My morning sickness started a couple of days later, although I didn't recognize it as such. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, I started to feel a bit queasy. But Clark and I had been up most of the night before on a stake-out, so I thought I was probably just tired.
As a result, rather than following Evelyn's advice and making sure my stomach was not empty, I decided that I probably needed sleep more than food and went to bed as soon as I got home.
It seemed to work, as I woke up feeling much better the following day. I had the yogurt Jimmy had gotten me for breakfast and we went out for the typical turkey sandwich for lunch and then again in mid-afternoon, I felt a little nauseous.
Clark convinced me not to skip dinner that night, and as I wasn't feeling that badly, I agreed to a light dinner.
Again, I felt better in the morning when I woke up. It wasn't until I started to feel sick again that third night that I realized this was not just a need for extra sleep due to the stake-out, but probably morning sickness. I was awfully tired as well, but a call in to Evelyn assured me that this was normal for the first trimester.
So, I forced myself to eat a light dinner again that night, and head to bed at nine, rather than my usual eleven o'clock bed time.
But the next morning when I woke, I still felt sick and the nausea just got worse as the day went on. One of the benefits of having Superman as a husband was that as soon as Clark realized that I was having morning sickness, he disappeared and was back a couple of minutes later with saltines.
“Evelyn suggested they'd help,” he said as he handed them to me.
It took me a half hour to eat three of them, and I didn't feel any better when I did.
Clark was sweet, but a bit clueless when we got home. He offered to make me all sorts of foods that I normally loved, but did not sound good now. He even offered me fried chicken. I guess that's what I get for being married to a man who has never been sick – he has no idea what nausea is like and that fried food is about the last thing a normal nauseous person wants.
We finally settled on pasta. He made marinara sauce for himself and I had mine plain. Clark added just a little bit of oil so that the paste would not stick to itself, and somewhat sadly, it did not taste at all bland to me the way it normally would.
Shortly after dinner, I went to bed. I was so disappointed to wake up the next morning still feeling sick. I remembered Evelyn telling us that morning sickness could last all day and that once it started, it often got worse for the first few weeks. The idea of this lasting for weeks and even getting worse was hard to take.
I got ready slowly that morning, deciding on a pants suit with a plain white blouse. It only took me an hour at the Planet to realize I chose wrong. I felt a strong desire to go home and change into sweats. My pants were not tight, but I sort of wanted to wear something that I did not feel on my abdomen at all. I sort of wished I had an office so I could undo my pants, but given my desk in the middle of the newsroom floor, that was not an option.
Luckily, while I was struggling with what to do – I wanted to take the day off, but knew I could not take off for the next several weeks, Perry came over.
“Go home, honey,” he said quietly.
“What?” I asked as I noticed Clark glance up at us.
“You look awful,” Perry said, the compassion in his voice taking the sting out of his words. “Go home. Work from there if you can. If you can come in for staff meetings, I'd appreciate it, but other than that, you can work from home until you feel better.”
“Thank you, Perry,” I said, feeling tears building behind my eyes.
Perry smiled. “Just take care of the little one, darling',” he said to me. “And Clark,” he said over my head. “You should stay home, too. Take care of your wife.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Clark said and while he did not appear to be fighting back tears like I was, I could tell he was just as touched by Perry's behavior.
**************
Working from home was much better. I had taken to wearing an old pair of Clark's sweatpants from high school. I had to fold them over so they would fit, but a couple of folds and they rest lightly on my hips, putting no pressure on my abdomen at all.
While I still felt sick, at least I felt comfortable. Perry had us working on smaller stories for now, and I appreciated it. I used to think that I would hate being treated with kid gloves when I was pregnant and I'd be upset to lose the big stories. But that was before I got pregnant. Now I was glad to be able to handle stories that I could write from home.
Clark went out occasionally to interview people for our stories and more often than that for Superman duties, but he was by my side as much as he could be. I was a little nervous about the baby. You hear so many stories about couples that fall apart after the arrival of a baby. But while I was still a little nervous, the week that followed eased those fears some what. I felt like all the time alone together made us closer together and I felt reassured that even thought things were going to change in a big way once the baby arrived, we were too strong together for it to cause problems we could not work out.
**************
After a week of wanting nothing more than saltines and ginger ale, I finally found something that made me feel better. It was the strangest thing, and I don't understand it at all.
