How A Unicorn Became A Mom
By: Jen Kwok
Tags: Ectopic Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Baby, Pregnancy Loss, Pregnancy

How A Unicorn Became A Mom

Generation Women at Caveat. Photo Credit: Tamara Smith @taqueth

This is a story about the female body and the magic it can do. And the most magical part of this story is that I’m…a unicorn.

I may not look like a unicorn on the outside. No horn, no hooves. But on the inside — literally, on the inside, my reproductive organs are 100% My Little Pony. I have a rare genetic condition called unicornuate uterus, which is when only one side of the female anatomy is fully formed. I essentially have a partial uterus about half the size and shape of a normal one, with one functioning Fallopian tube attached, which is “the horn”. Unicornuate uterus is so rare that it’s estimated to occur in only about 1 in 4000 (0.025%) of people born with female anatomy. So, appropriately enough, there aren’t a lot of us unicorns around.

I found out about my unicornuate uterus when my husband and I started trying to have kids. As you approach your mid-30s, you reach what doctors call “geriatric maternal age”. And when you’re “geriatric maternal age”, they suggest that you try conceiving for about six months on your own before getting tested for various things. I took one of those tests and the doctor calls to tell me she wants to give me the results in person. Not good.

My doctor is like the Russian version of Samantha from Sex in the City. She does all the normal stuff like shove a speculum in you, and scrape and swab you. But she does it with a no-nonsense sassy attitude and gold strappy heels. And she’s wearing the cutest leather jacket I’ve ever seen in my life when she tells me the news: I have a unicornuate uterus. It’s rare. Not a lot is known about it. But what they do know sucks.

Unicornuate uterus can make it harder to conceive, if at all.

And it takes basically any risk of a normal pregnancy and doubles it. Chances of a miscarriage. Double. Chances of needing a c-section. Double. Chances of a breech baby. Double. But she is hopeful. She tells me about another patient with a unicornuate uterus who delivered three babies. She tells me that IUI and IVF are great options and also a funny phenomenon where people who’ve decided to start fertility treatments suddenly — and magically — get pregnant all on their own.

But I’m not really hearing any of this because I’m still stuck on the fact that my uterus is not the gorgeous “V is for Victory” shape that everyone else has, with the two little jazz hands coming out like this [jazz hands]. I, instead, have a tiny, misshapen, asymmetrical, elliptical blob with one horn sticking out the side. And it hits me that I’d lived my whole 34 years of life with this body without really knowing this body. What I have inside me is not what they showed us in high school biology class on the headless torso lady. And the genetic card I was dealt in my mother’s womb is now going to dictate everything that’s going to happen with my womb.

It’s a lot to take in and I start getting a little teary eyed. And my doctor’s just like “N-n-no”. She’s very nice but I could tell she was like “Ooh…I don’t do tears.” So I thank her and I leave. And I walk down Fifth Avenue on a beautiful spring day, sobbing in broad daylight. Because I’m not a Samantha. I’m a Charlotte.

I was sad. I was depressed. And my husband and I decide to take a couple months off trying to have a baby because we were scared of the risks. We do our research and discuss our options. We decide to go forward with the most low key fertility treatment, IUI. That’s where they figure out when you’re ovulating and shoot the sperm to the exact right place at the exact right time. It’s like an express bus for sperm.

The IUI process begins with some tests on the first day of your cycle. But I hadn’t gotten my period the morning I was scheduled to go in, and was leaving for an artist retreat in Pennsylvania that afternoon. So I thought, “OK, I guess we’ll start next month”. At the artist retreat I’m sleeping in a horse barn, chopping wood and writing songs in the middle of a field. The only thing I’m not doing is getting my period. The moment I get back to Port Authority I buy a pregnancy test at the Duane Reade, and when I get home I see the two pink lines I’d been waiting to see for almost a year. Magic.

I’m pregnant for eight weeks and on Labor Day we go in for our first scan and there is no baby there. The doctor tells me I’m miscarrying — and that although it looks like a normal miscarriage, there was also the remote possibility that I could have an ectopic pregnancy — a pregnancy outside of the uterus that’s too small to detect.

We go home and things are normal until they’re not.

I’m getting ready to go to work one morning and end up on the floor in the greatest pain of my life, dry heaving and feeling like I’m going to pass out — a pain that people have described as actually worse than giving birth. I call 911 and the ambulance takes me to the ER. It turns out I did have an ectopic pregnancy. The embryo had implanted in a Fallopian tube, which had now burst. I had massive internal bleeding and lost about a liter of blood. And the thing about ectopic pregnancies is that babies never survive them and mothers only sometimes do.

I’ll probably never know how close I was to death, but the situation was bad enough that they weren’t willing to risk transporting me to Manhattan or waiting for my doctor to come Queens. And any good real estate agent will tell you how close Queens is to Manhattan, but when it’s rush hour and you’re bleeding to death, it turns out they are really not close at all.

They did an emergency surgery right then and there. And I went into that surgery making peace with the fact that I was going to lose my one good horn and only way of conceiving naturally. But instead, by some other magic, the baby had actually implanted in a fragment of an non-communicating horn that was previously undetected. The chances of that happening are about 1 in 76,000 to 1 in 140,000 —about 0.0007%.

Last spring I conceived a second time and miscarried at five weeks. I was in the recording studio working on my album — which I started because when you almost die, it makes you get off your bullshit and realize you really only have so much time to live and make the art you want to make. And as I started bleeding I took the 7 train home thinking that no one around me knows what’s going on right now. And I wondered — I still wonder — how many women have stood on the train, silently, casually losing their babies while holding onto a subway pole?

Last fall I conceived again. I was pregnant long enough to experience the magic of morning sickness. I was pregnant enough to audition for a TV role as a pregnant lady. I got so pregnant that people asked me if I was having twins — I wasn’t. It was a high risk pregnancy with every risk doubled, but I got so pregnant I made it to 39 weeks and two days, went into labor for 12 hours, pushed for two and a half hours and now this is my son Wolfgang [cue picture of Wolfgang], who was born nine weeks ago. My unicorn horn worked three times. And my tiny elliptical-shaped uterus held one baby. My body did some kind of magic I’ll probably never understand.

And that is the story of how a unicorn gave birth to a Wolf.