It was a Tuesday afternoon when I realized my kids had early release from school the next day. Being a single mom and a public school teacher means childcare is always a struggle. Forget fun stuff–I use up my babysitter budget on things like getting my will prepared, or pap smears.

So I was stuck. Should I do the drop-in daycare thing? The boys…don’t love it, and of course, it costs money. I’d be paying a babysitter so I could teach. Should I take them to work with me? No, they’d be too distracting. Should I ask a family member or friend that works from home to stick them in front of their TV? It’s not that easy, and I didn’t want to bother anybody. 

And then I remembered, I could just take the day off. It’s always the last thing that occurs to me. I have tons of banked PTO, and if I took the day, I could use the morning to cross a bunch of shit off my to-do list, the shit that’s hard to do with two little kids in tow. I could go to the post office to return the faucet aerators that I ordered that turned out to be the wrong size! (In related news, being an adult is a huge rip-off.) 

Anyway, I put in for a sub and planned for my Day of Victory. As is true for many teachers, I have a second job–writing for Patreon and Slate magazine–and a third job–dogsitting. My current client, a sweet mutt named Jessie, had been eagerly investigating my compost pile, and that night, she woke me up at 2:00am with liquid poops. I let her out, wiped up the gross trail she left on my carpet, and collapsed back on my bed. Right when I was drifting off, maybe 15 minutes later, I heard the tippy-tap of her claws on the side porch and got up to let her in. At that point, there was no going back to sleep. I listened to a podcast for hours, and just when I started to get sleepy again and was rejoicing in the fact that I didn’t have to get up to go to work, I remembered another doggy-client was being dropped off at 6:15. 

The commotion of his arrival woke up my kids, and so that was it. I’d had maybe four hours of sleep. OK, well, my kids are 7; I’m no rookie–I’d caffeinate and power through. So that’s what I did. I got the boys ready for school, dropped them off, went home, and started absolutely decimating my list. I made my bed, I flossed my teeth–I like to write very small stuff on my to-do list because it keeps my momentum up. I did laundry. I cleaned stale French fries out of my car and surreptitiously recycled first grade artwork. 

Then it was time to make the rounds. I mapped out my strategy: hit the post office, swing up to donate stuff to the thrift store, vacuum the Cheeto dust out of the newly tidy car, then pick up the groceries and head home, all in time to get the boys off the bus.

The post office had a ten-minute line, and I stood there without having to entertain anyone with rock-paper-scissors or hiss at anyone not to lick the mailboxes. I returned the stupid aerators. Yes. Check. To the thrift store! 

But as I was leaving, I noticed a plasma donation place that had set up shop in the adjacent strip mall. Back in college, donating plasma was all the rage because you could go between classes and earn your drinking money for that night. I never actually did it. Too squeamish.

Shmrrty-shmrr years later, however, I’d been through pregnancy, where one suffers all manner of pokes and jabs and how’s-yer-mothers, and now I can get a blood draw with minimal drama. I still don’t crow with joy when I have to get labs drawn or watch enthralled as the blood leaves my vein, but if I stare at the wall and do some deep breathing, I’m OK.

Standing in front of this clinic with a poster in the window that said, “Earn $825 in a month!” I thought, “Eight hundred twenty-five dollars could pay for a lot… of pap smears.”

So I detoured from my Day of Victory. I walked in and slapped my ID on the counter. They handed me a folder and sat me in a cubicle with a computer to watch the consent video. 

The first part of the video was all about what they do with the plasma–make medicines, help people with hemophilia, and whatnot. Now I felt virtuous–not only was I padding my pockets, I was saving the world! So much Victory!

The next part of the video described the donation process. A needle is inserted into your arm. My stomach clenched a little bit, but I was OK. The blood is drawn out through a tube and routed through a machine that separates the plasma, and the red blood cells are sent back into your body. At that point, I noticed a burning sensation in my face. The rest of my body was cold, but my face was definitely aflame. The video went on, This process takes–and I’m thinking, what could it take, 10-15 minutes?–forty-five to ninety minutes. My head went swimmy, and my limbs felt numb. Then the talking head on the screen mentioned the volume of the draw. Up to 880 mL. My hazy brain was calculating–1,000 mL to a L, that’s half a 2L soda bottle. Uggggghhhhh. I realized at that point that I definitely needed to lie down or throw up or both, and I leaned out of the cubicle to look for a couch or a bathroom or a superhero. Nothing. I remembered the sweet cold air outside and knew what I had to do.

