Kelly Jean-Philippe Story
There is nothing quite like being a dad. Before my son was born, I had reached a point in life where I was starting to feel more comfortable in my own skin as a person, as a man, a Chocolate-covered man.
I had completed both undergraduate and graduate studies. I was beginning to find and define my purpose through my career path. After a few decades of financial instability, I was beginning to mature in my financial decisions and take more accountability for the years of poor
financial practices.
I was growing more and more comfortable looking back at my reflection in the mirror, appreciating the things that make me who I am: the good, the bad, and the really ugly. “I like this version of you, Kel”, I would say often; a thought rooted in the opposite end of the spectrum of what I had silently been telling myself for many years. Before my son was born, I was in a good place.
Then he announced his arrival at about 02:30 – 02:45 on a Tuesday morning in late May 2020 when my wife’s water broke. About half a day later, the sum of my life’s trajectory revolutionized my world being bundled up in the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen staring back at me at about 14:33 later that same afternoon. I was quickly whisked away from my wife’s side to be at his side and comfort him.
“Hey buddy, this is daddy… I’m right here with you”, I recall saying to him. His piercing crying voice rang like a gentle lullaby to my ears; but only that one time. I placed my right index finger in his palm, and the moment he grasped on to it with his tiny little fingers, not only did he immediately stop crying, but the very pillars and paradigms of who I thought myself to be as a person, a man, a chocolate-covered man, fundamentally shifted and changed. I was really, truly a dad!
The journey to getting to that point was challenging. Embedded in my cultural and religious context is the expectation that when a man and a woman marry, they are to reproduce almost immediately. Marry today, pump out kids tomorrow. But obviously that’s not how this works. The factors of what it takes to conceive a single human life are nuanced, complex, and mysterious. There are those who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars seeking alternate treatments to be able to conceive a life but to no avail. Others have a much smoother path. But it goes further and deeper than just biological processes, although that’s a huge part. And in my experience, I’ve been reminded of just how painful, traumatizing, and numbing it can be time and time again.
Within a year of being married, my wife and I were quietly eating dinner at out dining room table when she surprised me with a decorative gift bag. “This is for you”, she said smiling at the puzzled look on my face. We were accustomed to randomly gifting each other things, so I’m not quite sure why I was so puzzled in this occasion. Inside the bag was a white newborn onesie with lettering that read “You’re Going To Be A Dad” printed across its front. I let out a shout of joy so loud that I might have created a new category of decibels. And I ran around our dining room so fast, I would have made the great Usain Bolt seem pedestrian.
That joy cannot be described. Trying to contain it in words almost feels sacrilegious and profane. My wife and I hugged and kissed. We were going to be parents! When the time came for our first ultrasound appointment, I was confident, optimistic, but measured.
Somewhere along the way someone might have said something to the effect of a couple’s first pregnancy having a higher probability of being nonviable; or as said someone might have put it: not “sticking”. The stupid things some people say. More stupidly, I tucked that in the back of my mind going into this first ultrasound and reasoned that in the worst-case scenario I wouldn’t be surprised; after all it might not “stick” since it’s our first pregnancy. The stupid things some people believe. Sure enough, the pregnancy was not viable, and sometime after my wife went through an emotionally and physically taxing procedure to remove from her body who would have been our first baby.
I did not know how to support my wife. She shut down for several weeks and I couldn’t understand why. And my not knowing was not only due to not ever having been through something like that before; my thinking was, “What’s the big deal? We already knew the first pregnancy might not stick…” Because that was my thinking, I prevented myself from caring for
my wife because of what her body went through. I was unable to acknowledge, validate, and honor the trauma she’d experienced physically and, more importantly, emotionally and psychologically.
We got through that block of time and found ourselves expecting again a healthy amount of time after the first instance. I tucked away the onsie my wife had originally given me after our first pregnancy loss, but now that we were expecting again, the onesie returned. I would sleep with it under my pillow and have it with me in the same way a child would walk around dragging a comfy blanket.
If the first pregnancy had a high probability of not being viable, surely—I thought—this time I am going to be a dad. My unbridled excitement materialized manifested in my subconscious in the form of a very vivid dream where I saw a woman, who in the dream was my wife, giving birth to a beautiful baby girl with bright ocean/sky-blue eyes (it was a white woman and a white baby in the dream).
The real emotions I felt were what awoke me. I might have shed a tear of joy waking up from that dream. To me that was confirmation: I was having a baby, and she will be a girl! I went again with my wife to our ultrasound appointment. Nonviable. I was devastated. My dream was just that, a dream. I felt something akin to the way I think my wife had previously felt and was again feeling.
Again, she would have to undergo that painful and traumatizing procedure, but this time my painfully shattered expectations bridged me to what she had been feeling all this time since our first loss. We were both emotionally dealing with a lot as I sat in that closet of a room with her, waiting for the medical team to take her back to the procedure room to remove from her who would have been our second baby.
