Surprise Child: Introduction
by Leslie Leyland Fields
Four years ago I walked into the bathroom, hand clenched around a white cellophanewrapped stick. Three minutes later the bathroom door opened, and my face was white. In a tiny centimetered window no bigger than my fingernail a faint line slowly emerged, then solidified. It was the face of another human being—one I had not asked for. Surely my life was over.
Less than two years later it would happen again. In spite of— everything: our fastidious use of birth control, our ages, our frantically stressful lives, our full household. In spite of all this, the line appeared again and with it a maelstrom of emotions: anger, denial, incredulity, grief—all familiar visitors from the first surprise pregnancy. But this time all descended with an intensity that nearly crushed me.
God had personally delivered to my door my second worst fear. My greatest fear was that I would lose my husband or one of my four children. My second fear, however irrational, was that God would give me another child—that after loving and lavishing and persevering through the infancies and toddlerhoods of three highly energetic boys and one iron-willed daughter, and while still pouring out my best energy and resources to these beloved human beings, he would make me start again, at the very beginning. Just as I had emerged into relative light and safety. Now another. Do it again. And then another. And not pregnancies only. Yes, the weight gain, nausea, stretch marks, sleepless nights, varicose veins, but far more, the all-night feedings, leaking breasts, fevered weeks of teething, endless laundry, perpetual exhaustion, potty training… I knew it all intimately.
And so I cried, I protested, I prayed, alternating between anger and numbness, submission and rebellion. Must I give up my career? How will I do this? How do I make it through all those interminable nights? How do we fit six kids in this house? How do we send them all to college? What will I say to the shocked faces in the grocery store? How do I find joy in this?
In the midst of the quaking of my world, there were two things I knew for certain. God is the maker of life. And somehow I must find a way to receive with open hands these children he had made. I had no choice but to choose this. This tiny creature would come, slipping from between my legs in that final gush into the doctor's hands and then mine, and how would I greet this precious first-seen face who already knew my voice, my smell, who knew me from the inside out? Would I cradle and behold him with joy, or would I contain his little body in my hands with resentment, apathy, bitterness? I must choose joy. But how would I get there? Who could help me travel this very long distance between my mourning and sobbing now and this necessary joy later?
Throughout both pregnancies I felt terribly alone. I did not belong to any identifiable group. Despite my expanding profile, I felt cut off from other pregnant women who glowed with expectation and delight; cut off from my peers at the college where I taught, who were openly puzzled about this derailment of my teaching career; cut off from women in my church and larger faith community who thrived on homeschooling and rejoiced over their every pregnancy, no matter how many children they had. When I finally ventured forth the news at church, my pastor greeted my somber announcement with a congratulatory pounding on my back and a crow of delight. I looked at him, dumbstruck. Didn't he understand that the coming of this new life was also a kind of death? Didn't he know how much I had given already and that I had no more left to give?
In my hunger and need, I began to look for books about unexpected pregnancy. The bookstore shelves were lined with either chirpy pregnancy journals and manuals that assumed a glad giddiness toward pregnancy or a host of birth-and-tell-all books written by highly educated women who had one or two children and who reveled in their own angst and ambivalence as mothers. I couldn't stomach either one. I also found a book, Bitter Fruit: Women's Experiences of Unplanned Pregnancy, Abortion, and Adoption, that presented the stories of women who had aborted their babies out of fear or discomfort or an unwillingness to alter their lifestyles. Those who elected to keep their child were bitter, resenting the child's needs and intrusion into their lives. I knew there was nothing here for me. Am I really this alone? I wondered.
Then I discovered a book that began to answer this question. The Best Intentions is a report compiled by the National Institutes of Health after a year of intensive focus on unexpected pregnancies. They report that 60 percent of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned. That translates into three million women a year. Three million women find themselves pregnant at the wrong time in their lives: women who are single, middle-aged, with a houseful already, unemployed, at the top of their profession, just starting out…and everywhere in between. Three million women a year whose lives are radically interrupted. Half of those three million women choose to end the pregnancy.
Where were these women? I began looking for them in the safest place I knew—online. Almost immediately they appeared: chat rooms and Web sites abounded, all of them a frenzy of impassioned dialogue. What I read in those places shocked and saddened me. I found my own desperation magnified across a hundred, a thousand lives. I found words and voices of women in every possible state of function and dysfunction, all of them facing an unexpected pregnancy and all of them feeling alone, desperate for help and answers. I read the words of Jennifer, who wrote:
I am twenty-six and have a five-year-old.… She has recently started school and I am
returning to college.… Her dad and I have been together ten years.… I was happy when
my daughter started school as it meant I could finally follow my dreams.… Yesterday I
found out I was pregnant.… I am scared to tell my partner, as I know he will be happy,
as he wants more kids. I so don’t want another baby in my life right now. Abortion was
the first thing that crossed my mind, but I feel so selfish for even thinking that. We could
provide a home for a baby, but I do not want the responsibility.… I am upset and have
nowhere to turn. Can anyone help?
Suzanne, a teenager, wrote this:
I am fifteen years old…and there is a very big chance I am pregnant.… I have talked to
my boyfriend about what to do if I am pregnant and he just wants me to get an abortion.
He says he loves me but we aren't ready for a baby.… If I told my mom I was pregnant
she would be so disappointed in me. She would tell me I have to get an abortion.… I
won't get an abortion no matter what. And I also don't want adoption.… I just need
someone to talk to that can help and give me some advice.
