How to Become a Mother

by Grace Sikorski

At birth, possess the requisite primary sex organs—one uterus, normally shaped; two ovaries, holding a million or so eggs, which will die off at a rapid rate with every passing year of your life. Tick tock. Tick tock. Start the clock.

Wear scratchy dresses and aching head bows. Wail as they pierce your soft, soft lobes with diamond studs. Play with baby dolls, kitchen sets, plastic irons, bangles, and glitter. Bask before the light bulb of your Easy-Bake Oven. Serve Ken sugar-spice cookies as he drives along the coast in his convertible beach cruiser.  Serve him punch. Serve him laughter. Dedicate yourself to a life of service.

Shop in the pink aisles at the toy store and the clothing store and the shoe store and the bookstore, for pink is the natural color of the Feminine.

Enjoy the caresses of family and friends; they are teaching you to touch and to allow yourself to be touched, skills you will need later in life.

Be good. Be clean. Be polite. Obey. Smile. Pretty that way. Pretty is a skill you will also need later in life.

Do not overexert yourself. Do not sweat. Do not compete against boys, for competition is Masculine, and boys are stronger, faster, smarter, and better than you. Compete against other girls. Measure yourself against them for size and weight and hair length and eye color and clothing and shoes and popularity and scent. Not for intelligence. Compete against an unrealistic beauty ideal, unattainable except in airbrushed fashion layouts, CGI-d choreographed Hollywood blockbusters, and carefully curated social media selfies. 

Bleed at 13. Learn the value of Virginity. Cleanliness. Hygiene. Purchase douches. Genital deodorants.  Ultra-absorbent, plastic-lined, bleached, winged pads, flexible. Keep that just showered feeling, sanitary, stain-free. Be protected, discrete, empowered, confident. In control. Change to tampons when you have the courage. When you are certain they will not rob you of your Virginity. Stay free, always . . . at least for hours at a time.

Lose your virginity at 15. Learn to track your period on your calendar app. Mark it with a tiny pink heart each day it begins. Panic when you skip a heart. Panic when you pee on the end of a plastic dip stick. When it reads positive, the plus sign signifying you are more than one. Do not tell your mother. Do not tell the stranger you met at the bar two months ago; you don’t have his number anyway. Do not tell the abortion clinic in the next state over that you are only 15. Show them the fake ID that got you into the bar, where you bought the drinks, that got you drunk, so you said yes to the stranger you met at the bar two months ago.

When your mother notices the bloody underwear in the laundry bin and sits on the side of your bed, smile, pretty, and tell her Aunt Flo has you down. Let her hold you and rock you and tell you it happens to everyone. It’s happened to her.

Vow you will be a good mother. Someday. When you are old enough. When you are ready. When it is right.

Binge-watch Nick-at-Night classics, nuclear families with two to eight children, coffee tables, couches draped with home-knit blankets. Learn how to meet a husband at the door after a long day at the office, smiling. Learn how to scrub your toilet, shave your legs, discipline children and knit a blanket off screen, during a brief word from your sponsor. Learn to solve other people’s problems in 22-minute time slots. Learn to take your cue. Hit your mark.

Practice active visualization to manifest your ideal mate. Blue eyes. Brown curls. Six feet. Flawless physique. Trust fund. Ivy league. Surgeon, lawyer, international power broker. You aren’t choosey.

Play the field. Blind dating. Internet dating. Speed dating. Count the ones who stay the night but never call you back. Count the ones who aren’t into monogamy or commitment or rolling one on. Count the ones who told you they were just playing the scene. Count the ones whose names you didn’t quite catch. Lose count. Learn not to count on men at all. 

Breathe in. Thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Alone. Marry yourself in a private sun-salutation at the acme of Mount Katahdin. Vow celibacy, self-actualization, depths of insight, heights of aspiration. Your sole witness, one passing eagle. Breathe out.

Raise your consciousness. Look at your pulsing vulva in a hand-mirror. Learn to use a menstrual cup. Plaster your apartment with framed reproductions of Georgia O’Keefe, Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta, Frida Kahlo, Yoko Ono. Earn your BA in women’s studies, MA in cultural studies. Read Butler, Hooks, Faludi, Lorde, Lady Gaga. Volunteer at a women’s shelter. Tattoo your arms, full sleeves. March to protest repeal of Roe-V-Wade. Learn to subvert patriarchal hegemony through the lens of radical feminist theory. Critique gender as a social construct, monogamy as a compelling fiction. Resist oppression. Attend Lilith Fair. Dye your hair panic pink. Pierce your clit. Rest assured that you at long last are woke.

Find Mister Right in the granola isle of the Organics Market. Vet him thoroughly. After you have proof that he is indeed a post-doc in Chemistry at the university with no prior convictions or notices on the local police blotter, after he has demonstrated on numerous occasions before an audience of your BFFs that he hasn’t misogynistic or racist or homophobic or ableist or neonationalist bone in his paunchy, hair-receding body, when he has disclosed to you without provocation that he has tested negative for all known sexually transmitted diseases and illnesses, that his income is on par with your own, and that he makes monthly donations to the Save the Children’s Fund in memory of his own dear mother, then and only then allow him to come to your off-campus apartment, offer him a tray of water-soluble lube, a non-latex condom, and the sex toy of your choice. 