I grabbed my purse, glasses, and phone, stood up, and started shuffling to the front. The front door was in my line of sight. With every step I took toward it, it retreated into the distance. I told myself, Just get there, and kept trudging, but my vision was closing. My head was being flattened like in a cartoon. 

And the next thing I knew, I was staring at a fuzzy ceiling, my back against the cold tile. My head hurt. I had no idea how long I was out, but long enough for six people to have scurried out to hover over me. One of them had wheeled out a computer and blood pressure machine. They were saying, “Are you all right?” but I wasn’t. 

Two of them hooked my armpits and hoisted me into a chair. When I said I was gonna throw up, somebody brought a barf bag. I thought, This is the best barf bag I’d ever seen–plastic with a round frame to keep the opening from collapsing. (I was glad they were prepared. I assume this was the first time this had happened during the consent video, rather than the actual procedure.) I was pouring sweat, retching into the bag. I still felt so weak. And embarrassed.

The woman whose nametag said director told me firmly, “Stop crying.” 

Which I never in my life will understand. “Oh, are my silent tears disturbing you? Let me just turn them off.”

It took a full 45 minutes until I could stand up, at which point my sister arrived. In the car, I assessed the damage. I’d busted my left knee, the fingers of my left hand (but not my phone or my glasses–phew!), and clearly my head. I would have headaches for four days.

My sister wanted to take me to urgent care, but because we live in a capitalist hellscape, I insisted that she drop me at home. 

When I got there, my poor doggy client had shat in her crate and was delighted to be set free, shaking poop droplets onto my walls and floors. I got her and the crate cleaned up and finally lay down on my bed. So much for my Day of Victory.

I tell my high school students, “Write from your scars, not your wounds,” because otherwise there’s no growth, no lesson, no message. But this happened a month ago, and I’m still wounded. The headaches are gone, but my knee is still tender. So I don’t know what the takeaway is. Maybe, though, it’s that if I could clean up dog diarrhea without barfing or passing out, the universe was telling me to stick to my strengths.

**********

If you want to support my habit of not giving plasma, you can subscribe to my Patreon (and get exclusive posts) or just buy me a coffee, lunch, or rental property–my Venmo @Amy-Scott-83.

The first time a friend introduced me to someone as a single mother by choice, it tweaked my brain. It wasn’t by choice, I thought. 

But of course it was. It just wasn’t my first choice. My first choice would’ve been to make sweet love to my soulmate, resulting in a natural pregnancy that would bring forth one (1) adorable baby who slept through the night at three (3) weeks old. Two and three-quarters years later, we would bless our child with a sibling conceived in the same manner.

But at 38, I didn’t have a soulmate. I didn’t have a Mr. Right, or a Mr. Right Now, or even a Mr. Occasionally We Get Drunk and Bang on the Couch. I’d dated online–disastrously–for years. I’d met 

• the smart guy who danced tango but with whom I felt no sparks, 
• the guy who spent the whole date watching football on the screen behind me and later sent me Chapter 1 of his “erotic novel” (direct quote: “They increased the rate of stroking of their private regions”), 
• the guy who made me wish I carried pepper spray, and 
• the guy on dialysis who asked me to donate my kidney to him. He was kidding though. (Was he?)

There was a brief confusing affair with a Dutchman, and a humiliating revelation of romantic feelings to a longtime friend, who had recently broken up with his wife… and who would a few months later reunite with his wife. 

It was becoming increasingly clear I would conceive no babies, planned or accidental, from sexual congress. I wanted kids, and as much as the idea of adoption appealed to me, I also wanted to experience pregnancy. And that biological window was closing. 

So I decided to knock myself up. I went to a fertility clinic and an 80-year-old doctor from Eastern Europe told me how much insemination cost and the probability of success with each attempt. I said, “That’s a lot of dough for some pretty weak odds.”

He said, “Hyuman reprodyuction is remarkably ineffyicient.” 

But I was determined. I looked online at cryobanks. Despite the fact that you can sort for height, eye color, astrological sign(???), and celebrity look-alike, I decided I wanted to go with a known donor. But who?

The Dutchman I mentioned earlier–the brief confusing relationship–had a PhD in biology and was funny and reasonably attractive, so I invited him to coffee. “I’m considering single parenthood,” I told him.

