I knew I was pregnant just a few days after I conceived. There’s no magic to it: there were only two possible occasions when it could have happened. And I could tell that something had happened: my body felt different. Nothing bad or strange, just… different. There was a fullness to it, something it never had before. I found out for sure a couple of weeks later. I remember feeling everything within a few minutes of looking at the little pee-stick with the extra line: elation, fear, wonder, shock. It was a Friday afternoon, sunny and warm, the air conditioner was running. A bit later I called A. at the studio and told him, and then we set it aside for a while because it was very early in the game, when nothing is certain yet, and one can’t at all count on ending up with a living, breathing baby.
One thing I remember thinking was how finally, after so many years of waiting, I’ll be a member of the club of motherhood. A. said something similar - it is finally happening for him, he doesn’t have to experience it through other people anymore. If all goes well - which is a thought I still append to everything I say, feel, or think about my soon-to-be-born child (who I hope will be, if all goes well, healthy, too).
About two weeks later my mother told us she had cancer. She’d suspected something for a little while by then but there were tests to be done before they knew for sure. It looked bad: there was a mass that could be coming either from her upper intestinal tract or her pancreas. No one wants to think the term pancreatic cancer, ever: it is very nearly a death sentence. And one does not want to think of it, most especially, when it might apply to her mother. My mother, who is not yet sixty, and with whom I wanted to finally share this amazing thing called motherhood.
For that is what I felt: that I will be assuming a birthright she’d passed down to me.
I am a pretty staunch atheist. But the ways of the universe are strange: the threat of death mitigated by the promise of new life. We weren’t going to announce my pregnancy for some time, not until it became a bit more certain. But when my mother told me of her cancer, I told her of my own happy little growth. Because she had to have hope.
From then on there were a lot of moments of synchronicity. Neither of us could travel to see the other, which was awful - my mother lives in Hungary with the rest of my family. My mother had surgery during which, among other things, a part of her pancreas had to be removed. It was no joke, that - a lot of the surrounding vascular system was affected. The cancer turned out to be between second and third stage but, very fortunately, it originated in the intestine and not the pancreas. Things were looking up (if it is possible to say such a thing under the circumstances).
And then the problems began. She had an embolism so she was given heparin. She was overdosed and started bleeding out and nearly died. No one told me while it was happening, only afterwards, when she was doing better. I had my own worries, you see: the fetus didn’t fare so well during the first-trimester screen: they measured an extended nuchal fold and finally the results came back 1 in 75 for Down syndrome. This really, really scared me, not least because it made me realize how hung up I was on this baby already. I felt utterly devastated. Not that I thought the existence of a potential being (my fetus) and an already-existing being (my mother) were quite commensurate. But I needed this little creature and the hope s/he carried and was terrified that it might disappear.
A human being is a miracle: so many things have to go right for one to emerge from the two cells that come together to form it. So many things could go wrong. I suppose it’s a testimony to our resilience that there are so many of us in spite of these risks. And I wanted that miracle.
I wound up having CVS - and everything turned out okay.
I got my miracle. And right about then, my mother began to get better too.
Since then, she started and finished a course of chemo. She responded well but it was really hard on her. For my part, I’ve not had any major problems. Moving around has been pretty uncomfortable most of the time but there’s been nothing I could seriously complain about, so I won’t.
Now I have somewhere around two weeks before my daughter will be born. My mother is well on her way to recovering from the chemo, subsequent CAT and PET scans have turned up nothing out of the ordinary, and her doctors have pronounced her well enough to travel. She’s arriving in 8 days and she’ll be staying for a month. Can you imagine anything more luxurious? My own mother here to reassure me, for a whole month. I couldn’t think of a better initiation into motherhood. I don’t care if she does nothing but sit on the couch, hold the baby sometimes, and tell me everything is okay.
I remember how she was with newborns: how awesomely competent with the two siblings whose birth I remember. One of them turns eighteen next week. I was in awe of her body for producing life. Experiencing her pregnancies with her and the births of my two siblings has always made it all seem very natural to me. My family’s a little bit of a matriarchy: we women in it trace our identities through our mothers. This Mother’s Day, right before my own impending motherhood (if all goes well), I feel a deep awe for the women I come from.
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