay to break down and cry. That reproductive PTSD is real. That all these complicated feelings are what makes us normal parents.
Except we’re not normal parents. Normal parents are our well-meaning friends and families, people who make babies the old-fashioned way and are able celebrate others’ joyful pregnancy and birth announcements. Normal parents are the strangers in the store whose innocent question about your baby’s hair reminds you that you couldn’t pass on your own DNA. Normal parents are the fertile population that doesn’t understand that having a baby cures childlessness — but not infertility.
We parents of reproductive trauma are caught between two groups: We can’t fully relate to those who conceived effortlessly, but nor do we quite fit in with those still trying so hard to overcome their childlessness, or accept it.
Four years into this motherhood gig, I look at my copper-haired daughter with a mixture of awe and affection. Though she is not of my body, she came from my body. She is the little piece of my heart that wanders the earth outside of my body.
In a different way, I look at myself with a mixture of awe and affection. I am at once utterly broken and fiercely determined. I am in a minority of parents who conceived thanks to an egg donor, and in a further minority who are open about it. You’d never know just by looking at me, but I am parenting after pregnancy loss, infertility, and birth trauma. I have lost many battles, but I am winning the war. I am a reproductive warrior.
And even though I am proud of how my little family came to be, I’ve learned I don’t always have to give a layperson’s genetics lesson to a stranger in a grocery store who asks about my kid’s coloring. I’ve learned to simply smile and say, “She came out this way. Total surprise!”
Sue Adlam says
What a wonderful piece to read. I have one child from egg donation, wanted more but successive attempts failed because I was diagnosed with Hashimotos 12 months later and now know that this is likely to be the reason why I failed to conceive so many times after and had a miscarriage on the one occasion where I did. Your words sum up how it felt for me too. It is traumatic – but my now 14 year old daughter was worth all of it and I love her to the moon and back. Sue xx
Tianna says
Still on the battlefield but this article gives me hope and I will weave it into my armor. xoxo
Lauren says
Fighting in your corner, comrade! xoxo