Michaella Thornton: The Grade AA, Beautiful, Golden Embryo of My Dreams

When Michaella Thornton shares her struggles with infertility with her bachelor farmer father, his response stuns her.

Michaella A. Thornton's essays and flash prose have appeared in New South, The Southeast Review, The New Territory Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and a University of Missouri Press anthology, Words Matter: Writing to Make a Difference (2016). She is also a staff writer for The Common Reader, "a journal of the essay," at Washington University in St. Louis. She loves her almost two-year-old daughter Lucinda, all the cannoli, Hall & Oates, and Jo Ann Beard.

This story originally aired on Nov. 23, 2018, in an episode titled “Parents“.

Story Transcript

My husband Brandon and I got married later in life.  We met in our early thirties and we didn’t get married until our mid-thirties, and this is like later in life by Midwestern standards, okay, folks.  Just so you all know.  Other places in the world it’s not a big deal. 

So when we got married we’re like, “All right.  This is awesome!”  And we’re like, “Let’s have a family.”  We’re like, “Yeah!”  And that’s the really fun part, right?  The practicing to have a family part.  The sex, right?  That’s good.  That’s really good.  But after a year of really, really awesome good, unfettered, fun times, I started to kind of get really nervous and really fearful and really kind of like, oh, fuck, what’s going on?  Is there something wrong with me? 

Mind you, I’m not the kind of person that’s like I’m tying my worth to my ability to have a child.  It’s never been my gig.  It’s never been my thing.  But I started to get really fearful and, I don't know if you guys are like this, but I go to that darkest, deepest ‘what if’.  And as I’m there in that darkest deepest ‘what if’ and we tried for a year and nothing is happening, I finally get the ovaries to call a reproductive endocrinologist. 

I meet with her.  My husband comes with me.  It’s one of those awkward moments that you feel like maybe a Coen brother film shit like option.  Oh, wait.  They did in Raising Arizona. 

But so you're there in the office and then they say okay, we’re going to refer you to have an HSG.  An HSG is this test where they have this radiographic dye and they put it through a catheter and it goes through your vagina, through your cervix, which is like this little beautiful donut, and boom, it illuminates all your lady bits.  And you can see if there are any problems with your uterus or your fallopian tubes and it’s really trippy.  I mean, you don’t expect to see that part of you on a screen ever.  Like there's a lot of things you can watch online now but that’s not one of them typically. 

So I think, “Oh, this is no big deal.  This is like flushing a car’s break lines.  This is something I've seen my father do.”  And so I’m like, “I can do this.  No problem.  I’m a boss lady.  I’m going to go in there and do this by myself.” 

So I go and there are, I kid you not, three male doctors, one of whom I think is a resident and they're the gentlemen that are down with the bit in this area, and there's the one that’s telling me in very monotone this is what we’re doing next.  I’m on this stainless steel table and my bare ass is cold and you’re angling your hips in the most vulnerable of positions and, oh, by the way, I start to realize, “Oh, my God.  They're going to see if there's a problem.  In this moment, when I’m in this room with these three men, none of whom know me or have had sex with me, they're going to tell me what my problem is and why I can’t get pregnant.” 

And I start to tear up because you realize in this moment oh, this is real.  We’re really doing this. 

The resident just grabs my hand which, bless his heart, someone taught him good bedside manner.  And he starts asking me about baseball and about weather and what I do for a living and I’m trying not to hyperventilate and answer his questions at the same time.  Then the other two business-end gentlemen are saying, “Oh, the dye is flowing through.  I don't see any blockages.  Everything looks healthy.” 

At that moment I squeeze the other resident’s hand even tighter, like probably really tight, and I just kind of sigh this huge exhalation of breath.  They leave. 

A nurse’s aide comes in and helps me clean up.  Then when she leaves I allow myself a moment to cry.  I just thought, Jesus, if this is the first step to trying to have a baby with science, I’m in for one hell of a ride.  Like seriously. 

So I walked out of that room after I took my ibuprofen and just left. 

