Part 1 of 2 I slit the edges of the package open without thinking, carelessly sorting mail and hanging up my child’s backpack at the same time. In the box was the pink fuzzy monogrammed blanket I had ordered from Pottery Barn the week before for my friend’s baby naming ceremony. Monogramed in loopy letters was the name: Joanna. It was the same name my patient had given the baby who had died in their arms that week after a traumatic birth. As I tried to quell sharp pricks of tears, I went into the other room to sit on my rocking chair, instinctively needing the repetitive soothing motion. I wanted to cuddle up in the soft blanket, holding it to my cheek, but recoiled from the name, once so musical, now a reminder of how cruel life can be.
I had seen the couple in treatment for a few years, as they underwent countless IVF and other procedures in an attempt to get pregnant. I accompanied them as they rode out vertiginous cycles of hope and despair: Would the acupuncture be timed well for her cycle? Would the new procedure take? Could they survive as a couple as the hormones she injected brought on bouts of emotional chaos? Would this be the time she became pregnant, or would it be another bitter disappointment? It felt a bit like spelunking, groping in the dark through a cavernous unknown. Few people understand how difficult #Infertility is, not just emotionally but bodily. They were committed to one another, but their bond was daily undermined by infertility. The therapy felt high stakes: either we’d together find the light or become permanently lost in the dark.
Six months into her pregnancy, they declared they’d made it through.
“I think we are cured,” she laughed, as we had our last session.
After years of treatment, of arguments, repairs, bursts of fragile hope ending in sadness, there was a whole new depth to their relationship. I felt invested in their pregnancy project, and immense joy for them when they passed the 3-month mark and made the move from the infertility clinic to a regular OB-Gyn. In that moment, I felt less like a therapist than a guide, reminding them that they were in it together, that turning toward one another when things were hardest was the only way through.
I saw a new side to them as her healthy pregnancy progressed. They had always sat in separate chairs in our sessions, but then they moved to the couch, his hand stoking her back occasionally as we spoke. There was a softness between them. I agreed that we had come to the end of our work together, an intense collaboration that felt satisfying and complete. They promised to send a baby picture when she arrived.
A few months later, the phone rang. It was his voice, frantic and shrill.
“She can’t get out of bed,” he kept repeating. “I can’t get her to move.”
I sat down heavily, my body tense. “What happened?” I asked him.
He paused for a long moment. “We lost the baby. We lost her—her name is-was-is-Joanna.” His voice was raspy and dazed.
I tasted metal in my mouth. “What can I do?”
“Can you come? I mean, here? She really can’t get out of bed.”
I arrived at their brownstone building and went up the stairs, acutely aware of the baby strollers and child-sized rainboots outside apartments as I climbed. I entered and felt a strange unease. I’d rarely spoken to them on the phone, never mind visited their home. Therapists don’t see patients in their homes, but there they were, sitting on the floor surrounded by the brutal reminders of the baby they never go to know. I sat down beside them.
“We don’t know what to do with all this,” the husband motioned to the piles of impossibly small onesies and newborn diapers stacked on the chairs. “We can’t even open that door,” motioning to the baby’s nursery. I tried to move as little as possible as he spoke, afraid that the wrong gesture might at any moment shatter their fragile equilibrium.
“And we can’t seem to go outside,” the husband said. “How is it that people are just acting normal? There’s this disconnect—it feels like this should be on the front page of the newspaper, that the world should be as altered as we are. But they are all the same. Life is just going on. Only we’re not the same.” Their knees touched, sitting next to each other on the floor. “What do we do now?”
I searched for an answer but had none. We sat in a weighty silence.
Eleven years have passed since Joanna died. I still wince when I hear that name called on the playground, or by a teacher in my daughter’s classroom. That name, Joanna, is for me buried, along with the tiny body who never heard her name.
Recently the wife called me out of the bl
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