It is a tribute to my wife’s and my impeccably bad timing that she ended up giving birth in the middle of a pandemic.
We met too late, waited too long to get serious about conceiving, and didn’t embrace in vitro fertilization treatments until we were both crowning into our 40s. My wife often says that she didn’t know how badly she wanted a child until we lost our first pregnancy. And as the losses racked up and we became older than the grandparents on MTV’s “Teen Mom,” we struggled to decide if we should pursue donor eggs or adoption. These were routes that led to where we wanted to be, but with even more uncertainty than the near decade we’d spent cultivating and transferring embryos hatched from my wife’s eggs.
In mid-2019, after we bought some donor eggs, I had a varicocelectomy (don’t Google it) to reduce the chances of miscarriage and score one notch toward catching up with my wife’s impressive tally of medical procedures involving the reproductive organs.
But there was a costly secret we were keeping: one frozen embryo. Made from our own egg and sperm way back in 2016, the genetic test had come back “indeterminate.” The doctors estimated less than a 7% chance the transfer would work. But there’d be a 100% chance we’d save $900/year on storage, and whether it worked or not, we’d finally be ready to move on to other ways of expanding our family before we were old enough to qualify for Medicare.
Coronavirus was lurking
Thirty-four weeks later, my very pregnant wife and I were touring the Family Birth Center at St. Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor Hospital. The guide showed us where we’d check in. She pulled out the little half bed where dad could sleep alongside mom and baby. She showed us where wandering dads could find cheddar Goldfish to snack on and plugged their photo taking service.
But at that point time, early February of 2020, the guide didn’t think to mention where they’d put my wife if the hospital — and the world — were overwhelmed by a virus that could kill hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million, in months.
Despite the president’s assurances that the number of cases would soon be “close to zero,” my wife and I had already stopped kissing or even holding each other’s hands, sure we might be spreading a bug far worse than the flu to each other, and then maybe to our baby. If we’d have a baby at all.
As the 36th week of our pregnancy began, the first American death from COVID-19 was reported by health officials in Washington state. By the 39th week, the known death toll reached 100. On the Tuesday we left the hospital with Winnie, a slightly jaundiced miracle properly strapped into her car seat, at least 160 Americans died of the virus, and there were almost 53,000 known cases.
The only emotion that could match our sleep-deprived joy and disbelief was my massive guilt.
We’d made it into the hospital as new COVID-19 precautions excluded all guests except one — choose your partner or your doula. I was asked to not leave my wife’s room; people were being screened at each entrance. If I wanted Goldfish, we had to hit a call button. No flowers, balloons, visitors or professional photos allowed. The first day, they had paper menus; the last day, menus were canceled due to possible spread.
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Still, the self-contained maternity ward felt like a sanctuary from the outside world constricting to save itself from a plague.
While nurses drowning in death used trash bags as gowns in New York City, our challenges were breastfeeding, perineal stitches (don’t Google it) and how we’d sleep despite the round-the-clock stream of medical professionals coming in to check on us.
A gift amid a pandemic
COVID-19’s distancing safeguards had prevented me from seeing Winnie’s final ultrasound and going to her first pediatrician’s appointment. And we had no assurances that this virus wouldn’t incapacitate our medical team or overwhelm the hospital beds before our baby arrived.
But given we had our miracle, I was ashamed of the moments when I felt uniquely cursed by this crisis.
Of course, there isn’t a person alive who couldn’t feel cursed by this crisis, which did not have to be this bad.
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COVID-19 has brought together nearly everyone on Earth in a way the Internet never could. The shared dread we feel for the loss of normalcy, any sense of certainty, and — Universe forbid — loved ones, isn’t quite a spiritual connection. But it is a blaring reminder to people like me, who often forget that billions on this planet live with similar uncertainty all the time, that we are all in this together.
Our neighbor county in Michigan, Wayne, is suffering what could be the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the Midwest. In a few days or weeks, our own county, Washtenaw, may be where Wayne is now. Scenes of overwhelmed intensive care units in Italy are already being replicated here, in the richest nation in the history of the planet. And the scope of this outbreak can’t even be guessed at until there are enough tests to begin to sort through people without symptoms.
Feeling this blessed in this mess is impossible to justify. I won’t even try.
Instead, I spend a lot of time thinking about everything our baby girl has inherited, and wondering if she may have escaped our terrible timing. Our progressive hearts can’t but help admire the way she figured out how to miss the bulk of Donald Trump’s presidency, despite being conceived in 2016.
And while it’s true that Winnie entered the world amid the worst global health crisis of the century, her existence proves that the kind of miracles we need now can happen — with a lot of luck and even more science.
Jason Sattler, a writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and host of “The GOTMFV Show” podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @LOLGOP
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Miracle baby: We tried for years and ended up pregnant amid coronavirus