stefanie norlin / essay
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Five Things I Know
1.
My uterus is shaped like a heart: curved and fleshy at its top, funneling downward to a point. A strip of tissue runs down its center and splits the cavity in two. My doctor told me not to worry, that our bodies were made to carry babies. So, I let myself imagine mine: thin translucent skin, her small body curled up in the hull of my organ. A tuft of reddish-brown hair at her crown, like her father. Long fingers and even longer toes. A full lower lip that quivers while she sleeps.
2.
There are more than 100 fertility-related acronyms people use online. Acronyms like TTC (trying to conceive) and FTTA (fertile thoughts to all) and the TWW (two week wait). I researched them when we started seeing our fertility specialist, again. Every other click through Google just provided more of what I couldn’t know. Would our embryo be healthy? Would there be complications? Could I carry a baby to term this time? Would my daughter have a sibling by the end?
3.
The coffee shop near Somerset mall opens at 5:30 am. Sometimes we’d stop there after early morning procedures. I remember lying back on the table after our last insemination, heels snugly fitting into stirrups, thinking about the split between one biography and another—between the right now and not yet, between those who were pregnant and those who weren’t and those like me, who were just waiting to see if it would happen.
I learned in bible study years ago that in Hebrew, one of the words for “waiting”—qavah—means to hope or look towards something with eager expectation. But there are many other Hebrew words for waiting, probably because there are many ways to wait. Another word, chakah, is better translated as longing, and comes from the root word chaqah, meaning to cut, pierce or carve into something. That’s what I’m experiencing: a type of longing that cuts away pieces of myself, a waiting that carves me into someone else.
4.
Some pregnancy tests can detect HCG as early as 10 days after conceiving. Usually, I didn’t test after our our infertility treatments, preferring to live within the possibility. It gave me an excuse to walk through the baby section at Meijer while grocery shopping, to run my hands over the soft ruffles of rompers and cuffed corduroy overalls. But since we’d decided to stop treatment after this cycle, I had to know.
The evening I saw those two faint positive lines for the first time, I sat on the couch under a pilled yellow blanket, folded hands resting over an invisible belly, and watched my husband and daughter hang homemade ornaments on the Christmas tree. We put Patty Page on the record player and listened to her low voice threading through the house. And we waited.
5.
No one knows for sure why an embryo stops developing. Two days after we decorated for the holiday, I started bleeding. Five days after that, a blood test indicated that my pregnancy was “inconclusive.” In the months afterward, I continue imagining this baby I’ll never meet, sometimes waking up in the morning, my arms tingling. Wisps of curly hair tugging at sleep’s corners.
Stefanie Norlin (she/her) is a poet and essayist in metro Detroit, MI. Her work, which explores themes of grief, mothering, and maternal heritage, has been featured in The Kenyon Review, Catapult, trampset, and more. A two-time recipient of the Tomkins Award, she also co-founded the Detroit Writer’s Collective, where she facilitates an active bi-monthly critique group and additional programming. She is currently working on her debut collection of poetry. Learn more at stefanienorlin.com.