The main physician walked in, a man; and his assistant with him, a woman. I sat in a corner almost perpendicular to where my wife was, about an arm’s reach from the door, and surrounded by white walls on all four sides. The physician walked right in front of me and completely ignored my existence and presence in the room. He sat with his back to me and made no attempt to acknowledge my being physically there.
His assistant was more cultured and acknowledged me with eye contact and a smile. The physician said his piece and walked out. If you were to ask him, I functioned as his shadow against the white wall. I felt powerless. I felt invisible. I felt worthless. My grief and pain were not validated, and perhaps not even valid, I felt.
My wife was the patient. End of story. In many ways, I acknowledge that perhaps these are the ways I made my wife feel the first time around. That’s a sobering thought. In her emotional angst she said these words I’ll never forget: “Instead of producing life, I feel like my womb is a place for death.”
The third time was indeed the charm. We are finally parents! The journey we’ve been on with my son is nothing short of beautiful, life-changing, exciting, frustrating, tiring, challenging, rewarding, and everything in between. It’s madness, both in the warm and fuzzy as well as the
pulling-my-hair-out sense. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
We talked about and decided we would try for a second child to give our son a sibling, and our little family would be complete. Because of all that my wife’s body has gone through, I suggested that after our next and final child, I would get a vasectomy so that she shouldn’t have to put her body through any more trauma. We tried again, and my wife became pregnant.
Because of our history, we were more tempered with the news of the pregnancy and decided to approach it one step at a time. Having a child this time around alleviated a lot of the weight of going through this again. However, we were back in familiar territory as the pregnancy was not
viable. We were disappointed, hurt, and beginning to feel numb. But we were stronger as a couple now.
I knew how to talk to her and check in on how she was feeling in order to be more supportive. As we nearing the time for her to undergo the procedure to remove from her body who would have been our fourth child, we experienced a new form of trauma in our own home.
I was upstairs in our bedroom and my wife was in the powder room on the main level of our house when she called out to me in distress, “Babe! It’s happening!” I ran down the stairs to find her lying on the floor of the powder room naked, blood everywhere. She was in pain as her body was beginning to discharge the non-life inside of her.
I could do nothing but watch in horror. She cried. I cried. I tried my best to do whatever I thought would be helpful, so I began fanning her with an unopened envelope I found on our kitchen counter, but by virtue of the tight space, I was suffocating her space. She asked me to get a fan we had in a nearby room instead, and I found a slice of purpose in complying with that. She cried. I cried. The scene was horrific. I felt powerless and almost useless.
We cancelled our plans to go to work that morning, and I quickly went to drop off our son at my in-laws, speeding back home to be with my wife. I found her still lying on the floor in pain and discomfort, still crying. I lay next to her on the floor and cried with her. The thought of trying again was terrifying to me. All these instances, with the exception of having our son, were moments I suffered in silence, alone. My wife preferred we not tell anyone within our circles when we were expecting during those pregnancies until it was confirmed viable. And given that three of the four were nonviable, no one knew what we were going through. No one knew what I was going through or had gone through.
I was there to support my wife; albeit imperfectly at times, but I did not have that person for my support on the other hand. I still carry the pain of two of our three losses with me to this day. I don’t blame or resent my wife in any way, let that be clear. But when we talked about trying one final time, I asked for the rules change. She agreed. So we tried again. I write all this fresh off the news that our most recent, and final attempt at conceiving a second child, is most likely nonviable; a likelihood my wife’s doctor holds strongly as the most probably case scenario.
Only one week ago as of the time of this writing, my wife was at an ultrasound when she texted me a video of “our little fish”; fish because the blob with the heartbeat she saw on the monitor had the shape of a fish, according to her. So, I named who would have been our fifth baby “Nemo”.
And yesterday, April 20, 2022, I stood next to my wife in the ultrasound room holding her hand, anxious but hopeful that I would see and hear my Nemo’s heartbeat, only to be told by the physician that she fears this pregnancy, too, is nonviable. I cried. As of right now and given our history, this is it for us in terms of attempting for a second child.
In real time, writing this, I feel like I’ve failed my wife and let down my son by being unable to gift him a sibling. I know my wife would disagree with me that I’ve failed her, but that is the feeling that lingers inside of me, 24 hours later.
Empirically, I know it’s not my fault, and that the factors for what it takes to conceive a human life are nuanced, complex, and mysterious…Experientially, this is a tough pill to swallow… And I don’t know what to do with that.
By Kelly Jean-Philippe, April 21, 2022
Kelly is our USA Pod-vocate for the Still Parents Podcast, you should check out the incredible work he is doing with his podcast The Miscarriage Dads. To read more about our partnership click here.
