Another September: Creating Life and Art in a Terrifying World

1.
We arrive at the maternity ward late on a Tuesday afternoon in September. That evening, I’m scheduled to be induced. The day before, I received an email from Katherine: “I can’t believe I’m writing you today. What absurd timing!”

She said we’d received an offer on my new novel. She knew, of course, that I was about to have the baby.

“Obviously please don’t feel ANY pressure to respond to this right away!”

I sent back a quick, happy reply.

I called my husband, Jake, who brought home celebratory Choco-Tacos in lieu of champagne.

A day later, my son is born.

This confluence of events—the baby and the book contract—was in part by design. My book was not yet finished, but I wanted to have the offer in hand before the baby arrived. It was a decision perhaps more emotional than practical. At 41, I was overjoyed to be having a baby; I’d always wanted to be a mom. Still, I’d heard about the crisis of identity that could accompany new motherhood and worried that once I was a mother—and maintaining my full-time job as a professor—my writing, which had always been so grounding, would fight for space.

If I had a book contract, though, it would mean I was writing a book, which would mean I was still a writer. Rather than intimidating, this felt clear and comforting. This book would get done.

2.
We had spent nearly two years trying to get pregnant. The summer we got married, I stopped taking the pill. I read Taking Charge of Your Fertility. I started taking my temperature, timing my cycles. I emptied the top drawer of our bathroom cabinet and filled it with plastic-wrapped testing strips, one for ovulation and one for pregnancy, green and blue.

That fall, three months after the wedding, I went in for testing at a fertility clinic, sitting in the waiting room that would become so familiar over the next two years. I wasn’t yet too worried. In the exam room, the doctor narrated the internal sonogram. Better-than-average egg count. Evidence of recent ovulation. A large fibroid on one side—it looked monstrous on the screen.

Afterward, in his office, Dr. P told me what I knew: At 39, getting pregnant could take longer. There were more risks involved. Still, he said,