Hear him tell you that you are the most important thing in the world. Believe him when he tells you he would do anything for you. Trust him when he says you are his life and his world and his heart. That he wants to grow old with you. He wants to know you. To love you. He wants you.

Marry him immediately after graduation.

Relocate to a university as an academic power couple. Prioritize research, leadership, teaching. The shared governance of the college. Climb the promotion and tenure ladder. Publish. Publish again. Become chair of your department. Move into administration. Celebrate your hire as the new Vice President for Learning on your 40^th birthday.

Hear your mother ask if she can expect grandchildren before she dies.

Say, grandma had children well into her late thirties, and she wasn’t even vegan.

Yes, your mother says, but she started when she was half your age and fell into menopause early.

Hear your biological clock beating like Poe’s tell-tale heart. Tear up the floorboards. Set the clock on your mental mantel, a reminder of your own mortality. Hear the cuckoo announce the hour. Every hour.

Use the last pill in your dial and start taking your temperature every morning to track ovulation. When you’re ripe and ready, have as much sex as you possibly can have in a 48-hour period. In all the right positions. Rest for three weeks. Repeat.

Repeat for three years until any whiff of lubricant causes you to reach for the Xanax.

Hear your friends tell you, “It’ll happen when you stop trying.” Now, how is that supposed to work, exactly?

Consult a fertility clinic. The best on the west coast. Measure sperm count, motility. Learn there is nothing wrong with him, that “the problem” is you. Your age, to be more precise. The age of your eggs, to be even more so. Recommendation: in-vitro fertilization. That way you can make the most of the time—and the eggs —you still have.

Step 1. Begin injections to stimulate optimum ovarian follicular development. Two every morning, two every afternoon, and three every evening. Watch the thin metal needle slide cleanly into your soft, soft belly, precise, sterile, scientifically nonjudgmental. Feel each ovary grow to the size of a large navel orange.

Step 2. Flare up with lava-hot emotional flashes. Lose friends. Alienate colleagues. Frighten your husband and the dog.

Step 3. Feel your husband pinch your right buttock to give you your “trigger shot,” the longest of needles, the day before they harvest your eggs. Hear him joke, “Sexy, huh?” Say nothing.

Step 4. Anesthesia. A long needle inserted into each ovary. Your eggs counted, “graded” for quality. If no eggs are viable, return to Step 1. Repeat the protocol three times.

Step 5. Harvest five eggs worthy of insemination. Monitor them for cleavage, compaction. If no blastocysts are viable, return to Step 1. Repeat the protocol. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Step 6. Transfer two blastocysts into your uterus. Freeze the third. Learn the limits of your insurance coverage. Ask mom for a loan to cover the cryopreservation of her unborn grandchild. Sign legal releases waiving your right to sue the fertility clinic for the loss or damage of any frozen embryos. Do not mention this to your mother.

Work your way through $227.28 worth of at-home pregnancy tests with conflicting results in two weeks while you wait for the clinic to test officially. Collect the testing sticks in a large plastic bag. Plan to create a surrealist sculpture to be sold at auction to the Museum of Modern Art permanent collection. Imagine it hanging in the foyer outside the women’s history exhibit featuring Georgia O’Keefe, Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta, Frida Kahlo, Yoko Ono; the curator hailing it as the single most daring vision of life’s tremulous indeterminacy. Reach for the crazy glue.

Learn from the fertility clinic that the embryos did not attach. Hear a chirpy nurse say, “Let’s keep going. We have to get you pregnant.”  

Thaw the frozen embryo. Implant. Wait.

Hear a crescendo of angels in chorus, heralding the annunciation, the blessed mother’s miraculous conception, the divine mystery itself as the ultrasound monitor shows a growing embryo with a strong heartbeat attached to the lining of your unlikely aging uterus. 

Take pregnancy vitamins. Rest. Exercise. Meditate. Buy What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Install the pregnancy tracker app. Today, baby is the size of a raisin. Today the size of a grape. Allow yourself to imagine holding baby, kissing baby. Feel that you are not alone.

Watch Amazon flash ads for diapers, formula, size NB onesies.

Watch your husband’s face as he looks at the ultrasound screen. Feel the OB squirt another cold glob of lubricant on your abdomen, move the ultrasound wand around in circles. Stop. Hear him say, “You see that empty sac just there?” You look. Feel your husband squeeze your hand. Too tight. Where did it go? Where did it go?

Curl up in a fetal position in your bed at home. Feel your husband climb in to spoon you. Hear someone howling in pain. Hear him whisper, “Oh, god. Oh, god.”

In a week’s time, you’ll be right back there recovering from the dilation and curettage that has scraped what remains of the fetus and the placenta. Your husband will remind you that you can start again. You roll away from him. He lets you sleep. You sleep for days.

Discuss buying donor eggs. Discuss hiring a gestational carrier. Look through databases of women, younger than you, prettier than you. Listen to your husband narrow down the choices. Know that he is choosing a woman to take your place, to carry his child, just one step removed from having an affair, you think.

