Howling at the moon: How I released chronic stress from parenting and secondary infertility
One afternoon, I was riding the subway with my young son dangling from a baby carrier when a stranger beamed at him and approached me, asking, “How old is your baby?” When I answered that he was 9 months old, she became elated and said, “Isn’t this just the best age?” I smiled, nodding, yet internally gripped with the fear that this might actually be the best age.
As a baby, my son was lovable and engaging but cried nonstop: He was tongue-tied, moody and preferred a 2 a.m. playtime. At 1 year old, his crying fits went from trying to terrifying. His silent cry often resulted in him holding his breath until he passed out and had a seizure. The first time it happened, I had just exited the subway to find my unconscious son being loaded into an ambulance. As I held him on the ride to the hospital, the EMT took out a small pin and said, “I’m going to prick him in the toe, and he should wake up. If he doesn’t, that’s a little concerning.” He regained consciousness twenty-two minutes later, nursed for a few minutes and fell asleep for two hours.
That’s how the second and third years of his life went. Despite us frantically blowing in his face, these breath-holding episodes happened on the plane, on the street in Brooklyn, on my in-law’s carpet, at a birthday party and in many other equally inconvenient places. He was unconscious for shorter periods as he got older, but the seizures lasted longer, and our gray hair grew faster. Finally, at age 3, the episodes stopped. Coincidentally, that was also the age he started sleeping through the night.
Frayed and weary, yet relieved and rejuvenated, we decided maybe it was time to try for another baby. To no one’s surprise, two years of chronic stress left our attempts to conceive again fruitless. We got all the tests, resulting in a diagnosis of unexplained secondary infertility. I tried everything: changing my diet, yoga, meditation, taking herbs, acupuncture and Mayan abdominal massage. I even tried a V-steam—in case you’re unfamiliar, that’s where you squat over a steaming pot, while someone rubs your shoulders. Yup, yikes.
Our doctor suggested intrauterine insemination (IUI) to help boost our chances. Just as we were about to start the process, a trip to Miami proved fruitful and we were finally pregnant. I was thrilled. However, at 9 weeks, my symptoms began waning, and a feeling of impending doom arrived. At 10 weeks, I went to my sister-in-law’s baby shower only to find out that a family member had let the cat out of the bag, and everyone already knew I was pregnant. The next day, an ultrasound confirmed my fear: no detectable heartbeat.
The loss threw my body out of sync for a long time, but eventually, we resumed trying to conceive. A year later, again, just before we were about to embark on fertility treatments, I was pregnant. This time, I knew within 6 weeks that it wasn’t viable.
That summer, I was inseminated twice with my husband’s sperm, to no avail. After discovering the news the second time, I knew I needed a break. A friend mentioned the “Wild Woman Fest,” a five-day camping retreat in the woods with 75 women, where, apparently, there might be some howling at the moon. In August, I headed upstate, not knowing what to expect—or even how to set up a tent.
The return to my body was exactly what I needed, especially as someone who often leads with logic. I danced out the stress and panic of those early years with my son’s seizures, wept over loss with many other women and I got an energy treatment, during which I was flooded with visions of purple flowers. We circled and pulled “goddess cards”— like Tarot Cards, but with a feminist twist and sans the impending doom images. I chose the card Goddess Maeve, the goddess of fertility. It read, “Make peace with your womanly cycles.” I made peace and found acceptance—I was finally OK with rewriting the future I had always imagined.
As I left the closing ceremony, I stopped in the outhouse, where I discovered I had gotten my period. It was the first period in years I wasn’t floored by, and, ironically, it was my last before conceiving. When I arrived home, all those purple flowers bloomed around my house. The last two Aprils I had lost babies, but that April, they both arrived: my goddess Maeve and her identical twin sister, Foster.
