38 EVIE
E VIE
I returned to New York a few weeks into February, using the time to go through new footage while also packing and preparing to leave.
But I found it nearly impossible to concentrate and couldn’t seem to shake the exhaustion that had followed me from London.
And then I started getting sick. In pajamas, I sleepwalked through packing boxes, organizing things into tidy piles marked M OVE , D ONATE , T OSS .
In the end, I decided I wanted a fresh start and pared it all down to a single suitcase and a few mementos and nothing else.
Funny I became kind of a pack rat later in life, maybe as a way to feel more secure, like an antidote to the scarcity of my childhood.
But at the time, it felt like burgeoning freedom.
It’s never convenient or fun being sick, of course.
But I can tell you that there was never a day in my life when I was more frustrated about being sick than I was the day of Mayluna’s first Grammy performance.
I’d been so excited to go. Excited to finally appear on Carter’s arm.
Thinking of Kate calling that night and hearing her squeal something like, Why didn’t you tell me? ! But that’s not what happened.
I’d thought I had the stomach flu at first, barely able to keep anything down.
After breaking the news to Carter that I couldn’t make the trip to LA, I ended up watching the televised show while wrapped in covers on my couch.
Afterward, they called me, all of them yelling into the phone excitedly, and I could barely make out anything they said over the din of the after-party in the background.
The Monday morning after the Grammys, I felt worse than ever, and after a week of feeling terrible, I dragged myself to the doctor.
This is how I found out about you.
“Well, the good news is, I can tell you that you don’t have a stomach bug,” the doctor told me. He was an older, grandfatherly type with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses. I’d been waiting in the room for the last twenty minutes and had nearly fallen asleep sitting up.
“I don’t?”
“Nope. What you have is a baby.”
I didn’t say anything. Just stared at him.
“Miss Waters, you’re pregnant.” He’d said it in the matter-of-fact way that doctors do, with a hint of a chuckle.
I let this sink in.
“You’ll want to make an appointment with your OB/GYN, of course.
” The doctor and nurse continued talking, explaining everything one needs to hear upon learning that they’re going to have a baby.
“In the meantime, though, I think we need to get you some fluids right away. It sounds like you’ve been feeling pretty crummy? ” he continued.
“Yes,” I mumbled, still in disbelief. Apparently, I’d gotten pregnant right after Christmas. As he talked, the nurse wheeled in the IV and a bag of fluids.
“You’re extremely dehydrated, and your electrolytes are low. Have you been eating?”
“Quick pinch, honey.” The nurse smiled, and I winced as she inserted the needle into my arm.
“I try, but everything comes up. Even water,” I told them.
“Hyperemesis gravidarum,” they called it. I had never heard of it, and to me, it sounded like a type of amoeba or something.
“It’s a condition that causes severe nausea, vomiting, dehydration, and weight loss during pregnancy.
Basically, the opposite of what we want when growing a baby.
We don’t see it very often—less than around three percent of patients—but we do see it on occasion,” the doctor told me.
“You’ll want to be cautious. It can be hard to get enough fluids and nutrition when you can’t keep anything down, so they’ll watch you pretty carefully in these early weeks.
But as long as you take good care of yourself, you and the baby will be just fine. ”
“What about travel?”
“Normally I’d say no problem, but for now, in your case ...”
I hadn’t grown up with women around me. I knew absolutely nothing about pregnancy.
Sure, I knew morning sickness was a thing.
Who didn’t know that? But this? This was nothing like what I’d seen on TV—with pregnant women tossing their cookies in the morning and laughing a moment later while returning to their desks at work or going for a jog.
I remembered years later, when Kate Middleton was pregnant with Prince George, it finally made it to the mainstream news when she ended up in the ER on several occasions.
It began to get the awareness it needed among women.
But back then? There was still a kind of stigma that women needed to be strong and get through it with a smile and a patronizing look from elders who made them feel small and weak for complaining.
But it was no joke. I read once that Charlotte Bronte is believed to have died, along with her unborn baby, due to complications from it.
Fortunately, I didn’t know that story at the time.
The nurse patted my hand and smiled. “You’ll figure out how to manage.
Small meals. Try to keep crackers in your stomach.
You can try Popsicles for fluids. Sometimes mamas in your condition and with your delicate frame need to come into the ER for an IV if it gets too bad.
But I promise, it’ll be worth it in the end when you see those ten little fingers and ten little toes.
” She patted my hand. “Do you have someone at home to help you out?”
The moment she asked, everything sort of went blurry, time pausing. Do you have someone at home to help you ... An old wound I thought was healed suddenly opened deep inside me. Do you have someone at home to help you ...
No. I did not.
I think some part of me still believed that somehow we could still go on like we thought.
That all the plans Carter and I were making for a life together would still happen.
But as the news began to settle in, I watched those plans begin to unravel in far-reaching threads.
While at the same time, I felt this quiet and unfamiliar sense of unexpected joy begin to rise from a place I didn’t know existed inside me.
So please know, my sweet girl, that though you weren’t what I had planned, from that very moment, the instant I learned of your existence, you were loved.