Before I could even ask the question, he said, “Oh, I’ll give you my sperm. That kid’ll probably be a superhero.” It was great—so generous of him—and I sobbed into his collarbone as we said goodbye. 

Later, he called me. His father had reminded him he had cousin who was “mentally r******* due to a microdeletion on his 15th chromosome.” Other associated conditions with the microdeletion are autism; learning difficulties; emotion regulation problems; and bipolar disorder, which the Dutchman admitted he had. (My confusion during our short relationship suddenly made much more sense.)

I was still OK with using his sperm, but he wasn’t. With no other prospects, I went back to the cryobank’s website. It was so overwhelming. There were hundreds of profiles, and sometimes I thought about printing them all out, pinning them to a wall, and throwing a dart, but then I was like, Amy, be reasonable, so I did what anyone would do–I formed a sperm-selection committee of my friends. 

And we chose: 6’4”, blue eyes, atheist, post-doc in math and engineering. He was perfect. I wanted him to be my husband, but a vial of 10 million of his sperm would have to do.

A surly nurse explained that it was going to be like getting a pap smear except maybe more uncomfortable because they couldn’t use any lubricant during insemination. Fun. I put my heels in the stirrups and slid my butt down to the end of the table. She inserted the speculum. “Hm,” she said. She slid it out and tried a different angle. “Well.” Out and back in again. “Your cervix is really deep in there. I’m gonna use a longer speculum.”

“OK,” I said, meekly.

She tried all through the winter, across the spring and summer, into late autumn, before she stood and said, “I can’t seem to find your cervix. I’m going to get a physician.”

Shortly, she came back in. “I couldn’t find a physician.” 

I thought, You’re bad at finding stuff. 

She brought another nurse. Immediately, I felt more relaxed. This one too was having some trouble locating the target, but she sounded like she genuinely wanted to know when she said, “You doing OK?” and just radiated general warmth. “There it is!” Finally. She inserted the catheter and shot, then cupped her hand around her mouth. “Swiiimmmmm,” she called into my vagina. Speculum out, and I was done.

Twelve days later I peed on a stick. And my hand. And the floor. But a plus sign showed up. So I peed on another stick. I peed on three more sticks. All plus signs.

At my 6-week appointment, the doctor stuck a lubed wand up yonder. On the screen, a hole blorbed into existence, and attached to one side was a tiny strobe light. He pointed at it. “That’s a heartbeat.” 

I put my fist to my mouth and started to cry. 

He shifted the wand to my left side, then stiffened, and his mouth dropped slightly open. “…There’s another one.”

I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he was pointing at another orb. “What?” I said.

“There’s a second one.”

My neck went numb. “Does it have a heartbeat?” I said, but I could already see it. Pulse, pulse, pulse.

And that was when I collapsed into full-on, laugh-cry mode. “Oh my god!” I said. “Two?!” The doctor stood there stiff, eyes wide, mute. “But I’m just one person!” I said. “Hahahahaha. Boohoohoohoo.”

He lowered his chin slowly but didn’t look away. His eyebrows were knitted. “I… I can’t tell how you’re doing,” he said.

“Me neither!” I said.

I eventually recovered from my meltdown and became completely wedded to the idea of twins. I loved them, and even though every part of my family plan had gone to hell in a handbasket, I was so glad I was having two babies.

Then came the “borderline” measurements and “inconclusive” test results, until finally at nearly 18 weeks, a white-haired doctor with the soft voice, gentle manner, and sensible shoes of a kindergarten teacher informed me that it looked like Twin A had Down syndrome. Amniocentesis would confirm her diagnosis. I wondered, was it something I did? A poor choice I made along the way? Or worse, that I’m a defective person who made a defective baby?

The genetic counselor said, “It’s not anything you did. It’s just an accident of nature.”

At that point, I came completely unglued. I sobbed. I had panic attacks. I desperately wanted to abort the abnormal fetus, but it would increase the risk of miscarrying the other one. Could I take a mulligan? 

Making the choice was wrenching. I told a friend it was the first time I truly understood what “anguish” meant. Right about then, I got some sage advice from a nun–she was a character on “Call the Midwife,” but whatever–that at every moment we get to choose between fear and love. So I chose. I was scared and lost, but I was going to have two babies, one with Down syndrome.

