A month later, she gave birth by C-section to Simone (a “micropreemie’’), and in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, she’s told that her 1-pound, 11-ounce daughter might be completely deaf, have profound neurological impairment, and a limited chance of survival. Simone’s entry into the world involves a litany of terrifying complications, including surgery to repair a hole in her heart, kidney failure, the inability to breathe on her own, and multiple blood transfusions.
Simone spends the first three months of her life in intensive care, and the strain is enough to drive anyone crazy. Stevenson details the “emotional leadenness’’ that comes with not knowing from one day to the next whether her baby was thriving or failing. “The tension between triumph and tragedy in the land of premature parenthood borders upon the absurd,’’ she writes. She doesn’t get to hold her daughter until nine days after she’s born.
The author had an extremely difficult time conceiving as well. She had miscarried twice before. When she and her husband, Scott, tried yet again, she endured a battery of intrusive tests and fertility treatments the highlights of which are (hilariously) recalled in the book.
She sees a reproductive endocrinologist who is a former veterinarian. She tries acupuncture. She and Scott go through the expensive and arduous process of in vitro fertilization. (He begins referring to their possible future child as “Science Baby.’’) And a startled doctor informs Stevenson one day that she has “very unusual anatomy,’’ then politely asks whether he can invite a medical student to have a look.
Throughout “Half Baked,’’ so many things go awry for the author that it seems only her highly developed sense of humor sustains her. With a pregnancy marked by pills, injections, dizzying amounts of antibiotics, anemia, gestational diabetes, and then, tragically, a stillborn son, even good days prove bittersweet.
When Stevenson isn’t waiting for the other shoe to drop, she’s simply bored. She recounts her hospital bed rest confinement, where she passes the time partly by obsessively calculating perforations in the ceiling tiles of her room (5,733 is the final tally).
