If I Were a Kangaroo

On a blistering August afternoon, my four-year-old son Noah falls out of his chair onto our back patio. He stops breathing. His face turns blue. His entire body seizes.

Minutes after my husband calls 911, fire trucks, police cars, and an ambulance come blazing down our street. The ambulance takes us to the emergency room, where Noah’s admitted to the hospital. We spend two days there, doctors poking and prodding our son’s body, ordering countless tests and procedures to determine the cause of the seizure. Each test overwhelms our tattered nervous systems a little worse than the last. We leave the hospital with more trauma than we do answers.

***

Unlike my fascination with super-stretchy popcorn shirts, a fifth-grader named Ricky, and yellow American cheese, my love for kangaroos started in elementary school and followed me into adulthood. Even now, I have a kangaroo keychain hanging alongside my real, grown-woman house and car keys.

It started as a basic, surface-level infatuation. I loved their adorable faces and the way they held their babies in equally adorable belly pouches. When I was a teenager, I learned kangaroos are incredibly fierce animals, too. Their kick is powerful, and they have no problem punting you if you threaten them—or their young.

***

Three months later, Noah comes down with a fever. We take him to the pediatrician, where he’s prescribed an antibiotic for strep throat. I set up a makeshift bed in the living room, turn on the TV, and give him a bell to ring in case I step out of earshot.

It’s 6 p.m. when I notice Noah’s neck seems to be swollen, cocked to one side. I wonder if maybe he has a crick in it from too much screen time, but when I gently push on it, he screams out in pain. I call the pediatrician first, then two relatives who are also doctors. All three advise us to take Noah to the emergency room. When I tell Noah we’re going to the hospital, I watch a familiar terror flood his eyes and feel the same terror rumble in my stomach. But I am the mother. I cannot freeze, go numb, or panic. There are hospital bags to be packed. So I wash my face, throw necessities in backpacks, and load them into the car with my son.

After a midnight CT scan shows an abscess in Noah’s throat, he’s admitted to the hospital. Machines pump IV antibiotics and steroids through his veins, and we’re left in another dark, cold hospital room to wait and see if he’ll need surgery. All night, I lie beside his fragile, restless body and beg God to protect my children: the one beside me, the one at home in her crib, and the one I think may be growing in my belly.

***

All but three species of kangaroo and wallaby can pause pregnancy development—until the time is right. This phenomenon, called embryonic diapause, typically happens when the embryo is a microscopic ball of about eighty cells, before attaching to the wall of the uterus.

Embryonic diapause occurs in other animals, too. Some species’ embryos delay implantation until the mother has enough energy and nutrients to support them. Major stressors on the mother can induce the hiatus, too.

The tammar wallaby’s gestation intermission can last eleven months if necessary, allowing it to give birth in January. This guarantees the joeys leave the mother’s pouch in the spring instead of in the middle of a sweltering Australian summer.

Learning this as an adult solidified my fascination with kangaroos.

***

My period is almost an entire month late. I bought a pregnancy test the day I took Noah to the pediatrician, but in all the chaos that followed, I still haven’t taken it. It’s tucked into the side of the bag I packed. I plan to take it in the morning in the small beige bathroom in our hospital room.

In the morning, the crimson stained hospital sheets tell me I don’t need to.

A few hours later, we notice the swelling in Noah’s neck has gone down—confirmation the antibiotics and steroids are finally working and surgery won’t be necessary. He’s discharged from the hospital the following day.

I unpack my hospital bag as soon as we return home, placing my sweatshirt on my closet shelf, my dirty clothes in the laundry hamper, and the unused pregnancy test in the back of my bathroom cabinet. I bleed heavily for nine more days. I don’t tell anyone except my husband what I think happened.

Six months later, at the OBGYN for a routine yearly visit, I recount the story of the hospital stay and the unused pregnancy test and the nine days of bleeding. The doctor says aloud what I haven’t been able to: It was almost certainly a miscarriage.

“Do you think I lost the baby because of all the stress?” I ask. She is kind, assuring me the miscarriage wasn’t my fault, but I can read between the lines. Stress isn’t good for an early pregnancy.

I think about the probable miscarriage often. My therapist says I can stop calling it probable. She tells me to allow space for grief. I’m not sure my (probable) miscarriage is worthy of grief, though. I never even held a positive pregnancy test.

***

A kangaroo gives birth only thirty-three days after mating. The joey then climbs into its mother’s pouch to develop for several more months. Often, though, the kangaroo mates again immediately after giving birth. This way, she essentially has another joey on standby to “replace” the baby quickly in case of loss—yet another advantage of embryonic diapause.

I wonder what a mother kangaroo feels when she loses a baby. Does the promise of another baby erase the pain of losing the first?

***

On a crisp September morning ten months after my (probable) miscarriage, I call my husband into the bathroom, and we stare at two pink lines in disbelief. We are elated—or at least, he is. I want to be, but for some reason, I can’t shake the palpable, nagging fear climbing up my abdomen and into my throat.

I call my doctor to schedule blood work to confirm the pregnancy. This blood work warrants a second blood draw, and then a third. My levels aren’t quite where they should be. She writes a prescription in hopes it will boost them. Aside from swallowing that small white capsule, all I can do is wait.

“Try to take it easy,” the nurse tells me. “Avoid stress.”

I take the prescription each night. I check the sheets for stains each morning.

***

Recent studies show kangaroos are intelligent, emotionally complex, relational animals—similar to how you might think of a dog or horse. One particular study even suggests kangaroos suffer from acute stress disorders or PTSD after traumatic events. Researchers observed that kangaroos under threat from human or dog harassment, institutional killing programs, and habitat destruction are likely to display symptoms like hyper-vigilance, a lack of play, and a lack of nurturance.

I wonder if mother kangaroos with this type of emotional trauma go on to have successful pregnancies. Do her symptoms ever dull with time?

***

One night, my husband is reading bedtime books to the kids—now two and five—while I shower. When I get out, I hear their little voices calling for me like baby birds chirping for their mother.

“Just a sec!” I call out, rummaging through my panty drawer. Their voices become less tiny, less singsong and more urgent, more impatient. My own impatience grows. Can’t a mother have twenty stress-free minutes to shower? I think. And also, Why do I only buy black underwear?

Ever since I held that positive pregnancy test in my hands, I don’t just check the sheets for stains. I check my panties every time I use the bathroom. Black underwear make that difficult.

“MOMMYYY!!” screams my daughter as I throw all the dark panties on the floor. “Hold ON!” I shout, my voice coming out shrill and uneven, harsher than I mean it to. Finally, I find a pair of light-colored underwear. The color that would show blood. The color of fear, I realize. An unexpected tear drops from my face onto the waistband.

Is life ever stress-free? Can life ever be replaced? I wonder how much the kangaroo’s superpower—its ability to pause pregnancy for a time that’s low-stress, its ability to quickly replace a loss with new life—actually protects it from grief.

I’m not sure anything protects us from loss. Maybe, rather, grief makes space for itself whether or not we give it permission. Maybe it settles in the depths of our bellies, waiting until the time is right to climb out.

Guest essay written by Allie King. Allie lives in East Tennessee with her husband and two children. She’s passionate about baked goods and mental health, belly laughs and the way God moves. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her walking to the library with her little ones or lost in deep conversation with a friend. Find more of her words on her Substack or Instagram.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.

Sources:

Some Animals Pause Their Own Pregnancies, But How They Do It Is Still a Mystery
How Some Mammals Pause Their Pregnancies
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Kangaroos