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Photographs by Michael Grinley
The following article
consists of excerpts from a newly released book:
Having Faith : An
Ecologist's Journey To Motherhood
by poet, ecologist and mother Sandra Steingraber.
Having Faith is a tremendous
contribution to the growing dialogue around the world about chemicals in our
bodies. How should we think and talk about the chemical "body burden" we all
carry? What does it mean that we are passing persistent chemicals along from
one generation to the next? Having Faith addresses these questions a very
personal way: through the lens of one woman's experience of pregnancy,
childbirth and breastfeeding.
-
Kristin S. Schafer, Program Coordinator, PANNA
 One
April Morning, in the middle of a
predawn testimony to the
mirthfulness
of robins, I hear
fluttering right outside
the bedroom window. I lift
the blind,
expecting to see either a
creeper or a nuthatch. Instead, a trio of tiny olive-green heads stares back
at me. One hops closer,
blinks, then bobs his head,
the top of
which is painted bright
pink. "Well, who
are you?"
As if in answer, the bold
one bows to show me again his splendid little cap. Then more
©
Michael Grinley
fluttering and prancing
around at the ends of
the maple branches. Then
all are gone. I know I won't sleep again until I can identify them, so I
pull back the blankets and pad out to my study. Somewhere in the stack of
boxes on the far wall is my bird book. As I'm pulling boxes down to find it,
I'm aware of my belly - harder now and rounder, not just thicker. The window
on this side of the house is still dark enough to be a mirror, and, backlit,
I can see an obviously pregnant body through the thin white cotton of my
nightgown.
"Who are you?" I ask for
the second time before sunrise.
I make a good guess with
the boxes, and find my grubby field guide to the birds wedged between two
stacks of textbooks. I start flipping through the section on songbirds. It
doesn't take long. There is only one olive bird with a pink spot on its
head, and it is famous both for its fearlessness and for fluttering around
at the ends of twigs: the ruby-crowned kinglet.
The next morning there
is a new song in the mix - a thin little violin voice calling Old Sam
Peabody, Peabody with a plaintive fade-out at the end, as if further
searching would be futile. This is a white-throated sparrow, a bird I know
by heart. I peer out the window to see if I can locate it. Instead, I find
the maple branches full of kinglets. Dozens of them, all tipping their caps
and bounding on the bud-swollen twigs.
There is the
white-throat song again, even closer. And then again. Old Sam Peabody,
Peabody. But I can't find the singer. I'm looking for inconspicuous black
and brown feathers, a gray breast, a white throat. Nowhere.
The next morning I wake
at 3 a.m., absolutely convinced I hear a veery singing. I lie in the
darkness - as yet undisturbed by robins - listening for it again. Nothing.
Finally, I pad back to my study to check the bird guide. According to the
book, it's not possible that I just heard a veery. Its earliest known
arrival date in central Illinois is April twentieth - two weeks from now.
Also, it's a bird of deep woods, not backyards. Also, it doesn't sing in the
dead of night. I must have been dreaming.
I climb back into bed
but can't sleep. In the fourteenth week of pregnancy, I've entered a new
phase. Torpor has given way to a state of high alertness. I'm more watchful,
and my sense of hearing seems to have become more acute, too. With my new
powers of perception, I try listening for the sound of songbirds migrating.
This isn't as
far-fetched as it sounds. Serious bird scholars often go out on damp spring
nights and listen for the faint chip chip chip of birds calling to each
other as they pass by, a thousand feet overhead. Master birders can identify
them to the species just by the pitch and timbre of the distant flight
notes.
A lot of mystery still
surrounds the migration of songbirds. For one thing, they only travel at
night. For another, most are too small to wear radio transmitters.
Therefore, most of what we know about their spring and fall travels comes
from radar, which can only track groups, not individuals. Before radar,
researchers estimated the intensity of songbird migration by moonwatching.
This was a quaint but highly skilled practice that involved counting the
number of birds seen flying across the face of the full moon. It required
clear skies, a telescope, and elaborate calculations to account for angles
of entry, altitude, and percentage of night sky occupied by moon.
Moonwatchers made fantastical claims: two hundred bird silhouettes crossing
the lunar window in an hour meant that three million migrants had passed by.