One of the things that’s so difficult to explain about infertility and loss is that it underscores your mortality.  More than anything, you don’t really know what you're missing until you don’t have an opportunity to do it or have it.  So I was watching my friends having babies and I felt this not jealousy but sorrow.  Here, me and my husband were ready, ready to have a family, loving and kind and we had the resources to bring a child into the world but it wasn’t happening for us and we felt left behind. 

So as we’re going through this, we start going through more and more of a wait.  We have a miscarriage.  We have two failed intrauterine inseminations.  For the uninitiated, it’s what the sexy talk of artificial insemination.  People often talk about turkey basters, which is actually inaccurate.  I need you to all know that no turkey basters are involved. 

We have timed-sex craziness.  Anyone, it’s like, “My ovulation.  I’m ovulating.  Wooh!”  That’s not sexy talk, just so you know.  It doesn’t really make men real excited. 

I was on a drug called Clomid.  It is by the devil.  If you're not familiar about Clomid, it is an ovulatory drug that made my husband want to dump me in a lake. 

And so finally he said, “Let’s get a second opinion,” because at this point we've been trying for two-and-a-half to three years and still no bambino.  So we get a second opinion and this doctor who’s very compassionate and thoughtful says, “Okay, your diagnosis is diminished ovarian reserve.” 

And you're like, “Okay.  What does that mean?”  It means I don't have a lot of eggs, folks.  There's not a lot of possibilities here.

So we’re like, “What do we do next?” 

She's like, “If you want a biological baby, you need to do in vitro fertilization, IVF.”  The big guns of reproductive medicine. 

So I’m like kind of in this bittersweet Zen zone because at least I have a diagnosis.  There's a reason for why I’m not getting pregnant, why we’re not getting pregnant.  And also great.  It’s not because I can’t relax.  I can’t tell you how many times people will say, “You just need to relax.”  Let me just say to you that’s the shittiest advice to give to anyone going through a stressful situation.  Please write that down.  I know Zack said not to but, seriously, it is the worst advice to tell someone going through a hard time. 

So I realized let’s go for this.  Now we've got next steps.  But convincing my husband was another process, was another story.  So I said to him, “Why wouldn’t we try this?  Why wouldn’t we do this?” 

He said, “Kella, it’s not that I don’t want to have a baby with you.  It’s not because I don’t love you and I don’t think this is good.  But what if it’s just not meant to be?”  Like very fatalistic. 

And I said, “Why would you say that?  IVF is a door.  Why would you not open it?” 

And he said, “It’s just a lot of expense, it’s going to put your body through hell and back and it possibly won’t work.” 

And he's right.  Two-thirds of IVF cycles do not work on the first time. 

And I said, “Yes, it’s still worth it,” to the person that waxes poetic about science. 

But despite all the medical advancements in the world, if the one you love loses hope, it’s hard.  So in thinking about this I thought it would be a great idea to tell my dad what we’re up to. 

So my dad and I are at a diner because we bond over not just cattle but also greasy spoons.  I've ordered him a vanilla milkshake and I’m drinking it and I’m telling him, “Dad, it’s taking a little bit longer but, you know, we’re thinking about some other options.” 

And my dad says in the most tone-deaf way of trying to comfort me, “Well, sometimes genetic lines just die out.” 

And I feel the frozen sweet cream of this milkshake go down my throat and I think he just doesn’t get it.  He doesn’t understand.  He has no earthly idea how hard his words hit me.  And I just think he doesn’t get it.  He doesn’t know what to say. 

So I said, “Dad, we’re trying IVF.” 

And he said, “Well, try whatever experimental process you want to try.” 

I kind of recoiled at the word ‘experimental’ because I’m like, okay, man, this has been used, IVF, in the United States since 1981, two years after my birth.  So at this point this is a thirty-five-year-old medical procedure.  This is not experimental. 

And so I’m asking myself, “Are you going to refer to my child if I have one as an experiment?”  I’m really, really wondering about that. 

Finally, I convince my husband.  He's on board.  We’re ready to rock and roll.  It’s June 2016.  At this point it’s been three years of us trying to have a baby.  I’m also not really being super open about it largely because, for some people, especially in this day and age with social media, it’s really natural to share your progression to want a family, whether it’s through biology, adoption, surrogacy or reproductive medicine.  But for me, I was pretty much a closed book.  I felt like my grief was amplified by not getting to that point yet. 

