Constant Beating
Of gentle hearts, turned to gentle fists, then turned gentle.
One womb, ten sets of ears. Five separate beating drums, to ten separate ear drums.
The whoosh of fluid, the beating of familiar hearts - what do quintuplets think the world will be like? Do they think they'd always hear the heartbeats of their womb mates? Imagine their trauma of being born.
All the whooshing and beating suddenly changes in an instant. For intervals with undetermined amounts of time between them, the beating of the other hearts isn't yet translated to surprised screaming - for a moment.
Being the first is the worst. The amount of loneliness felt in what could realistically only be a few minutes between births would be an agony usually only found far later in life. Loneliness, until placed on the sixth heartbeat for peace.
Further away than the siblings, the parental sixth heartbeat enters the auditory plane once again. What could potentially have faded into a background heartbeat is called forward, a comforting sound to ease the pain of not hearing one's siblings.
Siblings may not always share the same womb, and the relationships of siblings are varied in both intensity and structure; but the common theme across all familial relationships?
"Your heart tells you who your family is."
You do not get to decide if or when you hear heartbeats.
Simple Arithmetic
Fertilization, in vitro
Was our last chance
To reproduce sans libido
Or passion, or romance
Technology overshot
When we sono-confirmed
Five heartbeats, five argonauts
On their voyage to term
T'was ordered an injunction
Via abortive injections
For selective reduction
And elective selections
Three were obliging enough
To give access to their worlds
And terminate in a puff
Leaving two, now free to unfurl
"Why are we twins here;
Why were we the two who were born?
Why did we not disappear:
Because ours were the hardest to perform?"
"We are here, are we not?
Because we weren't easy to discard
But we no longer hear
The pulse of triplets onboard."
How do parents explain
Children who were put,
Then sent away again
And didn't make the cut?
____________
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Whether one is pro-life or pro-choice, the whole concept of "selective reduction" of a multiple-gestation is a philosophical mindbender.
The "Octomom" pretty much ended the practice of inserting many embryos to increase the odds of some surviving; especially since IVF technology had improved with better odds of all surviving.
Thus, allowing more than one or two embryos of a multiple gestation to proceed, after an overachievement in assisted reproduction (i.e., in vitro fertilization), was fraught with too many "taking"--and then surviving--until preterm labor or complications tragically doomed them all.
Yet, pro-choice mothers, with selective reduction, abort babies that they wanted at the outset. And pro-life mothers have to choose to renounce their philosophy (or religion!) in order to save the babies who would remain after the selective reduction.
Imagine the dilemma for all who think too hard on this issue: a couple with infertility, desperate to have a baby--to have a family--only to have to "deal" with babies they wanted.
Confused? Understandable.
But the thing that may be the most disturbing is that the choice of which babies to "reduce" (ironic semantics: how do you "reduce" a baby?) is made on which amniotic sac is the most accessible. That is, the most convenient fetal sac to get into with an injection of an abortive. The others, the hardest to get to, thus become the lucky ones. And terms like collateral damage come to mind.
I tried my best not to make this poem sound tongue-in-cheek, which rhyme (which I can't resist) often risks. But I did want some angst to fall out of it, especially when you have to explain to a child that they were just as likely to have been the unlucky ones as their theoretical brothers/sisters turned out to be. They will realize that it was just how they implanted in their mother's uterus--that made so crucial an existential call. And a capricious one, at that.
I've tried to reconcile the thinking on this, but I've come to the conclusion that it can't be done.
Because it's a paradox.
Horsemen
The siblings meant to end the world.
Famine is born among the frost, when trees are bare and the ground is frozen. Stomachs go concave and famine manifests with skin stretched over stark ribs. The babe will carry the arid frost for all of his life, sunk into his bones. There is no warmth for him at the hearth.
Pestilence emerges from mud. To the song of frog croaks, Pestilence comes into being with crust on their eyes, a thick layer of miasma keeping their mouth shut. It’s a while before they cry, but when they do, they are grabbed up just the same.
War is born on the grass. Not soft and pillowy, but trodden by thousands of boots and bodies into an unforgiving state. From the harsh ground, the horseman has back pain from birth. A dull, continual thud throughout their muscles like the beats of a battle.
Death’s birth is among the most expected. On the first graveyard, black eyes spring open. A raven caws a welcome to the babe who will be there for everyone, and thus never be alone.
The fifth is stillborn, for it had a chance, a blip of existence early on in the world. Apathy was born in the absence, in neglect, in the gazes that turn away. Too soon for the babe did Men prove that this horseman was an error. In soft touches, in warm lullabies, in protests and raised voices, the babe is born already taken back.
