Authors: Carolyn Savage
SEAN
I am a long-distance runner. At the end of the race, getting through means keeping focused and sticking to the plan I made, fighting through the pain and the urges to give up. We needed to find the willpower to get through to the end, wherever it might be. When I focused on the goal and all we needed to do to get through, I was less likely to fall into despair. The key element I needed for me to “get through” handing the baby boy over to the Morells was to focus on the gift. If I could keep the idea that this was a gift and place it alongside the pain, I believed I could honor this child and the Morells while still acknowledging a profound personal loss. There was dignity in this approach, but it would take every ounce of energy in that moment for me to achieve this balance.
As I wrapped my mind around holding these two ideas simultaneously, I knew Carolyn and I were moving forward, despite everything, and closer to being able to let go. As we approached the end of the pregnancy, we had other signs our family was moving forward. September 22 was Drew’s fifteenth birthday.
There had been precious few celebrations in the last few months as we tried to keep a low profile around town. But we had allowed the world back into our lives when we finally gave interviews to the many media sources that were interested. We were on the front page of the local paper, on numerous national and international broadcasts, and the story had gone viral on the Internet. The night before Drew’s birthday had been a crazy scene in our home. While we were completing an interview with a pair of journalists on our patio, another waited on our driveway, a network was setting up
cameras for a live national interview in our living room, and an international camera crew was on the front lawn.
Even though the media world was swirling around our situation that week, on September 21 we would give our son the best possible birthday. Carolyn’s mother was in town, so both grandmas could join us too.
Drew selected the restaurant, and as we sat at the table and shared “Drew stories” there were eyes on us. But no one bothered us as we celebrated. After dinner we all came home for cake, and in keeping with Savage tradition, Drew sat at the kitchen table behind the cake to have his picture taken holding up the number of fingers for his age. Of course, at age fifteen he needed some help. I crouched behind him, and as he held up his ten fingers I held up five over his head, totaling fifteen. Our son was fifteen. Hard to believe.
Carolyn and I made our way to bed at about 9:30
P.M.
We were exhausted, and we knew that the next morning we would be doing another live national interview for a morning show. Carolyn was in the bathroom, and I was pulling clothes out for the next day when she screamed and came flying out from the bathroom.
“I think my water broke!”
“We need to get to the hospital,” I said.
“Sean, grab the phone. I need to call Dr. Read.”
I ran to get the phone and brought it to her. I paced the floor quickly, doing nothing close to productive. Then I grabbed the bag she had packed for the hospital and positioned it next to our bedroom door about five feet from its previous spot, like that was really helpful.
Dr. Read told us to get to the hospital. This was the real deal.
Within minutes, Carolyn and I were in the car. As we made the drive, it hit me.
“Carolyn, we cannot have the baby on Drew’s birthday. This is not fair to Drew or fair to us. We can’t have this happen on the same day that has one of our best memories. This would be cruel.”
“I know.”
My hands clenched the steering wheel so hard that I thought I might break it off of the car. I hated that we couldn’t control this. If Carolyn’s water had broken, they had to deliver the baby.
Carolyn called the Morells to let them know that they needed to get down to Toledo. The maternity ward was ready for us when we arrived. They hooked Carolyn to the baby monitor while we waited for Dr. Read. The sound of the baby’s beating heart filled the room while I sat on the couch next to Carolyn’s hospital bed. It was 10:00
P.M.
“Oh man, Carolyn,” I realized. “We’re scheduled to do an interview with a TV crew tomorrow morning at the house.”
“Call the producer to cancel. I think they will understand.”
I called and discovered that the crew was already on its way from Chicago. They agreed to turn the truck around. I apologized.
As we waited, my mind went to Drew. What would he feel like sharing a birthday with a brother he would never know? Suddenly I was really pissed at God. After everything we had gone through, and would go through in the future, how could He possibly connect this date to the delivery? We had tried to be good and faithful servants and taken the hard but noble path. I did not ask to be spared the experience—just to be spared this experience on this day.
When Dr. Read walked in the room, I stood and said in complete seriousness, “You have to wait one hour and forty-seven minutes to deliver this baby.”
“Sean, I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s possible. If the baby is in distress, we’ll have to move quickly.”
She asked Carolyn a series of questions and said she was going to order a few tests.
A short while later, after reviewing the test results, she returned.
“You will not be having the baby tonight,” Dr. Read said. “The tests show that your water didn’t break and that the baby is still doing well.”
I was so relieved and thanked God for the reprieve. That night I was pleased to have to walk the “amateur walk of shame” that happens when you arrive at the hospital pregnant and leave the hospital the same night still pregnant. I immediately called Shannon to tell her to turn around. “The baby will not be born tonight,” I said and apologized for the inconvenience. Then I called the TV network, and they turned their truck back around again.
The media was certainly a presence in our lives now, and we were trying to handle it as best we could. On September 24, two days after the false alarm, I arrived at my office about 6:15 in the morning to get work done prior to meeting Carolyn at our local publicist’s office for a series of local and brief television interviews. Just as I did every morning, I glanced at our local paper,
The Blade,
and I saw the front-page headline with a picture of us. But then I saw another headline, and I clutched the paper as I saw what I had hoped would never surface. The article was about the Catholic Church and the issue of IVF: “In Vitro Fertilization Poses Ethical, Religious Dilemmas.” “Oh, here we go,” I said out loud as I quickly read the article line by line.
The paper had obtained a statement from the Diocese of Toledo calling IVF “morally unacceptable.” My interpretation of that statement was: what Sean and Carolyn Savage did in undergoing IVF was “morally unacceptable.” The statement went on to explain the Church’s position: in vitro fertilization is morally unacceptable because it replaces rather than assists the marital act, the diocese said.