Which meant that billions of birds were on the move during particular nights
of the year. There was a lot of skepticism about these extrapolations until
they were confirmed by radar operators.
I
must have dozed off because I suddenly become aware of robins caroling. And
then Sam Peabody, Old Sam. I creep to the window ledge and let my eyes
adjust to the dimness. Empty branches. No sign of the kinglets today, and no
white-throated sparrows. Either I'm a truly incompetent birder or the tree
itself is singing. Jeff stirs in the bed.
"Sandra, what are you doing up? Are you worried about something?"
"Hang on a minute."
Silence. More robins.
"Sandra?"
"Shh. Just listen with me."
Old Sam Peabody...
"Did you hear that? I think we're having a son."
On the night of the full
moon, I am fifteen
weeks pregnant and in
Boston, having flown here for an amniocentesis. This was a huge decision -
whether to have the test at all, and
if so, where. Actually, the
where question was easier to answer. My so-called health maintenance
organization refuses to pay
for nonemergency health care
outside of Massachusetts. The question of whether to
do it at all was more
complicated.
Amniotic
fluid is the oceanlike substance
©
Michael Grinley
unborn
babies float in. It offers fetuses
buoyancy,
protection from trauma, and oxygen.
Like
semen, amniotic fluid is comprised of two basic elements: living cells and
the liquid they're suspended in. In this case, the cells represent
sloughed-off fetal skin and bladder tissue. Amniocentesis means puncturing a
pregnant uterus and aspirating about thirty milliliters - one shot glass
full - of amniotic fluid, which is then sent to a genetics lab for
examination. The cells it contains are grown in tissue culture to increase
their numbers and
then inspected for chromosomal defects. This takes about ten days.
In the meantime, the
liquid fraction is run through a gauntlet of tests that can reveal the
presence of other abnormalities. By subjecting to scrutiny both the liquid
and the cells, amniocentesis can potentially uncover hundreds of different
congenital problems. Extracting this fluid from the belly of a pregnant
woman is not, however, without its dangers. Specifically, amniocentesis
triggers miscarriage in about one in every two hundred women.
And yet, I have decided
to go ahead with it. In the end, knowing simply seemed better than not
knowing. Two big facts of my life are relevant here. The big fact that I am
a cancer survivor. The big fact that I am an adoptee.
Having been diagnosed
with cancer - in my case, bladder cancer at age twenty - means that I've
been badly betrayed - not only by my own runaway cells but by those who
issue medical reassurances along the lines of "don't worry, the odds of
there being any sort of problem here are negligible."
The
adoption piece is more bewildering. Now that I am pregnant, I find myself
wondering about it more. Thinking about my adoption is like looking at
faraway stars. It makes me feel small and vaguely sad. Being adopted and
pregnant also presents some large practical problems. The primary one is
that I have no information about my family medical history. In most states
of the union, including Illinois, adoption records are still sealed by law.
The adoption agency that
handled my case is more
sympathetic than most to the abridged civil rights of adult adoptees, but
sympathy cannot answer the questions the genetic counselor had for me - any
cystic fibrosis in my family tree? Tay-Sachs? Thalassemia? Spina bifida?
Mental retardation?
I agree to submit my baby's
chromosomes for analysis in part because I know nothing about my own. Which
leads to the vexing paradox that the first information I learn about my
unborn child will be exactly the kind of information I lack about myself. Of
what value is this knowledge? I've absolutely no idea.
THE SMALL, DARKLY LIT ROOM in the sonography unit at Boston's Beth Israel
Hospital fills up with women - my friend Janaki, my gynecologist. The
technician and the chief sonographer take their places and begin flipping
switches and unwrapping the assembled objects. They begin quickly.
The dome of my belly is
bared to the ultrasound probe, which looks like the kind of spoon that you
eat Japanese soup with. The probe locates a pocket of fluid safely away from
the body of the fetus. The needle slides in about two inches below my navel.
A second later, as it passes through the uterus, I feel a sharp cramp.
" Normal," my obstetrician says breezily.
Everyone else is
watching this moment on the screen of the ultrasound monitor. I am not. I am
thinking very hard and very deliberately about hummingbirds.
The nests of
hummingbirds are constructed of spider webs and dandelion down. They are
lined with lichens and moss. They usually contain two eggs.
I glance down briefly.
The syringe is half full of fluid.