Allow your marriage and your soul to atrophy. Stop touching. Stop talking.

Go on a silent retreat. Alone. Meditate. Find your center. Reflect on the intentions behind your actions. Affirm your commitment to being a wife and mother, the journey you have begun, the noble truth that you desire a child. Google couple’s counselors, grief support groups.

Listen to your mother’s affirmation. They say, you can always adopt.

Sign a contract with a domestic adoption agency who guarantees placement and has no age cap. Pay the fees up front. Complete reams of paperwork identifying what you will accept. Say yes to birth mother currently incarcerated, without health insurance, in need of financial assistance, requesting up to three visits per year, admitting to occasional alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana use in the first trimester or later. Say yes to birth father similarly tagged, or father unknown, which could mean a pleasurable one-night stand, or rape, or incest. You will never know which.

Say yes to single newborn, mixed or any race, boy or girl. Say no to genetic abnormalities, HIV, disability, major impairment, or special needs. Say no to older than three years, sibling groups, abandoned children. Say no to international adoptions — adoption agreements between countries can be cancelled with the change of a presidential administration. Hate yourself for saying no.

Hire a videographer to create a video profile that will be shown to birth mothers interested in placing a child for adoption. How to dress? How to speak? How to smile? Like a woman who deserves to be a mother? Take three takes and settle for the one in which the dog does not lick himself. Create a print profile too.

See your primary for a medical exam. Fax the dog’s vaccination record. Pass the fire department’s home safety check. Fingerprint for an FBI criminal background investigation report. Show proof of employment. Proof of income. Proof of marriage. Proof of residence. Tax returns. Citizenship. Ask three friends to write letters of reference testifying that you will make a great mother. Meet with a social worker who asks how you plan to discipline a child, how you and your husband resolve conflict.

Take a course in diapering, feeding, dressing, and bathing. Take another in infant CPR and home safety. Pad every hard edge in your home with rubber bumpers. Install cabinet locks, outlet covers, gates for kitchen and stairs.

Prepare for an emergency placement, which could happen at a moment’s notice, they say. Arrange backups to teach your classes. Step down from leadership positions. Cancel conferences. Cancel travel. Buy car seat, stroller, clothes, blankets, hats, socks, bottles, formula, lotion, soap, and a pack-and-play.  Learn what the hell is a pack-and-play. Assemble IKEA crib, changing table, dresser. Paint walls, clean floors. Hurry up and wait.

Join a queue of hundreds waiting for a birth mother to choose you. Wait six months.

Smile and shrug at coworkers who ask expectantly, any news?

Wait a year.  Pay another round of fees. Reshoot the profile video. Renew your print profile. Resend documentations. Meet with social worker. Resume waiting.

Avoid coworkers in the halls. Let your mother’s phone calls go to voice mail.

Get a text. You’ve been chosen. Finally. All’s well. Birth mother goes into labor. Loses baby.

Get a call. Drive two states south. Arrive to discover the birth mother has changed her mind. Or the birth father has changed her mind for her, by the looks of things.

Get an e-mail asking if you will consider the placement of a child born this morning. Meets all desired criteria but has low “APGAR scores.” Google “APGAR scores.” Watch your husband’s face fall. Say no to low APGAR scores.

Get a voice message describing a situation that is an exact match. Tell the chair of your department that you need to take family leave. Listen to him clear his throat and say he’s “not sure” family leave applies to adoption. Call HR. Take family leave.

Fly across four state lines.

Go straight to the hospital. Meet the social worker in the cafeteria. Sign a half-inch stack of paperwork. Confirm receipt of disclosure for mother’s health status, baby’s health status, father’s unknown identity. Reason for placement: “I can’t give this baby the life she deserves.” Sign agreement for visitation rights, annual photos and letters, open files.

In the elevator listen as your husband chooses this precise moment to tell you about his recent infidelity with a coworker. Your coworker. Listen to him say he needed tenderness, warmth, genuine human connection, what he couldn’t get from you.

Breathe. Then walk into the hospital room to meet a slightly sedated woman who is recovering from a c-section, who sits in bed in the company of her own mother and father, who is singing “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away,” who will now decide if she can put her newly born child into your care.

Lose your breath entirely when she hands a child she has just brought into this world into your arms. Look at the small hands and nose, the little mouth yawning. The wrinkled face. The eyes struggling to open and take you in. And say what you believe everyone in the room must be thinking.

“She’s beautiful.”

And just like that, before the birthmother signs over her rights as legal guardian to the adoption agency, before the adoption agency authorizes you to take the child into your custody, before you spend two weeks living in a local hotel near the hospital waiting for a state judge to give you permission to leave his jurisdiction, before you fly home to a schedule of two-hour feedings that will hobble you with sleep deprivation,  before the adoption agency stops posting notice in the local papers to call on the birthfather to come forward and claim the child or declare his rights forfeit, before the judge makes the child’s name and your legal guardianship final, before years of vigilance and worry, joy and pride, before you even hand back the baby to this slightly sedated woman, who has agreed to breastfeed until she is no longer needed . . .

She smiles at you and says, “You see, mama? I told you I chose the right one.”

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