One part of the statement especially infuriated me:
Human life is something precious. A new human being who comes into existence at the moment of conception, is meant to enter into this world within the context of committed marital love, a love which finds its fullest expression in the intimacy of the marital act. Any technique that severs the creation of a new human life from this most intimate context is not morally acceptable and ought never to be done.
I felt that this statement was laced with arrogance, and it put a knife right into our backs at a very vulnerable moment in our life. I imagined my response:
Dear Diocese, Carolyn and I have had a committed marital love for seventeen years. We wanted to have a family with a number of children that we could raise to be faith-filled, productive, and good members of society. We needed help having those children. That help we believe came from God through science. Our daughter born in March 2008, is beautiful and adored and an IVF baby. When Carolyn and I first looked into her eyes the day she was born, we saw God’s creation!
I called Carolyn immediately, and we talked about the article. We agreed that what hurt the most was what was missing from the statement. We chose life on February 16, 2009. In deciding as we did, we upheld the Church’s teachings on the beauty and sanctity of human life. Why was that missing from the statement? We are members of the Church, and hurting members at that. Yet our very own church was not there to support us in our time of greatest need. Is this how Jesus would have handled us? I don’t think so.
As I traveled to the PR firm for the interviews, the hurtful articles would not leave my mind. The words cut through me like a sharp knife. Over the years, Carolyn and I took to heart our stewardship responsibilities to the Church by giving our time, energy, and resources. Ministering to the youth through coaching sports, raising funds for parish expansion, and giving to worthy church causes was embedded in my being. Carolyn had dedicated much of her career to being a teacher and then a principal in Catholic schools. Now, in a public forum, we were being called out by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to account for our “morally unacceptable” behavior. It really hurt and we felt abandoned.
Despite feeling abandoned by our church, we understood those who judged us were very distant from Carolyn and me, high up in the Church hierarchy. At St. Joe’s, we received council and prayers from our clergy and support from our fellow parishioners. The people of St. Joe’s were there for us. We knew we would remain
members of the Church with its flaws because the Catholic Church did so much good locally and throughout the world. As word spread about our situation to places across the globe, prayers and support poured in. These warmed our hearts and touched our souls. Carolyn and I were humbled that people responded in such a loving manner. As I arrived at the PR firm for the interviews I saw Carolyn waiting for me near the front door of the building, and it hit me that this may be the last day I ever see my wife pregnant.
Reaching Toward Joy
CAROLYN
T
HE BABY WOULD BE
born any day, and I focused on one concern: I wanted to be fully present for every moment and have that brief period as a kind of movie that I could play again and again whenever I felt like it. I knew that our moments in the delivery room might be our only time together, and I wanted that movie to be a joyful one, one with a happy ending. We were going to take photographs of this event for us and for him. I didn’t want to be a wreck. I wanted those pictures to show us as we truly felt. Despite everything that had happened, his presence on earth was a gift. When he was older and he had a chance to look at the faces of the people who brought him into this world, I hoped he would see that we were honored to give him life and that we loved him with all our hearts.
Sean’s preparations, all the ways in which he had planned so carefully for the moment of the birth, were about to come to a close. On the morning of September 24, our local public relations firm had arranged for us to speak to the local television stations. I was going to meet Sean at the public relations office that morning at 8:00, and we would be done by 9:30
A.M
. All of them would have had their little piece of this story, and then, we hoped, they would leave us alone after the baby was born. Once the baby was born, we
would want our chance to grieve, and we wanted that grief to be private.
On the morning of the interviews my already fragile state of mind was further shaken by the news of the article quoting the Diocese about our situation. I was feeling disappointed and angry about the Church’s statement as I rushed around my bedroom trying to ready myself for the events of the day. Before I ran out the door I took a blood pressure reading, and as the cuff released its grip on my arm, I glanced at the reading and did a double-take. It was significantly high. I knew I couldn’t call the doctor because the office wasn’t open yet.
This could be the day
, I thought. Dr. Read had indicated that all she needed was to hear of fluctuating pressures, and she’d deliver. I knew this was her surgery day, so she’d be in the hospital and could easily slip me into her schedule.
I took a few deep breaths and took my pressure again. The next reading was better. I got my bag for the hospital and checked to see if everything was inside. We’d been going to the hospital so many times in the previous few weeks that I wasn’t sure if all the items were still in place. As I checked the bag, I looked up and out the window of our bedroom—this same bedroom where I’d first heard the news seven months earlier and run from one side of it to the other trying to escape the reality of what was about to happen to us. Here we were at the other side of a painful journey, but we’d made it. The baby was healthy, our marriage was strong, and we had our own baby on the way. I thought back to the morning of February 16, when I lay in my bed content that I was pregnant. I was thrilled that a new baby would be joining our family. I never could have imagined what that day and these past seven months had in store for us. Now I stood and stared out the same window. It was a beautiful crisp fall day, with clear skies. The leaves on the trees had just started to turn. This would be a perfect day for Little Man to enter our world.
I picked up my hospital bag when my mom came in.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re going to the hospital right after the press thing,” I said.
“What? Are you sure that makes sense, Carolyn? I mean, if you need to go to the hospital, you should probably go right away,” she said, a worried frown on her face.
“Mom, I’m okay,” I said. “I just had a blood pressure spike. I’m not in any danger. But I am preparing to be admitted. That does not necessarily mean delivery.”
“I’ll call your father,” she said. “If he leaves from Michigan now, he’ll get here before the baby is born.”
“Don’t do that yet. Wait until I call you after I speak to Dr. Read,” I said and headed out the door.