Seven weeks before my due date I couldn’t stop peeing my pants. That’s what I thought anyway. Actually, I was leaking amniotic fluid. Twin A’s sac had ruptured, and I’d be in the hospital until I delivered, which I did six days later in a harrowing emergency c-section.

Thus began nearly eight months of eating hospital food. Patrick came home after a month in the NICU, but Arlo, the one with Down syndrome, would undergo medical trauma that would end a weaker person. There were surgeries and invasive tests and feeding issues and infections and twice CPR, like actual compressions on his tiny, tiny chest. Patrick smiled at three months, but Arlo didn’t. One day it dawned on me he’d had very little to smile about. But on March 13, 2015, when he was almost six months old, the corners of his mouth ticked up, and I melted into a puddle of goo on the floor of the NICU. 

At one point, my brother and I stood on opposite sides of the bed, looking down on my sleeping baby.

“It’s funny,” I said. “Remember how I asked the Dutchman to be my donor, and he backed out when he found out about the chromosomal funk in his family’s genes?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Isn’t it ironic that I ended up with a baby with Down syndrome anyway?” 

“Yeah,” he said.

“But seriously.” I gestured at Arlo.

Reading my mind, my brother said, “What’s better than him?” 

After nearly eight months, Arlo finally came home on Mother’s Day 2015, and even then trouble abounded. He didn’t know how to eat, and his stomach hated everything, and he didn’t sleep, and his brother didn’t sleep, and I didn’t sleep. And I was losing my mind.

But with a LOT of help from friends and family, and just, you know, putting one foot in front of the other, we made it through. That’s a story for another time. Right around his third birthday, Arlo learned to walk. Then run. And then jump with both feet. He learned to sign more, all done, help, and–thank god–eat, which he did with gusto. Bacon, eggs, waffle–the most important meal of the day. He loved playing with his brother and singing songs. His best friend was a blue stomp-rocket tube he named Odie, after the dog in Garfield, his favorite TV show. I once rescued Odie from a five-lane highway, another time from a 10-foot storm drain.

When he started preschool, everybody knew him–teachers I’d never even seen said, “There goes Arlo.” 

Out in town, he’d go up to complete strangers, tap them on the knee, and wave at them. I’d say, “Have you met the mayor of Durham?” 

He became a nudist and potty trained himself. Woohoo!

He started talking. “Maw” (ball). “Weewee” (TV). And of course, “waffle,” which he pronounced perfectly and added a kiss at the end, maybe to express his devotion to them.

Most recently, words have become phrases, and he’s started workshopping his standup routine.

“Ho coco nat?” he says, pointing at his red shirt.

“I don’t know–what color is it?” I say.

He grins. “Weeeeee?” 

“No, it’s not green,” I say, and he giggles.

“Loooooooob?” he says.

“No, it’s not blue.” He chuckles.

“Blap?”

“No, it’s not black!” I say. He cackles. I cackle. Every day, we do this. Hey, if a bit works, work it.

He still likes to greet strangers on the street. “Morlyyyy,” he says to the construction workers we pass. “Morlyyyy!”

Late in the day, I correct him. “It’s not morning. It’s afternoon.”

“Morly anoo!” he calls.

Sometimes, like the rest of us, he gets salty. “PATIC, GO ‘WAY!”

“Don’t say that to your brother–that’s not nice. Hey, how about you put on some pants and a shirt?”

He turns and clomps toward his room, waggling his blue tube. “Ohwee cahmee,” he declares.

“Yep, Odie’s coming.”

“Mama cahmee?” he calls over his shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” I say.

Of course I’m coming. I’ll never not come if he asks me to.

The boys will turn 7 this month. Patrick reads chapter books and plays Minecraft with his cousins and revels in arguing with me about uncontroversial things. (He still asks me to snuggle in his bed every night though.) But that’s a story for another time.

My elderly father moved in with me, and I went back to changing diapers. But that’s a story for another time.

There have been so, so many accidents along the way. I made plans and choices. I did research. But I learned how little control we actually have over our lives, and how torturesome and sublime that can be. I wanted a family that looked a certain way, and I got one that looks totally different.

“It’s just an accident,” the genetic counselor said, and it really did comfort me at the time. Now though. Now I wish I could take full credit.

********************************************************************

I have a whole memoir manuscript about this. Holler at me if you want to publish it. :)