The eggs are the size of
peas. When baby hummingbirds hatch, they are said to resemble wet
bumblebees. "Normal" is a very nice word.
The first syringe is
replaced by a second.
Hummingbirds fly over
the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatan in a single night. It's a distance of
five hundred miles. Some of them probably came across last night - assuming
the high pressure system over New England extends all the way down there.
The second syringe seems
to be taking longer to fill up.
In truth, I don't like
hummingbirds. Up close. They're too spangly and too impossibly small, with
too much nervous, insectlike whirring. Still, the entire Gulf in a single
flight is impressive.
The needle is out. We're
done. The obstetrician hands the pair of vials to the technician who holds
them up to the light like glasses of fine wine.
"Nice color," she says. "Do you want to hold them?"
And she passes the
vials, hot as blood, into my hands. The fluid inside is pale gold. It seems
to glow.
"It's like...liquid amber. Like an amber jewel." It occurs to me that
amniotic fluid might be the loveliest substance I have ever seen.
The
obstetrician touches my arm. "That's baby pee," she says, smiling. "We like
it yellow. It's a sign of good kidney functioning."
I look at the vials again. Oh. Right.
 Amniotic
fluid is a mixed drink, with contributions from both baby and mother. Some
portion of amniotic fluid is secreted by the lining of the amniotic sac
itself, and some of it is blood serum from the mother, which passes freely
through this lining. And some of it is baby pee. Fetal urine is distilled
from amniotic fluid, which is continuously sipped and swallowed by the baby.
Amniotic
fluid also soaks right
through the skin because
the outer waterproofing
layer doesn't form until week twenty. The fetus also inhales it during
©
Michael Grinley
rehearsals for breathing. In
these ways, amniotic
fluid bathes the inside as
well as the outside of the developing body.
Amniotic fluid is a
biological mystery. It is bacteriostatic - meaning that bacteria will not
grow when cultured in it - so amniotic fluid undoubtedly helps keep the womb
a sterile place. But what it does once it seeps inside of the fetus -
through the mouth, through the lungs, through the skin - is not at all
clear. Some researchers suspect it plays an integral role in establishing
the fetal immune system.
Amniotic fluid
eventually reenters the womb as urine. Here it is absorbed back into the
body of the mother and replaced by fresh fluid, in a ceaseless cycle of
emptying and refilling. This process speeds up as pregnancy progresses. At
fifteen weeks, the baby and I require twenty-four hours to replace the
volume of fluid just removed.
The obstetrician is
finishing up. She reminds me to drink plenty of water today.
Drink plenty of water.
Before it is baby pee, amniotic fluid is water. I drink water, and it
becomes blood plasma, which suffuses through the amniotic sac and surrounds
the baby - who also drinks it.
And what is it before
that? Before it is drinking water, amniotic fluid is the creeks and rivers
that fill reservoirs. It is the underground water that fills wells. And
before it is creeks and rivers and groundwater, amniotic fluid is rain. So
that when I hold in my hands a tube of my own amniotic fluid, I am holding a
tube full of raindrops. Amniotic fluid is also the juice of orange that I
had for breakfast, and the milk that I poured over my cereal, and the honey
I stirred into my tea. It is inside the green cells of spinach leaves and
the damp flesh of apples. It is the yolk of an egg. When I look at amniotic
fluid, I am looking at rain falling on orange groves. I am looking at melon
fields, potatoes in wet earth, frost on pasture grasses. The blood of cows
and chickens is in this tube. The nectar gathered by bees and hummingbirds
is in this tube. Whatever is inside hummingbird eggs is also inside my womb.
Whatever is in the world's water is here in my hands.
CAUGHT UP IN THE
ANCESTRY of amniotic fluid, I almost forget to look at the ultrasound
monitor where, in a kind of silent movie, the baby is swimming around, sans
needle. The technician is explaining that she has two ongoing purposes here
- to see how the fetus has reacted to the procedure and to take some
measurements.
A sonogram is a picture
made of echoes. More specifically, obstetrical ultrasound bounces high
frequency sound waves against the body of a living fetus and then converts
the returned energy into electrical signals, which are visually displayed on
a computer monitor. I know plenty of women who experience their fetal
sonograms as an ecstatic event, but I bring a whole different set of
associations to the sonography table. I've lain in this semi-darkened room
before, for the purpose of being scanned for signs of a tumor. On those
days, the only heart beating was the one pounding against my own rib cage.
