Les Etats-Unis: From Trauma to Taken Care of, in a brand-new life.

Legs spread, feet in the stirrups, gown yanked up my hips, teeth clattering, neon lights blurring my sight. Five or six people bumbling around in the room. I don’t remember which one of the attempts it is—the first, the second, or the last. My husband and I have been married for over a decade, and we are childless. We turned to the medical profession for help, but our issues run deeper.

We fell in love when I was a freshman in college in Israel and he was visiting Jerusalem to do research for his Ph.D. I moved back to Paris after we got engaged. Ours is a marriage of little intimacy. I lie to all my doctors. To spare my husband, and myself, I pretend everything is alright. I yearn for a child. I pretend he does too. He is a rabbi: how could he not want kids?

It takes me years to convince him to seek fertility treatments together. All the while, his sermons are filled with calls to further Jewish continuity. I teach brides-to-be the rules of the mikveh and promise them Jewish rituals lead to marital bliss. Strangers come up to me at kiddush, asking if I am seeing the right specialist. Congregants ask him if he intends to divorce me, since I don’t seem able to get pregnant.
We go through rounds of evaluation. The diagnosis: unexplained infertility. (I would find out, years later, that a laparoscopy, performed to assess abnormalities in my womb, left me with endometriosis.) One afternoon, I roll in agony, alone, on the grey carpet of my office. It doesn’t occur to me that the blinding, electric pain in my stomach had anything to do with an IUI (intrauterine insemination) undergone the week before; it doesn’t occur to me to call an ambulance. Once home, I lay very still on my bed in the dark, waiting for the pain to subside. I called my husband several times. He came home hours later.
My doctor told me I had experienced an “ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome,” a reaction caused by the hormone used to release the egg. I thought my cramps had been caused by jealousy over a friend’s new baby. This syndrome is extremelyrare in the case of an insemination—so rare my doctor hadn’t warned me of the risks. He offered to prescribe the contraceptive pill to put my ovaries to rest, but I wanted to believe the procedure had worked, that I was pregnant. I wasn’t.

After this incident we were told IVF could only be attempted under serious supervision, if at all, but we then turned to the French pioneer of IVF treatments. Given my history, an experimental route was preferred: IVM—In vitro maturation. My eggs would be collected directly from the ovaries, grown in a lab, then fertilized, and the embryos reimplanted. No danger to you, he said. The chances of success were slim.

I’m shivering. I had a panic attack earlier in the waiting room. My lips were quivering, my breathing halted, and I started crying uncontrollably. I asked a nurse for a plantbased sedative and a paper bag. She stared at me. It didn’t occur to her to call a doctor. It didn’t occur to me to request to see one or to ask for psychological assistance.

‘One or two embryos?’ says the professor. ‘If we transfer two, you’ll double your chances,’ he insists, impatiently.

Two then, I reply.

“Standard” IVF is the next option. My doctor is at a conference in Japan, supervision is sloppy. My body produces 17 eggs which will prove irretrievable. Because of fluid build-up in my body, I am hospitalized. It took me a year to recover from this ordeal. At first, any effort—including getting out of bed, getting dressed, walking to the bathroom—required twenty hours of subsequent rest. My speech was slurred, and my eyes couldn’t focus; reading was impossible. My organs had been attacked by the edema. There were more tests, cardiac and neurological, to assess further damage. There was still a risk of thrombosis. I learned to rebuild my strength. I went back to work two months later. My best friend and I ran a division of a large publishing company from a remote office. Emails popping up on my screen felt like a stab in my head—I turned off the notifications when I was reading a document. I would guiltily leave the office after a few hours of work, then return home to rest.

I was 34 and heartbroken. I was confounded by close friends who encouraged me to “try again.” Believe it or not, I did. I sought out another highly recommended specialist who promised he’d take great care of me. I went alone. We scheduled an IUI. His assistant called me, an hour later, apologetic—the doctor had mistakenly prescribed double the dosage of hormones necessary for the injections. I had a panic attack at the pharmacy, and didn’t go through with the procedure.

I checked the national adoption agency website. Prospective parents were instructed to ‘mourn the biological child’ before engaging in the process. I was outraged. What about the possibility of life? Of a miracle? I remember thinking—What happens now? Between the ages of 35 and, say, 45—while my body might still crave a child?

So I focused intensely on work. I took a new job as a senior editor at a venerable publishing company, located on the Left Bank. Suddenly, I had energy. I thrived on authors, novels, writing, editing, translating, choosing cover art, cooking up marketing plans. Oh yes, I was alive, and I could find joy again. But not inside my home. I hoped we could be a family of two, devoted to each other, to our community and friends, to our parents and siblings, to our beautiful nephews and nieces, near and far. My husband didn’t care for any of it: it clashed with his deep-seated need for adulation.

I felt so alive I couldn’t be unwanted forever. I left him.

When an unexpected job offer came my way from America a year later, my therapist approved: “Les Etats-Unis: United States, emphasis on united. That’s your aspiration.” As I did often, I laughed away her comment. Eight months went by, I landed in New York, visa and job in hand. I had come to a decision: I was entering a new phase, one which wouldn’t include pursuing motherhood again. Perhaps I’d meet someone with a ready-made family. And even if I didn’t—I wouldn’t spend the better part of a new decade trying to outrun my biological clock, and dealing with the emotional rollercoaster of trials, hope, disappointment, despair.

I would be a family of one.

I’m almost eight years into my American adventure. I’ve been suffering from abdominal pain for a couple of days. I blame it on a frozen soup I reheated in my microwave, scared of cooking in a roach-infested kitchen (the renovation going on in the townhouse next door is your typical Manhattan nightmare). One morning, my stool turns black, and I run to urgent care. The doctor laughs the symptom away but prescribes a CT scan. The exterminator is coming in the afternoon—no way I’m postponing his visit, the scan will wait. Come morning, I take the bus to the ambulatory radiology center. I’m still half undressed when the nurse rushes into the changing room: ‘Ma’am, we’re taking you straight to the ER. It’s acute appendicitis’.

Stéphanie A. strokes my leg all day while we wait for me to be admitted. Stéphanie D. comes at night with a bag filled with toiletries. The surgery takes place around 1 A.M. I must heal fast: next weekend, I’m officiating at Laurie and Julie’s wedding. My brother drives me home at midday and picks up groceries. Vanessa brings me chicken soup and stays for dinner. In the morning, Emmanuel and Valérie bring warm cheese sticks, fresh croissants and a book. Tsilla delivers chicken and zucchini. Mitchell shows up at lunchtime, with lunch. Vanessa comes back for teatime, with tea. In the evening Stéphanie returns with bagels and a Bollywood movie. David walks with me around the block and all the way to Trader Joe’s and back. Les Etats-Unis.

After a career in publishing in France, Deborah Kaufmann oversees acquisitions of literary properties for a film/TV studio. She lives in New York.