So here we are, we’re doing this procedure.  We’re ready to rock and roll.  If you're not familiar with IVF there's a lot of medication involved and so much so that I have to take it for a month-plus before they can retrieve my eggs. 

So the doctor’s office gives me a color-coded calendar that they update frequently and I have daily bruising injections and a host of different types of hormones, some to suppress, some to encourage ovulatory conditions. 

So we do it.  We retrieve five eggs because, remember, I have diminished ovarian reserve.  I’m not a super producer.  I’m not like eggs, eggs, eggs everywhere.  It’s just five, man.  Five. 

And of those five, three fertilized.  So you're like… any math people here, you're like, “Whoa.” 

Three of those fertilized eggs, only two make it to day five, and five-day embryos are known as blastocysts.  They're like the holy grail of awesomeness.  Like you want the five-day embryos.  They're the ones that are going to be much more likely to implant.  So of those two, one is really badly fragmented.  That leaves one. 

But the heavens part and this is the Grade AA, beautiful, golden embryo of my dreams.  And so my skilled and super compassionate reproductive endocrinologist implants this one - nothing left, remember – one beautiful blastocyst into my uterus on July 28 of 2016 and then I wait, we wait. 

We wait for approximately two weeks.  I get blood work.  The first test says you're pregnant.  I don't believe anything yet.  Second test, still pregnant.  Still not really believing.  Because if you've gone through infertility and loss you're like I'll believe it when I see it. 

So almost a month later I go to the doctor’s office with my mom.  My husband had a work trip he could not get out of.  And this time I’m holding her hand and not some strange resident’s hand.  And this time on the screen we see this beautiful, flickering, teeny tiny, like the size of a poppy seed heartbeat.  And then the reproductive endocrinologist turns up the volume, like “phump” and you see and hear like the whoosh of the ocean.  That’s the heartbeat. 

It’s like making contact with another world.  I just lose it.  I start to cry.  Cry and cry and I keep saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” 

But I wish I could say that was like my ‘Wooh!’ congratulatory I've made it.  I’m pregnant.  But you know, it never felt like I was in the safe zone through my whole pregnancy.  I was never the chick in that prenatal yoga class who wore a t-shirt that said, “I’m so pregnant.”  I didn’t buy maternity clothes until I was twenty-two weeks along because I thought something could happen.  I didn’t want a baby shower until she arrived.  So I think that’s one of the first lessons of becoming a parent, especially after infertility.  Nothing is a given. 

So my dad and I are back at a greasy spoon, this time we’re not debating the Me-Too Movement or why my father thinks soccer is a socialist sport.  True story, by the way.  This time my seven-month-old daughter is sitting in his lap and he's feeding her scrambled eggs and he keeps calling her Baby Kella because she has a passing resemblance to her mama, and he is smitten.  I mean, he is soft, he is cuddly.  The gruff and the direct exterior that he exhibits with me is not on display.  There's no talk of cattle. 

We’re drinking our coffee and enjoying each other’s company and there might be biscuits and gravy and I say to my dad, “You know, dad, I think sometimes I just feel like I have all my eggs in one basket.” 

And he said, “You know what, Kella?  It doesn’t matter if it’s one or four.  You'll always feel that way.” 

And I thought, “Yeah, I’m starting to get this.”  I’m starting to understand a little bit where my dad is coming from. 

And by the way, my daughter’s name is Lucinda.  I named her after my father’s grandmother and her name literally means graceful illumination.  My daughter’s existence has shown a light on so many things in my life, but especially in terms of thinking about my relationship with my dad. 

I have to think what it must have felt like to hear your child tell you about a challenge that you have nothing to offer in terms of guidance, in terms of understanding.  I think about how perhaps the thing that he really struggled with wasn’t that genetic lines are going to die out potentially but that his own genetic line is going to end, that his own mortality awaits. 

And so I make this moment in my mind while we’re in this little diner and I look at my daughter and I make a silent promise to myself.  I say to her, “You are not your ability to procreate.  You are loved and you are whole.”  Thank you.