On those days, I hoped to see nothing. I have to remind myself that the
discovery of a growth in my abdomen is not a bad thing this time.
"Look, Sandra, there is the spine. Can you see it?"
Out of the grainy
darkness, a strand of pearls floats into view. Around it an entire human
form takes shape. I see a back, an ear, a head. And then the vertebrate body
abruptly rolls over, like a sea mammal executing a turn in an aquarium tank.
And then two arms fly up in synchrony and come back down and fly up again. A
small bird migrating across an open ocean. A white silhouette against the
black moon of my own body.
And for the third time
this week, I peer into a window, asking, "Who are you?"
TWELVE DAYS AFTER my
amniocentesis, I am scheduled to fly across the Atlantic for a two-week book
tour of England and Ireland. I've been assured that "almost certainly" the
results of the amniocentesis will be back from the lab before we leave.
Meanwhile, the myrtle
warblers arrive in Illinois for a few weeks' stay and flash their yellow
rumps in the tree branches, calling check, check, check, as though testing
microphones. Myrtles are tough little birds, withstanding late snows in the
spring and fueling themselves with poison ivy berries in the fall. Sadly,
they are often killed in collisions with broadcast towers. In October 1985,
more than three hundred myrtle warblers were found dead beneath a television
tower in Springfield, Illinois, on a single night. I wonder what will happen
to the myrtles as the rage for wireless communication raises more and more
of these structures across the prairie.
Television and cell
phone systems are not the only hazards. Later in the week, I have lunch with
Given Harper, a local biologist who has been studying pesticide
contamination of Illinois birds. He's particularly interested in analyzing
their tissues for the presence of organochlorine pesticides. DDT is probably
the most famous representative of this family of synthetic chemicals. All
members of the clan poison insect nervous systems. But many chlorinated
pesticides have two other properties once they enter the environment at
large. Like mercury, they biomagnify - they concentrate as they move up the
ladder of the food chain. They also possess the power to redirect hormonally
directed biological processes.
Harper and his
colleagues collected songbirds during the spring migration of 1996 - many of
them tower kills - and analyzed their tissues for the presence of these
chemicals. The bodies of more than ninety percent of the seventy-two birds
he studied contained at least one such pesticide - and often three or more.
The most common pesticides detected were dieldrin, heptachlor, and DDT. In
keeping with the principle of biomagnification, birds dining higher up on
the food chain - the insect-eating warblers and flycatchers - carried higher
burdens of pesticide than the vegetarians, such as grosbeaks and indigo
buntings - although these species, too, were contaminated.
ON
FRIDAY, ONE WEEK AFTER the amniocentesis, the tattoo beneath my belly button
has completely vanished. I decide to call the obstetrician's office in
Boston. Just to check in.
I spend the weekend walking
the Constitution Trail, a paved north-south path, previously a railroad
track, that slices through miles of backyards, loading docks, athletic
fields, city parks, and even a patch of prairie grass. The daffodils are in
full bloom, competing with forsythia bushes for brilliance of yellow. The
cardinals singing in their branches have never been redder. Nor have the
tulips. The puffed-up robins patrolling the newly green grass refuse to be
silenced by the gravelly roar of the roller-bladers. I am attracting knowing
smiles from mothers pushing strollers. Spring is an out-of-control carnival.
I am out-of-control pregnant.
The cells of my baby are
growing not only in my body but somewhere in a laboratory in Boston, where
they are bathed in a broth made from fetal calves. Only about ten percent of
the cells captured during amniocentesis are alive, but these can be coaxed
to grow and divide if carefully nurtured in an incubator at human body
temperature. At some point, usually five to nine days later, these living
cells can be harvested for genetic analysis. Chromosomes normally exist
inside cells as slender, loopy threads of DNA which are impossible to study.
Only when a cell is preparing to divide are its chromosomes transformed into
the stout, rod-shaped bodies that grace the pages of science magazines and
biology textbooks. Thus, the fetal cells collected for genetic screening
have to be arrested in their growth cycle just at the point where they are
about to split into two. The chromosomes must also be stained to bring out
their individual banding patterns.
