Puking Rainbows
I was failing as a woman. My partner and I had been on the hellish roller-coaster ride of infertility for over three years and I was still not pregnant.
I wanted to conceive naturally, and to that end we had tried everything. We experimented with every sexual position imaginable, having obligatory sex every day for a week (not as good as it sounds). I had acupuncture, uterine massage, and ate only coconut oil and leafy greens. I gave up alcohol and sugar, then gluten and dairy and anything else that gave me a modicum of pleasure.
A Cuban shaman rubbed an egg over my belly, only to tell me that I would never carry a baby there. A nutritionist prescribed ground pig ovaries and copper pellets. I meditated, visualized, built baby altars and performed magic spells by the light of the moon. Psychics and healers told me there was a child waiting in my auric field. I saw her myself, nestled in a pink cloud. I swam laps on my back at the large pool at a nearby university and talked to her in my mind, and she talked back. Okay, maybe the stress and depression over the years was taking its toll and I was going crazy. Or, maybe my Baby was out there, waiting too.
Nothing in my experience brings on more well-intentioned, totally insensitive, unsolicited advice than infertility. Women would say, “You just have to relax.” Men would say, “Well it’s fun trying, right?” to which I wanted to scream, “No it is not fun, idiot!”
Following many friends’ advice “to just go on vacation and get drunk,” my partner and I went to Mexico and drank copious amounts of tequila…staying just sober enough to have sex for ten days. Nada.
Desperate, we scraped together enough money to try an IVF procedure. I really didn’t want to do it—I wanted to conceive naturally, goddamn it!
I took the hormones dutifully, but had bad dreams about it, and ultimately the IVF was canceled due to medical reasons. Secretly relieved, I waited for my period so we could try again. It was late. I chalked it up to the hormones I had taken in preparation for the IVF. After a week, I rummaged in the bathroom drawer and got out one of the dreaded “pee sticks.” I’d sworn off over-the-counter pregnancy tests—they had proved addicting, expensive, and heartbreaking. Unwrapping it, I went through the motions and then forgot about it until an hour later when I found it laying on the kitchen counter. I squinted…there was a faint second line.
Oh my God, there was a visible line in the positive window! I began to tremble, my eyes swelling with happy tears, my body shivering with bewilderment and overpowering hope.
What followed were the greatest weeks of my life. I was pregnant, it was the holidays, everything made sense again, I was a woman, I had had faith, I had triumphed, I would be a Mother. At eight weeks we saw a heartbeat. We told our families. We experienced boundless joy! I had conceived naturally—and of my canceled IVF procedure, I thought, “Everything happens for a reason.”
This was followed by the worst week of my life. The day before New Year’s Eve, I miscarried. My body shaking again, now with overwhelming fear, sadness, and heartbreak as I watched the blood swirling around my ankles in the bathtub. Crying and screaming out loud, “Nooooo!” I prayed to stop the flow of my hopes and dreams spiraling down the drain.
I dragged myself out into the gray January afternoon and braved the health food store for the first time since our loss. In the cereal aisle, I stood holding a box of the “healthy” version of Honey Nut Cheerios, and stared at the cartoon animals that danced on the box, tears triggered by their cute faces. I kept looking at the box, blinking the tears off my lashes as they rained down onto the dingy linoleum. Grief sneaks up on you in unexpected places. I wished the woman lingering next to me would get her cereal and go.
She touched my arm lightly and quietly asked, “Are you okay?”
I looked and recognized a woman whom I used to see regularly in a yoga class. A yoga class I had quit going to because the teacher had become pregnant, and the sight of her growing belly caused me pain between the poses. I began to sob, my guard down, and whispered, “ I had a miscarriage.” She dug in her purse, fished out a crumpled Kleenex to stem the tears that flowed from my face, and touched my arm again.
“God works in mysterious ways,” she said quietly.
“Why does God want to kill my embryos?!!” I retorted in my mind. But I was crying and vulnerable and stayed silent.
Unsure of herself, she began again, “There is a divine plan….”
I shook my head at her, frowned, and, clutching the cereal box, I walked away.
Muttering “I’m sorry,” she backed uncomfortably around the corner, knocking some cake mix off the end cap. I pulled out a wadded-up bandanna from my pocket and blew my nose. Feeling like I might throw up, I remembered a cartoon I had seen of a little pink pony puking up a rainbow. I was struck at the time by the weird juxtaposition.
I felt in that moment that I was gagging on her words, on the idea that a terrible thing that had just happened to me would be justified in the grand scheme of everything happens for a reason.
A divine plan made no sense to me anymore. I wanted to just hurl up this New Age concept in a giant rainbow puddle in the middle of the breakfast foods aisle.
“Don’t take away my right to feel this pain—get your granola and go, lady!” I shouted inside my head, and had to laugh a little at myself as she was now long gone, yoga pants and all, probably off to brighten somebody’s else’s day.
About the Author
Ellenora Cage is a filmmaker, poet, and photographer who has turned her lens on fiction and memoir in the last few years. She’s published three chapbooks of poetry, performing in the New York City poetry scene at St. Mark’s Church, La Mama, and Nuyorican Cafe. Her short story, “The Sound of Snow,” was published and made into a podcast by The Strange Recital in summer of 2019. A short memoir piece, “Tangier,” was recently published by Narrative Magazine.
She holds a BA from the University of Colorado in film, theater, and photography and was the recipient of a MacDowell residency for film. She lives nestled at the foot of Overlook Mountain in Woodstock, New York.
Related Posts
An Ode to People →
Joni Mitchell →
My Sweet Aunt Lotus →
3 Responses to Puking Rainbows