Night, Forgotten

Original Edition - Chapter 26: Then

"Do you have a strong support system? How does your partner... Owen, right? How does Owen feel about this pregnancy?" Dr. Marie Almaden looked down, somewhere beyond the bottom edge of my laptop monitor. Framed degrees from impressive institutions hung on the beige wall behind her.

Finally, it was March 3rd and I was face-to-face with a psychiatrist, if only via video chat. It was time to put my feelings about this pregnancy into words, but I was still struggling.

"He's always wanted to be a parent, and so he's actually pretty enthusiastic about keeping it." I tilted my screen away from my face a bit to avoid the glare through the windows behind me. For our video chat, I'd set up my laptop on the kitchen table without accounting for the position of the late afternoon sun.

"What about you, Julie? How have you been feeling?" Dr. Almaden's voice was mellow and patient, as if she were certain that this fifty-minute video chat could solve whatever mental health issues I was up against.

"About whether or not to have an abortion?" I picked at the skin around my right thumbnail. "I have a while to decide, still."

"It says here that you're twelve weeks and four days along," Dr. Almaden confirmed, "so yes, take your time."

Twelve weeks and four days. It was almost exactly one month from when I'd made this appointment. I was grateful to her for saying that and for stopping there. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting from this video-chat appointment, but her lack of judgment around my decision- making process was a relief.

What if I'd sought out counseling at St. Catherine's crisis pregnancy center instead of with a licensed psychiatrist? What would Diana's response have been, if she'd been volunteering that day? What had she said to Paula?

Dr. Almaden cleared her throat. "We can come back to the topic of abortion, if you want," she said kindly.

"Okay."

I heard the click-click of rapid typing; she must be referencing my medical record on her computer monitor and simultaneously jotting down notes.

When she finished what she was typing, she looked up at her webcam. Her eyes crinkled kindly. "How have you been feeling about everything else? You've been through quite a lot, Julie."

I breathed in deeply through my nose. I'd probably never have to meet this woman in person, so let her judge me harshly if she wanted to. I closed my eyes, released the air from my lungs, and decided to tell the truth.

"I imagine this fetus dying more than I imagine it living," I said. "I can't imagine being a mother." I opened my eyes.

Dr. Almaden's face hadn't changed. She wasn't scandalized by my confession. In fact, she seemed rather unfazed.

"Do you want to have an abortion?" she asked, coming back to the question she'd left off with.

"I mean, I don't want to be pregnant with this fetus.

I don't want this... I don't want this to be my life. I can't believe any of it is even happening. But I'm also not sure I can actually have an abortion."

"It's an incredibly safe procedure," she pointed out. "Do you object to it because of religious convictions?"

"No," I shook my head. "I don't think it's morally wrong or anything, and I'm not afraid of the procedure."

I remembered the way Owen had stood up to his mother when she'd tried to forbid me from having an abortion because of her religious convictions. Diana's words rang in my head: No, you will not kill this baby. Ever since that afternoon in her kitchen, I'd felt certain that as long as we faced parenthood together, Owen and I could manage whatever it would demand of us.

"I just can't really imagine an abortion being part of my life story," I told Dr. Almaden. "I guess I never expected it to be."

She nodded. "None of this is your fault, Julie, and it isn't fair. But you do get to decide what happens next."

"What if I have an abortion this time, and then Owen and I can't get pregnant when we want to?" I wondered aloud, giving voice to one of my worst fears. If I aborted Owen's only chance at fatherhood, I'd never forgive myself. "What if this is our only chance to have a kid? Giving that up feels... tragic. And we already have enough tragedy in our family."

I watched the computer monitor to see if Dr. Almaden would react. She just waited, so I rambled on. I said whatever came into my mind without the normal filter that prevents all the socially unacceptable thoughts from making their way out of my mouth.

I told her about the empty space in my brain where memories of the night I was raped should be, and how I wasn't sure I even wanted the memories back. I told her about Paula's death, almost two weeks earlier, and how I blamed it on Diana. I told her about how Diana had discovered that I was pregnant the day after Paula's wake, and how Owen and I had stood up to her. Dr. Almaden listened, typing notes and only asking a few, prodding questions when I stopped to catch my breath.

Over the course of our fifty-minute video conversation, I came to a tentative decision: I was going to give birth to this baby, Owen and I were going to raise it together, and we would learn how to come to terms with it all somehow.

It was the only way to start to heal our family.

At that point, Dr. Almaden said, "Talking to Dr. Syed and having this appointment with me was a good first step, but with everything you've been through, especially since your memory has been affected, I want to keep monitoring any changes in your mood. And for now, there's a book I'd like to leave for you at Dr. Syed's office, if you're interested in reading about the kinds of symptoms you can keep an eye out for."

"Sure," I agreed.

"It's called Perinatal Mood Disorders. That's the catch-all term for what we used to call 'postpartum depression.' But about fifteen percent of women experience feelings of hopelessness, loss of appetite, inability to concentrate, and sleep problems, like you're describing, during pregnancy. And your trauma history is also a strong predictor of perinatal mood disorders."

My trauma history. It sounded so neat and simple when she put it that way.

"What are the other... disorders?" I asked. "Baby blues?" I'd heard Diana use that term to describe what she'd assumed Paula was experiencing after Sadie's birth.

"Well, what people tend to call 'baby blues' affects up to eighty percent of women after they give birth. It's normal to feel teary and inadequate sometimes, that kind of thing. This book covers baby blues, but it also covers depression. As I said, your risk is increased because of the trauma surrounding conception."

"How common is postpartum depression?" I asked, picking at a strip of translucent skin alongside my right thumbnail.

"It's not rare," Dr. Almaden said. "It affects up to twenty percent of new mothers, even those without a trauma history like yours." She cleared her throat. "There's also postpartum psychosis, which is extremely, extremely rare.

The word psychosis leapt out at me from the laptop speaker. "What's that?" I asked.

"Fewer than one tenth of one percent of new mothers experience those symptoms, which are all in the book."

"Symptoms like what?" The strip of skin tore away from my thumb. A sliver of blood appeared where it had been.

"Delusions, auditory hallucinations... feelings like you might seriously hurt yourself. Or hurt the baby." Dr. Almaden shook her head, confident that her answer would never apply to me. "As I said, it's extremely rare, and we'll keep on top of your mental health throughout this whole experience."

I nodded. Our fifty minutes was up.

Dr. Almaden was noticing the same thing. "Let's talk again in a month," she said, helpfully pinging me a link to her online appointment scheduling tool. "And be sure to pick up that book from Dr. Syed."