How I Became a Mom
Shortly after our wedding we began thinking about becoming parents. Mine were young and I enjoyed having a mother and father who were energetic, athletic and hip. I wanted the same for my children.
The first pregnancy was around our one year anniversary. Took the home test and was so excited I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Which I sort of did. By the time the initial doctor’s appointment came around I was about six weeks pregnant. He told me something was not right with the pregnancy. A blood test revealed the hormone levels were too low. He said I would miscarry and we should try again. I was crushed. A week later when I was producing the weekend news at WCBS-TV his prognosis came to pass in the newsroom’s bathroom. It was an hour before air. With no choice but to continue producing the broadcast, I saved my tears for when I got home after midnight.
The second pregnancy I switched doctors as I was not thrilled with the first doctor’s matter-of-fact reaction to our loss. My mom accompanied me to the ultrasound appointment where we were going to see the tiny beating fetal heart of my first child and her first grandchild. I approached the table with great excitement and extreme nervousness. As the machine zeroed in on the fuzzy image the doctor looked concerned. Where was the heartbeat? What had happened to my baby? Again, our child was not to be. I was hysterical. The new doctor spoke to me as if I were a kid at a tee ball game. “You’ve had misses, don’t worry, you’ll have a hit”. The baseball analogy made me as angry as I was sad. The nurse and the receptionist cast their eyes downward as I left the office with my mother who tried to calm me down. She told me I was overreacting and it wasn’t life or death. “What do you mean, it IS life or death. That’s exactly what it is!” I cried.
It had been two years since the first loss and once again, I changed doctors. The third pregnancy seemed to be taking. But then a blood test revealed the hormone levels were not doubling every couple of days as would be expected. I was given hormone suppositories to improve the results. An ultrasound even revealed the tiny heartbeat. We saw the beginnings of fingers and toes. But the celebration was short-lived. Technically, I was still pregnant but the prognosis was that the fetus was not viable. There would be no second trimester.
This time, with the doomed fetus still inside me, I searched for the top miscarriage expert in New York. His name was Dr. Sami David. When I called to make an appointment and they heard I was in my twenties, they said no. They had a waiting list that was two years long and filled with women in their forties.
Then I pulled some strings. Since I was a local news producer who also produced medical stories I asked Dr. Frank Field, our Channel 2 News meteorologist and medical reporter to call the office. I got my appointment.
Dr. David reassured me that although this pregnancy was not going to survive, I would, and that most of his patients eventually had healthy babies. He would find the problems and fix them. Once the fetal heartbeat had stilled it was decided that they would remove the dead fetus and my husband would immediately rush the remains to a lab at Mt. Sinai Hospital just a few blocks away for extensive testing.
While the medical issues were being investigated I was becoming increasingly emotionally fragile. Co-workers who had become pregnant at the same times as me had delivered their healthy babies or were now sporting gorgeous growing bellies. Overwhelmed with grief and jealousy I would run into the ladies room at WCBS and break down in tears.
Writing a ten page letter to Dr. David speculating about every possible cause for my pregnancy woes from the computers in the newsroom to my Great Aunt Molly who had also miscarried helped me to feel I was tackling the crisis like a good journalist. Seeing a psychiatrist helped me talk through my emotions and gave me a safe space to grieve and heal.
Our doctor’s exhaustive testing revealed an infection that was cured by my husband and I going on a ten day course of intravenous antibiotics. Then I had surgery on my uterus to remove scar tissue and regrow the uterine lining. When I became pregnant again we were sent to Philadelphia and the Thomas Jefferson University Medical Center Pregnancy Loss Center where, at five weeks gestation I was given an experimental transfusion using my husband’s white blood cells. I will never know if in fact any or all of these treatments are what made the difference.
One thing I did on my own was to make a secret pact with God. “Let me have this baby and I will produce a groundbreaking series on miscarriage and help women everywhere have babies, and teach doctors and nurses how to speak with compassion to patients who suffer from pregnancy loss.” That was the deal. I worked hard on my end of the bargain.
During that November’s sweeps, the most important ratings period in news, “The Miscarriage Mystery”, my ten part series anchored by Dr. Frank Field aired to great ratings. It was nominated for a local news Emmy award. And while Dr. David helped tackle pregnancy problems, he did not deliver babies. For that, he introduced me to my brilliant, caring and completely empathetic obstetrician, Dr. Jonathan Scher. He had just written the book How to Prevent Miscarriage and was featured in the miscarriage series.
Two weeks after the series aired, my son Gregory’s birth was announced on the news.
To this day I have the shoebox filled with letters from women who saw the special reports, had healthy full term pregnancies as a result, and wrote to us to say thanks for the babies.
Twenty-five years, and three children later, I am finally able to write about how I became a mom. Grateful is not a big enough word to describe the feeling.