Womb Awakening
There was nothing I could do about it. They said that I was the only one who could carry all five fetuses. These fetuses inside me all have different mothers, and their fathers are to remain anonymous until they successfully make it to full term. Medical technology has come so far that one woman can carry multiple fetuses at once and all they need is a sterile platform to transplant it from one body to another. They chose my body to carry five fertilized eggs because I have been the most reliable host in the quadrant. In the past four years I have delivered eight babies. The doctors had to surgically expand my womb in order to hold these five, even though they were barely zygotes when the transplant happened. The surgery was four months ago, and since then they haven't released me from my isolated quarantine room. I am to stay here until I give birth, with the IV keeping me sedated and hydrated and the machine monitoring my heartrate. Dr. Menage keeps all the hosts restrained and monitored so he can make sure that we don't turn in our resignation early without the desired results.
When I signed up for this project, I thought I was going to be helping families who couldn't have their own children. I knew that pain, and I was willing to help women who couldn't have their own children. What I didn't realize was that I would become a vessel for as many pregnancies as possible, with no concern about success. At first, they did only one at a time. The goal was not that every child made it to full term. The goal is to stick as many fertilized eggs as possible into any suitable host and hope that at least half of them survived. They gradually tried for twins and triplets until I was unfortunately lucky enough to deliver a set of triplets last year. Now, only two months later, they have put five fetuses inside my womb in hopes that I will keep up my reputation of delivering every baby that I am given.
"Hi Maribelle, are you ready for your ultrasound?"
I remain silent as I see the nurse close the door behind her. I will not waste my time with pleasantries in this cell. She's going to do my ultrasound whether I am ready or not.
I see the withered old nurse come in, her eyes glossed over like she is in a trance. She hobbles over to my bedside to read the monitor, and even though my eyes are trained on her she never meets my gaze. My fists clench up beneath the restraints with rage as she hums a melody that seems slightly familiar. Is that Beethoven? This ancient woman is humming Beethoven while I'm tied down to this bed and drugged in this forsaken place just to have an unnatural number of babies come out of me eventually. It takes everything in me to not spit on her wrinkly face as she lifts my gown up to prepare for the ultrasound. She can barely squeeze the tube hard enough to get the cold gel onto my belly. She starts spreading the cold goo, but I don't really feel it. The numbing sensation has become a new normal with Dr. Menage and so many nurses invading my body every day. My belly is so swollen that I can't imagine how it's going to expand any more to accommodate the fetuses as they continue to grow. She bends over slowly to turn on the ultrasound machine on, and after a couple beeps, she brings the transducer up to eye level. She pulls her smudged glasses down and seems to examine the transducer to make sure that it's sterile.
She repositions the handheld reader and gives me the faintest smile as her hand drops hard onto my abdomen. The room is deadly quiet except for the unpleasant sound of sloshing gel. Once she gets a good position, she steadies her hand. I can't tell if her hand is shaking because she's nervous or because she's older than the fossils buried under this building. The sound gradually becomes louder, and I barely hear a constant thrum of heartbeats. They sound unsynchronized and scattered, like a herd of elephants trampling the ground on a distant television.
But I hear them. The nurse moves the beacon and marks each of the five distinct heartbeats on her chart. The sound from the ultrasound intertwines with the sound from my own heart monitor machine, creating a dissonant melody. I guess that is what six hearts beating together sounds like. For a moment, I am in pure astonishment at the five lives that are developing in my womb. And then, a rippling pain seizes my abdomen. Suddenly the room is blinding white with no more shapes or dimensions and my abdomen feels like a pot of boiling acid. I feel my whole body convulsing beneath the restraints and my vision becomes dark and watery. I feel wet, and I regrettably consider that I may have peed myself due to the extreme pain. The warm wetness just makes me scream as I soil myself with no control.
"Maribelle? Oh goodness... Maribelle, can you hear me?" The nurse inquires frantically.
My eyes roll into the back of my head, and I am no longer conscious of anything around me. I only feel the pain of my abdomen and the babies in me raging from suffocation.
Yes, there are five heartbeats in my womb right now. With mine, that made six heartbeats, like six gears turning to keep a machine running. Isn't it just a shame that my heart might give out before I can save the other five?
Retirement
“Mortimer! You can’t just keep chomping down on ice cream like nothing’s happening?” “Sure I can, I’ve only got a few months left till retirement, why should I care?” “Because I doubt they’ll even grant it to you if you don’t nab those thugs.” The sound of a toilet flushing. His partner Pepe emerged from the police station bathroom and strolled over to Mortimer’s desk, where he had his feet up while indulging in a sweet vanilla ice cream in a glass cup. He clicked the TV remote, with an exaggerated grimace. “End of shift, catch you later,” he said, leaving nonchalantly. The TV blared news Mortimer wished he could ignore. “We confirm that five different branches of the same bank have been hit simultaneously. The masked bandits have made off with the loot, thanks to hostages that have left our police forces stumped. The heist has been pinned on the criminal gang known as The Quintuplets, who always strike in five different yet coordinated spots, leaving law enforcement authorities perplexed. Citizens are asking, why can’t our police guardians quell the chaos and...” Mortimer grunted and switched off the TV, annoyed by the report.