Jimmy had come over in the evening ostensibly to bring us some paperwork, but it was clear it was largely to check on me. Anyway, we were just chatting, when he pulled some gum out of his pocket.
“You want a piece?” he asked Clark.
Clark wrinkled his nose. “Sorry, Jim. I've never been a fan of grape bubble gum.”
“I'll have some,” I said. Even as I said it, I wondered why. I hadn't had grape bubble gum since I'd been a kid and given my inability to keep much of anything down right now, it was a weird choice. But within minutes of chewing it, I felt better.
It was the strangest thing, but Clark went that night and bought six packs of grape gum for me and I continued to chew them for the next several weeks.
**************
I was feeling well the morning of the appointment and had even gotten dressed in work clothes, intending to go back to the Planet after our appointment.
“So, how are you feeling?” Evelyn asked as we walked in.
“I'm good now,” I told her. “I was feeling really nauseous until a couple of days ago, but I'm feeling better now.”
“That's great!” she said. “Sometimes it comes and goes like that.”
I smiled as she pulled a thin sheet out from the closet. “I thought you'd prefer this to my lab coat,” she smiled as she handed it to me. “I'll leave you alone for a minute to get changed. Same as before – take off everything below the waist except for your socks.”
She was only gone for a couple minutes but I was up on the examination table with the new sheet over my legs when Evelyn returned.
I decided not to watch as Evelyn found the lubricant. I thought it was best to focus on the baby rather than the wand-thing so I would not get nervous about the ultrasound.
“So, is it likely we'll be able to see the baby today?” Clark asked.
I looked back at Evelyn as she shrugged, “It's hard to say. It's often a bit early to see the baby, but we should be able to see the gestational sac.”
A few minutes later, we were looking at the strange black and white image of my uterus on screen again. Within a moment, she focused on a black dot. “Is that it?” I asked.
“It's the sac,” Evelyn said as she made some measurements and then zoomed in on the area. She made a few more measurements on the screen looking at it closely.
“Can you see the baby?” Clark asked, and looking at him, I could tell that he was zooming in on the black dot, hoping his sensitive, but untrained eye would be able to make out the baby.
“Not today,” Evelyn said, “but like I said, that's not unusual for six weeks.”
A moment later, the ultrasound was complete and Evelyn moved to clean up. “When you're finished getting dressed, come out into the lab and we can talk.”
I felt my heart rate speed up and my stomach clench as she left. “Do you think something is wrong?” I asked Clark as I got dressed.
“Of course, not, honey,” he said, but I could hear the worry in his voice.
“Why didn't she tell us that everything looked good?” I could hear that my voice was a bit higher pitched than normal and took a deep breath in an effort to calm myself.
Clark came over to wrap his arms around me. “It's going to be okay, Lois. Whatever it is, it's going to be okay.”
I wasn't sure that I believed him, but I appreciated how calm he was being. I could tell that he felt as anxious as I was, but he was trying to cover that up, to be strong for me. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed it right then.
When we came into the lab, Evelyn was waiting for us in the living room area with Bernard. Clark and I sat side by side on the sofa, clutching hands.
“Everything looks perfectly fine,” Evelyn said in a tone that was clearly meant to calm us.
“Really?” I asked, skeptical.
“There is a something a little bit… it's probably nothing,” Evelyn said and I could see she was trying to find the right words to break the news to us.
“What is it?” Clark asked, prodding her on.
“The measurements of the gestational sac are a little small for someone six weeks along,” Evelyn said, her voice gentle.
“How small were they?” I asked her.
“Consistent with a four and a half week pregnancy,” she said.
None of us said anything for a moment, before Bernard took a deep breath, looking at both of us with a kindness in his eyes that startled me. “It doesn't have to mean anything bad,” he said.
“What can it mean?” Clark asked, his hold on my hand tightening.
“There are lots of possible explanations,” Evelyn said. “It could be that our rough calculation of when you got pregnant was off.”
“By a week and a half?” I asked, not quite believing it.
Evelyn nodded, “I admit. It's not the most likely scenario given that you said your cycle is regular, but it is possible.”
“What are the other options?” I asked leaning closer to Clark.
“Well, another option is that for some reason it took a little while for this little one to implant. It can happen, and usually although things go a bit slowly at first, they catch up quickly and the rest of the pregnancy is normal.”