Another woman, Lila, described her situation:
I just found out…I am pregnant and I do not see how. I have never missed one pill. I am
devastated. I have four boys. My youngest is seven months old. I love my boys so much,
but we can’t afford another one and I have always been against abortion. But I do not
know what else to do. My husband wants me to have it done. Actually he is putting a lot
of pressure on me. But I do not think he gets how this is affecting me. We made an
appointment for this Friday to have it done and I am already beside myself. Please, if
anyone is out there, please help me.
I was astounded that my personal crisis fit into a pattern and context so huge and yet so concealed. I felt as though I had uncovered a vast cave of silence, hidden from the world of light and noise and everyday lives. It had been here all along, of course—and now I too had slipped into this subterranean space. But once I landed and saw how many others were there, I understood why the cries from that place were scarcely heard above. It was so intensely private from the very start: the making of love between a man and a woman, the family planning behind bedroom doors, the silent burrowing of sperm into egg, the secrets of the uterus. And once that child exists in the womb or at the family table, who will call her child unplanned, unexpected— implying failure, mistake, accident? Who will taint flesh of very flesh with this stigma? Yet what rescues this whole enterprise—what saves the pages of this book and the lives of the women and children who appear in it—is the possibility, no, the probability that transformation will take place.
Even before that transformation, I realized that my own isolation would not go away until I spoke the truth to those around me. It was not courage on my part; it was need—my distaste for dissembling, my inability to pretend that all was well all the time. As I met friends and acquaintances in the grocery-store aisles, my usual professional clothes replaced by leggings and maternity tops, my belly now well extended, I would explain carefully to questioning faces, "God has brought us a surprise." On good days I would smile, act as though this was all in hand, but if I knew the friend well, I did not try to smile. That is how I found out that some of those three million women were living right here in my own small town. My openness encouraged honesty in others, and through those months of pregnancy, through whispered conversations, I heard from so many:
"Yes, this happened to me. My last child was a complete shock!"
"I think I'm pregnant, Leslie—and I'm a grandmother! What shall I do?"
"I missed my period—I've got two other children. I can't handle another child!"
"I had an unplanned pregnancy a few years ago. I felt so alone. No one understood what
I was going through."
"I knew having another child meant less time with my two girls. I didn't want to give that
up."
"Mom, a girl in my class is going to have a baby—she's fourteen."
It seemed nearly every woman I knew had either experienced an unexpected pregnancy or was close to someone who had. The statistics were gone. In their place were the solemn faces, voices, and expressions of women all around me, and nearly every story or conversation ended with a question or a cry for help. Though many were in situations more dire than mine, they still needed what I needed—not a sermon, not an elder's glib congratulations, not a pat on the back that everything will be fine, but another woman who is herself pregnant to walk beside them, someone else ahead of them who has birthed her surprise child, motioning toward hope and joy.
I have written this book from both places. Looking for solace, I began interviewing others and writing while I was in the midst of my pregnancies, still struggling, still facing the dark of the tunnel ahead. The quotes and stories throughout the book are derived from those interviews, except for a few taken from online message boards, which will be noted. I knew what to ask in the interview sessions, because I was asking for myself as well. Through this process I have come to know women in many life circumstances: Jill, unmarried, in her first year of teaching, wakes up one morning and discovers she is pregnant—and her boyfriend wants no part of it. Linda becomes pregnant after she is raped, and she gives her baby to an adoption agency. Trisha spent the last seventeen years of her life raising her four children, running a day care in her home. Her oldest is about to graduate; her youngest has just started school. Now she is free to enroll in college classes to begin her education and a career, but no, she is pregnant again. Teresa and her new husband are getting ready to retire and move to a warmer climate—and the pregnancy test reads positive. Bianca, a multitalented freshman in a musical theater program at an exclusive college, gets pregnant and must leave the program. Pam has had four miscarriages in a row and has decided she doesn’t want another pregnancy—she cannot bear another miscarriage. And then she is pregnant again. Marianne is only sixteen when she misses her period. Her boyfriend is an alcoholic and doesn't want the baby. Each one here had her life interrupted, each one here has a child who came to her unbidden, and each one now cannot imagine her life without that child.
And I am among them. I am not the same woman who started this book. I began my pregnancies and this project in the darkness of anxiety, resistance, and fear. Five years later I stand outside in light and clean air, my two surprise children, Abraham and Micah, in my arms. I will share with you, month by month, chapter by chapter, the unfolding of these unexpected pregnancies just as they happened so that you will find yourself here somewhere along the way. During the weeks and months of pregnancy, fears can grow as rapidly and as tangibly as the fetus himself. I will voice these fears common to so many of us and will tell as honestly as possible what has come of them in others' lives and in my own.
All of us know that, essentially, we have three choices before us. I do not pretend to be neutral—I will choose life every time. But some women may come to this book undecided about the life within them. Others may be deciding whether they will raise their surprise child themselves or will entrust their child to others. Others have decided to keep this baby, but the road ahead feels long and hard. My life circumstances allowed me to keep these two surprise children born to me. Not everyone can or should make the decision I did. But this book is written for every one of us. There are women here who have not chosen life and who speak honestly about that experience. Two other women tell deeply personal stories of giving their newborns to another family. In these pages we can gaze directly into other women's journeys through pregnancy and birth—women like you, who struggle with the reality of a coming child. Month by month, page by page, you may discover what is possible for your own life and the life of your child.
For the millions of women who will wake up one day to find themselves pregnant at the wrong time, at a hard time, at a difficult place in their lives—this book is for you. May you find the honesty, hope, and joy that I have found through these women's stories. And may you be given the strength to carry on.
