My First Son, a Pure Memory

By DAVID HLAVSA
Published: September 19, 2008

HAVING waited until we were in our 30s to start a family, my wife and I were having trouble conceiving, leading to sperm tests, hormone shots and other extraordinary measures.

Over many months, the process of conception became so technical that when Lisa told me she was at last pregnant, I found it hard to know what to credit. After the first ultrasound, she came home with a black-and-white picture of a tiny curled-up creature. We put it on the refrigerator: my son, the lima bean.

At 20 weeks, we went in together for the second ultrasound. The technician made small talk and popped his gum as he dimmed the lights. Lisa lay back on the table. I shifted in my seat, jammed my hands into my pockets, and stretched out my legs like a teenager settling in to watch a movie. As the technician slid the paddle around on Lisa’s belly, the image on the computer screen wheeled, dipped and blurred.

Finally my son’s image popped into focus. Arms and legs folded, he seemed to be resting on his back, as if lying on the bottom of a pool, waiting to spring to the surface.

I said, “Cool.”

The technician muttered something, hit a button to freeze the image and walked briskly out of the room.

A few minutes later, in walked a small man wearing a rumpled white coat and steel-rimmed glasses, his bow tie askew. He shut the door behind him.

I don’t remember exactly what he said; he looked as if someone had left him out in the rain. What we had taken for a frozen image, he explained, was in fact absolute stillness.

We still refer to the man as Doctor Death, perpetually forlorn, always breaking bad news. They keep him in a closet. (A year later, pregnant with our second son, Benjamin, my wife turned a corner at the hospital and saw him at a nurses’ station; she did an abrupt, involuntary about-face.)

After Doctor Death left, our midwife arrived to explain that we had a decision to make. Did we want to schedule a D and C or induce labor? Her language was very plain, but it took a while for me to understand what she was really asking: Did we want the pregnancy to end in a surgical procedure in the outpatient clinic, or in the maternity ward as a stillbirth? We asked whether there were medical advantages or disadvantages to either choice. She told us it was simply a matter of preference. No hurry. Let us know. More