Mortimer thought it would be better to turn on the radio instead of the television, as he didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts that were echoing the weight of duty too loudly in his head. The old radio in his drawer remained there, undisturbed by the events unfolding in the evening darkness. “And now, we present to you the new hit from the Korean band composed of five brothers. Which one is your favorite? Let’s hear what their fans have to say about this band of quintuplets.” “No, not more quintuplets! Leave me alone!” Mortimer exclaimed, turning off the radio.
“Sir, we have identified additional individuals for interrogation. There are five actual quintuplets with a history of supermarket theft,” said Ronald, one of the officers.
“Are you serious, Ronald? Just because they’re called ‘the quintuplets’ doesn’t mean they’re actual siblings, they’re just a group of five. We shouldn’t be looking for real brothers, that won’t give us the answer,” Mortimer dismissed the idea.
“Tomorrow, we’ll be more refreshed. Let’s finish today’s shift and let the night shift take over,” Mortimer insisted.
“But...” Ronald tried to argue.
“There are no valid ‘buts’ in this situation,” Mortimer said firmly, asserting the authority he had granted himself, and he headed toward the subway to return home.
To avoid spending time with his inner self, Mortimer decided to pull out his mobile phone and start playing a monster and dungeon-themed RPG game. Despite his advanced age, he was an avid fan of video games and easily passed the first levels of the daily missions. “Here comes the boss,” he thought.
That day’s boss was the Lernaean Hydra, a creature with five heads, and its special move was splitting into five quintuplets of itself. “Oh, come on! It has to be a joke. They’re haunting me everywhere I go,” Mortimer complained, abruptly turning off the screen and losing the game immediately.
Suddenly, everything became blurry around Mortimer, and he woke up in his bed, disoriented and drenched in cold sweat. “Oh, it was just a dream, a nightmare, really. I don’t understand why quintuplets kept chasing me,” he muttered to himself.
“Grandpa, Grandpa! Wake up! You promised to play with us today!”
“Yeah, Grandpa! I want to go iguana fishing!”
“No! He said we would brush my dolls’ hair together and shave their heads with his razor!”
“He won’t be doing any of that because first he has to help me with my math homework. I don’t understand how this works! It says here, ‘How many candies are left if I’m given six and I’ve already eaten two?’ I don’t have any left because Mom only lets me eat two a day!”
“Grandpa, why are you looking at us like that? Come on, cheer up! You’re almost retired, and then we can always be together forever! Won’t that be great?”
And Mortimer understood why.
I smile at my belly. When I place a hand on it, it feels warm. Warm and cozy and safe. I know it's just the motherly hormones kicking in, but I like it. I love it, actually.
My dear husband places his ear gently on my belly, listening.
"I know one thing for sure." He says.
"What?" I ask, smiling.
"Our kid is an active one, it sounds like a basketball team stomping around in there." He grins.
I look down at our child, filling with warmth and love and adoration.
"I love you." I say.
My husband looks up, "I love you too."
I grin at him and bop his nose, "I love you too."
Unstained & Unstrained...
Five little babies so small and cute, each a bundle of joy though they may be born prematurely.
Resources it will take to keep them all surviving and healthy.
No matter, they bring blessings to their mother and father who are thankful for this miraculous 1 in 55 million of a rarity.
But there's no denying that caring for and raising them will take a lot out of them both emotionally and
Five tiny fingers of ones born after the next, through their position in and later exiting the womb.
As they live and grow, the uniqueness of their solid bond in love and support, they'll show. From infancy to childhood, they'll explore and learn about the world.
There will be moments of laughter, happiness and sadness spilling into portions of their lives but joy they will retain. For the odds of them being together and alive are odds they'll take any day.
Five little heartbeats in a symphony of harmonies will grow, tall into adulthood and beyond but their connection will still remain unstained and unstrained blossoming into more so than before, every precious day.
We Were Five
Our mother seems to think of us as one. From our hair to our clothes down to our shoes. I could see why she would confuse us for each other, we're identical clones of one another. The only thing separating us are our names and personalities, things that were overlooked by the people around us. To the five of us we clung to those little things, like they were our freedom from each other. We relished in the joy that one day we'd be going our separate ways, to finally become one person and not five carbon copies of each other. We were in tuned with each other that when one of us was hurting or in pain we could feel it...and we did. We felt every heartache, cried when the others were down. We were so use to being compared or mistaken that we resented one another. It was hard to have a voice when we outnumbered each other. Clawing our way out of each other's shadows, wanting to be seen for who we were. Individuals with our own thoughts and ideas but to everyone who knew us or the us they thought they knew, we were five.