Happy Mother's Day to new mothers, to veteran mothers, to single mothers, to mothers who work outside of the home, to mothers who stay at home, to mothers who have lost their children, to mothers who are still waiting for their children to come to them. And happy Mother's Day to Dr. P, who has helped so many women become mothers.
Dr. P and her partner Dr. O were responsible for helping us get Nora and Milo. Today they held a party for all of the mothers and children they've helped create at their new clinic, which has been open for a little over a year now. Jake and I were the very first IVF at that new clinic, and we received extra-special treatment for being the first. Today when we introduced Nora and Milo to Dr. P and Dr. O, they said "Here is the reason we finished the lab on time! All of the construction workers know their names!" They were so happy to see the babies that were the result of all of that hard work.
The party included pizza, cake, a bouncy castle, photo keychains, and onesies that read "My parents spent over 30K in medical bills just to have me, and all I got was this lousy onesie". Nora and Milo weren't the only twins in attendance, and today we even met a lovely couple and their quadruplets. Quadruplets. Four babies. The mom was holding two of them, the dad was holding a third, and the 4th was in the stroller crying. I'm never going to complain about juggling two again.
Dr. P gave a little speech about how happy she was to be here with all of us, and how much it meant to her, and how gratifying it was to see everybody in happiness after having been through the hard parts of the journey with us. She started crying as she was saying that, and I think every single mother in attendance started crying right along with her. She was right. She really was there through all of the hard parts.
Dr. P isn't like any other doctor I've ever had, because she really seemed to care about me as a person. Beyond just my health. A victim of infertility herself, a veteran of IVF herself, she knew exactly what I was going through. She reassured me when I was beginning the treatment journey, encouraging me every step of the way by telling me how great everything looked with my health and how sure she was that I was going to get pregnant. After the first IUI failed, she held my hands while I cried in the examining room. After the second IUI failed, she cried right along with me. When I was scared, when I was in pain, when I was enduring endless shots and side effects, she called me up to see how I was doing, she told me at every exam how excited she was for me because she was sure the IVF would work, and she asked me if I had baby names picked out. When the day of retrieval came, she ran out to greet me in the waiting room and hugged me, so excited that the day had finally arrived. She and Dr. O were both with me in the operating room, along with Jake, and she never left my side. The night of the retrieval she called me at home to check up on how I was doing, and ordered pain relievers for Jake to pick up immediately so that I didn't have to wait until the next day.
Dr. P had cried right along with me through the failures and the dashed hopes, and she cried again the day I had my positive blood test. She was just so happy for me, and undoubtedly for the success they had experienced with their first IVF. When I was almost 6 weeks pregnant I visited her for the last time to do an ultrasound to see if we could detect a heartbeat. Dr. P had predicted all along that I would have twins. I was a nervous wreck before that ultrasound, because I was sure that we wouldn't find a heartbeat. I was sure that we would see an empty sac and nothing else. She stood next to me while Dr. O did the ultrasound and found not one, but two gestational sacs. He then found not one, but two beating hearts, and Dr. P held my hand while I started sobbing in relief.
What a tough job she must have. She has to go to work every day and face so many people's pain. She has to give bad news again and again, and the bad news will come far more often than the good news. So the good news must mean so much to her, and I understood why she got choked up at the party in the face of all of the happy, healthy babies all around her. Dr. P is a mother herself now to two little girls from Haiti, but even if she weren't, nobody deserves a happy Mother's Day more than she does.
No comments:
Post a Comment