“And how often does that happen?” Clark asked.
“I'm not sure of the percentage of time,” Evelyn hedged.
“But it's common?” I asked. “Or uncommon?”
“It's not that common,” Evelyn said softly.
“Of course, the most likely possibility is that I was wrong and rather than having a shorter gestational time than humans, Kryptonians take longer,” Bernard offered up.
Clark took a deep breath and then looking at Evelyn, he asked, “If I weren't Superman, what would you be telling us about the baby?”
Evelyn smiled at us, but the smile did not reach her eyes. “I'd tell you what I have told you – that implantation might have been slow or maybe we miscalculated when you conceived.”
“But given that those are both uncommon, what would be the most common explanation?” I asked, hearing the hitch in my voice.
Evelyn and Bernard looking at each other for a moment before Evelyn faced us again. “The other, most common explanation, is that the baby was conceived when you thought, but for some reason, something went wrong at four and a half weeks and the baby stopped growing.”
“What went wrong?” I asked.
Evelyn leaned forward to place a hand on my mine. “If something went wrong it was likely a chromosomal abnormality. Nothing you did had anything to do with it.”
“Does that mean if this is what happened, we can't…” Clark's voice broke and I squeezed his hand in support. “If we were to try again…” again his voice failed him.
“No,” both Bernard and Evelyn said together.
“Not at all,” Evelyn continued. “It's not actually that uncommon a thing to happen. About 15% of pregnancies don't work out and most couples go on to have a successful pregnancy next time they try. It's a random thing, it doesn't mean anything is wrong with either of you. And that's only if that's what's happening here. In all likelihood, Bernard is right and this is just a result of the half Kryptonian side of this little one.”
“But, if that is the case, if the baby has stopped growing, what happens next?” I asked.
“Well, we want to be sure, of course,” Evelyn said. “But if that was the case, and we left it alone, your body would catch on eventually and you'd have a miscarriage.”
My hand went immediately towards my stomach as if I could shield the baby from the idea of miscarrying.
“So what do we do now?” Clark asked.
“Well, the best thing to do would be to wait a couple more weeks and do another ultrasound to see how things are going,” Evelyn said. “But I imagine you'd like to know sooner than that.”
I nodded my head, afraid that if I spoke, my voice would betray how scared I was.
“So, we can try to get an idea,” Evelyn said, “but we have to try to remember how little we know about how Clark's genes are impacting this pregnancy.”
“How would we get an idea?” Clark asked, letting go of my hand to wrap his arm around me, pulling me close to his side.
“We'll take a blood test today,” Evelyn said “and take another look at Lois' progesterone and hCG levels. This early in pregnancy, one possibility could be that Lois isn't producing enough progesterone. That's easily correctable with a prescription. It looked okay a couple of weeks ago, but another check can't hurt.”
“And the hCG?” Clark asked.
“Levels of hCG usually double every seventy-two hours for the first several weeks of pregnancy. Normally, failure to do so is an indication that something is wrong.”
“So,” I said, my voice quieter than I would have liked, “I should come back on Saturday for another test?” I asked.
“Yes,” Evelyn said, “although unfortunately, I won't be here. My sister is getting married,” she said apologetically. “But maybe Bernard?” she looked at him.
“I'm sorry, I can't,” he said. “I have a road trip with the Bio Bikers this weekend.”
“The Bio Bikers?” I couldn't help but ask.
Bernard blushed. “It's just a group of scientists, mostly biologists, who like to ride motorcycles.”
I smiled slightly. I liked this weird side of Bernard. Although I liked it more when my life felt more in order than it did at this moment.
“So what do we do?” Clark asked.
“Well,” Evelyn said as she got up and moved over to her computer. “Any lab can take the blood test. There's nothing unusual about it. It looks like there's a lab here in Metropolis that can do it. Let me just call and see what their hours are.”
She was on the phone for a moment but hung up without a word. “Guess not. Maybe you can just go to Metropolis General. It won't be the same lab…”
“We can go anywhere we need to, Evelyn,” Clark reminded her.
“Oh,” she smiled slightly. “Right. The closest place that uses the same lab is in Platslum County.”
“Not a problem,” Clark said. “We'll go there on Saturday,” he said as he held me even closer to his side.
