Our little miracle

We were ready to give up on a second baby after a few miscarriages but we gave it one last try, writes Nick Bhasin

OUR first child came easily. My wife and I were enjoying a trip through Southeast Asia and well, a temple tour and a couple of four-hand Cambodian massages later, we were on our way to becoming parents. Life felt full with one child but we started to imagine what our son would do if something happened to us. Where would he live? Who would love him?

I pictured him stranded, bearded and alone like Tom Hanks in Cast Away. No friends. No family. Just the cruel face of a volleyball staring back at him with eyes that constantly admit what we all know to be true but rarely say out loud: That we all die alone.

So despite admonitions from articles that say you shouldn’t have a second child just to give your first child a sibling, we decided to give our first child a sibling. A full-time friend for our son. A saviour from certain desolation and a variety of personality disorders.

But by the time we landed at this potentially misguided conclusion, our son was 2 and we were rapidly approaching 40. Time was no longer our friend and biology was working against us.

Over the next two years, my wife had five miscarriages. Each miscarriage followed a pattern. The initial excitement of the positive pregnancy test, followed by deep anxiety over trips to the bathroom. Would there be spotting? Cramping? Was it OK to be that nauseated? Did we need to go to the hospital?

The seven-week scans became dreaded hurdles. I watched on a monitor as my wife’s belly was probed for a heartbeat that was never quite strong enough. The technician’s face would fall slightly and we all knew what was going to happen.

It was difficult to watch my strong wife repeatedly endure the emotional and physical pain of miscarriage. Each one broke her spirit just a little bit. My embraces, words of comfort and encouragement seemed less and less effective as hopelessness settled in.

Because we were able to get pregnant, our doctor said that it wasn’t likely that my body was the cause. But they did not know what was.

My wife had an imbalanced thyroid but that wasn’t necessarily the problem. She also had an iron deficiency but that wouldn’t have been the sole culprit either. Both of these issues were treated with medication — and for good measure, we added folate and CoQ10. My wife tried reiki. She attended a weeklong yoga retreat in Bali, returning with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

Still the miscarriages came — and with each one, an increasingly perilous emotional minefield.

Now, miscarriages are common; they are usually nature’s way of preventing an unhealthy baby from coming to term.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 10 per cent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage — and that number jumps up to more than 30 per cent for women over 40.

Yet they remain very private, painful, personal experiences that many people don’t discuss.

I was unprepared for the grief that followed the first miscarriage. That unmistakable, deep ache that lies beyond mere sadness. We had lost a family member. This was a place I had come to know very well when my mother died suddenly over a decade earlier. A place from which I thought I would never return.

I don’t recommend this approach for everyone but in order to deal with that grief (and the depression that followed), I had to detach myself from the thoughts that triggered extreme negative emotions. I practised living in the middle — no highs, no lows; no hope, no despair.

So with every miscarriage, I distanced myself more and more from the deep longing to have a baby. I stopped thinking of the foetus as a child or even as something with biological potential.

Of course, my wife didn’t have the luxury of that kind of detachment. She boarded the roller coaster of extreme hormonal and physical fluctuations again and again, opening herself up to the initial joy and eventual despair.

As a result, she found me extremely unsympathetic and we spent most of those two years on separate emotional islands, drifting apart, getting closer, drifting apart.

How long were we supposed to keep this up, enduring the nerve-racking trips to the bathroom, the tests, the bleeding, the screaming, the bouts of weeping?

I wanted another child. But I also wanted our life back — a life that wasn’t interrupted by death every few months. But as long as my wife wanted to keep going, to keep putting her body on the line, I didn’t want to suggest that we stop.

Couldn’t we accept how good things actually were for us? Or would we always focus on what we didn’t have? And how much more could my wife’s body take? Surely it was time to accept our family the way that it was — the three of us.

The Internet is full of stories from women who’ve suffered multiple miscarriages — but they tend to end in success and messages of encouragement (“I finally had a child. Don’t give up. It could happen for you.”).

Could we allow ourselves to stop when we had “only” five? When we couldn’t say we had tried everything? Wouldn’t we be quitting on our son and his chance to avoid eternal loneliness?

And so we decided that we would give it one more try. One last go. The final job before retirement, like at the beginning of a heist movie. We went back to Bali for my wife’s 40th birthday.

And now we have another son.

He’s now 2 and divides his time between being adorable and throwing himself to the floor screaming his head off when he doesn’t get what he wants. And he absolutely worships his older brother, who is now 7. He follows him around, copies his every word and gesticulation, and insists on sitting as close to him as possible at all times. They seem destined to love and care for each other long after my wife and I are gone, but just as I couldn’t control or predict whether we had miscarriages, I can’t control or predict my children’s future.

I know how lucky we are to have these boys. We didn’t think we’d be another inspirational “don’t give up” story.

We were ready to give up. And that would have been OK.

NYT