A human being is
supposed to have forty-six chromosomes. Half of these are inherited from the
mother, half from the father. Matching them up is the first task of prenatal
genetic screening. At the end of the day, one hopes for exactly twenty-three
matched pairs. Anything else has serious consequences for development. An
extra chromosome, for example, is called a trisomy. With three copies of
petite chromosomes 21, Down syndrome is the classic example.
I wonder where in this
process my fetal cells are. Still quietly incubating? Or have they already
been harvested, stained, and photographed, their chromosomes spread across a
computer screen, magnified a thousand times? Perhaps at this very moment,
while the Illinois sun slants through ironwood trees and while pigeons
clatter under the slats of old train trestles, someone in Boston is sitting
down with a fresh cup of coffee to start the sorting and counting. Maybe
there is a radio playing in the lab. Maybe the report is already typed up.
What's starting to bother me about amniocentesis is not the anxiety it
creates (which is considerable) nor the cold-heartedness of it (also
considerable), but its narrowness of focus. The whole enterprise implies
that the future life of a child can be read by counting its chromosomes and
scrutinizing their architecture. But the children of Minamata crippled by
mercury poisoning had perfectly normal chromosomes. So presum-ably did the
thousands blinded by rubella and the legless ones exposed to thalidomide.
Indeed, the majority of birth defects are not attributable to inborn genetic
errors. And yet we put legions of geneticists to work looking for them, and
we ritualize amniocentesis as a rite of passage for pregnant women, as though chunks
of DNA were the prime movers of life itself. As though pregnancy took place
in a sealed chamber, apart from water cycles and food chains.
What if amniocentesis
inquired about environmental problems as well as genetic ones? Only one
study of environmental contaminants in amniotic fluid has ever been done,
and it found detectable levels of organochlorine pesticides in one-third of
the thirty samples of amniotic fluid tested. Of particular concern, say the
researchers, is the discovery of DDT, which was found in concentrations
roughly equivalent to that of the fetus's own sex hormones. Because DDT is
known to interfere with the biochemical pathways that sex hormones operate
along, the question arises as to whether this kind of contamination can
alter the unfolding development of the fetal reproductive tract. The
researchers also found trace levels of PCBs in some of the samples. These
chemicals not only have been linked to birth defects but are also thought to
suppress the immune system. Amniotic fluid itself is believed to play a role
in establishing fetal immunity. Are inhaled and swallowed gulps of PCB-laced
amniotic fluid sabotaging this process even as they initiate it? No one
knows, but the answer would be relevant to all unborn babies, not just the
very few who have inherited the wrong number of chromosomes.
The chemicals being
discovered in human amniotic fluid are, of course, some of the same ones
that Given Harper is finding in the tissues of migrating and resident birds.
I think back to my own amniocentesis epiphany. Whatever is inside
hummingbird eggs is also inside my womb. Whatever is inside the world's
water is also here in my hands.
MONDAY, DAY TEN. It's very possible the results will arrive today. But when
I get home from my afternoon class, there is no message on the answering
machine. So I call again.
No, I'm sorry, says the nice receptionist. They didn't come back today.
Don't worry though.
Tuesday. I call again.
Oh, hi, Sandra. No, we still haven't heard anything. I know you're leaving
tomorrow. Call us before you head out for the airport.
Wednesday morning.
No, we don't have the results yet. What time is your flight?
Wednesday afternoon, at
the O'Hare airport:
I'm really sorry. The lab hasn't returned my phone call. As soon as I hear
anything I'll leave a message on your answering machine.
Thursday, from a hotel
room in London:
No message.
Friday, from a phone
booth near Hyde Park:
No message.
Friday night, from a
phone booth next to a cemetery in Kent:
Sandra, we've got the results. The chromosomes are normal. And you're having
a little girl.
A blackbird is singing in
the medieval churchyard where Jeff and I are dancing. 
From the book:
Having Faith:
An Ecologist's Journey
to Motherhood
by Sandra Steingraber
A Merloyd Lawrence Book.
Reprinted by permission
of Perseus Publishing
Sandra Steingraber
Ecologist,
author, and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. is
an
internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to
cancer
and reproductive health. She received her doctorate in biology
from the
University of Michigan and master’s degree in English from
Illinois
State University.
www.steingraber.com
To learn more about PANNA
visit:
www.panna.org
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