Currently This

This is a post from 02 that I found while cleaning out old files. It's relevant in ways I'll explain tomorrow.

Aftermath
3/5/2002


I can’t have any more babies. Rather, I cannot carry and nurture a child in my womb, because I have no womb. My uterus was removed from my body almost a week ago.

This time last week, I was a fertile woman. I still had the option of changing my mind, but I was sick and I had to decide whether or not having another child could be worth taking the risk of a recurrence of cancer. I decided that the hazards associated with the various things they believed to be going on with me at the time, coupled with fears of what an added child would do to this fragile family dynamic made the viability of adding another child impractical.

That sounds detached and impersonal, but it was and remains a terribly painful choice to have made. When I was fourteen, I knew I would one day have a little girl with red hair, and though her father and I both have naturally dark hair, making the likelihood of a fair haired child pretty slim, my daughter was indeed born with vivid red hair. When I became pregnant with my second child, I knew she would be a girl and I knew before even becoming pregnant that my third child would be a boy. I’ve always believed that there was another child out there somewhere, a little girl with dark hair I always saw in a ponytail. Let it defy rationality, let it smack of psychosis, delirium or melodrama, but I know in my heart there was another child out there and I always believed that sooner or later, Lyle and I would buck the odds and she would burst onto the scene in a wriggling, squalling bundle of baby stuff.

My decision to have a hysterectomy effectively aborted that child. Ironic and cruel, given earlier decisions and opportunities tossed away blithely believing I had all the time in the world. I suppose I have pre-empted all sorts of possibilities in my life that way, closed doors and burned bridges on chances I always believed I would have one more of later on down the road. At thirty eight I am just beginning to understand how age and time can do that to you while life keeps you distracted with other stuff.

That other stuff . . . I believe I had good reasons for making the choice I did. There was the risk of cancer, a risk I did not believe I had the right to take with three other people depending on me to put their needs above everything else. There was the state of my uterus . . . would it be possible to carry a child to term? Was it worth taking the chance? The family dynamic . . . I have three kids with special needs and difficult issues now. Could I add another and still give them the attention they needed and deserved, something I have so much trouble doing now? I was worried, probably unfairly, that my in laws might treat my children differently if they had a biological grandchild, and worried that might devastate my kids, a rejection they did not need on top of all the other adults who should have known better and didn’t. Worried about money, my ability to handle another kid who had as great a chance as the other three of autism, etc, my ability to start again, the chromosomal problems which occur more frequently each year after thirty five you wait to have a child. And of course, there was my husband who threatened divorce if I took on another cat, bird, fish and the very real possibility that he would shrivel to the size of a raisin and be unable to ejaculate more than a whimper if he thought it could result in a child. Another child might have been a possibility, but I didn’t have another three years to wait.

I had a dozen or more reasons why it was not going to work, and I could come up with only one to go for it: my faith in my intuition, my belief that this child was indeed waiting out there in the ether for her turn. I wish I could believe in the more likely irrationality of this, that it was just hormonal, maternal tugs and I’m sure that’s part of it. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong, though. It could be part of why my intuition about my unborn children has always been so on target. In any case, my feeling was that I was never choosing between ambiguities. The child was out there. Would I have her or not?

In the end, I decided that my responsibility to my existing children was greater than the possibility I had to admit to: that I need a lot of therapy, that I was looking for excuses or validation or attention. I let go of the idea of this other kid, let go of her hand and offered her up to the ether.

I sit here, carefully folded up on the couch in a position least likely to cause me to scream in pain, freshly freed of the Frankenstonian staples they used to close me up, and as I write this to you on my husband’s laptop, I find, to my relieved horror, that I am not grieving as much for that lost child as I thought I would, nor am I beating myself up as much as I would once have done. If I believe that it is possible to know years before a child is conceived what it will look like and what sex it will be, if I believe in my killer intuition and that I sometimes know before it rings who will be on the phone, or at the door, I have to believe in fate and that things are as they should be. I believe that if I had chosen differently something would have happened to force me in the other direction, to force me into the operation. I agonized over the possibilities and decisions, wept a little bit afterward when the finality hit home, but I believe I made the best possible choice for everyone in my family. Things are as they should be.

Now it’s about what’s next. Getting past my minor Vicodin jones, getting my own laptop and digital camera and seeing if I can honor the children I have and give the ones I chose not to have an epitaph worthy of us all. I will raise wonderful people with love and security and unleash them on the rest of you and I will leave the world a better place than I found it by using my experiences to help other people. I won’t wallow in grief or melodrama, and I will let myself off the hook. My body, no longer capable of bearing children, feels mine in a way it never has before. I feel different. I suddenly feel freed of waiting, feel certain that what is next is already well underway, and I have to get better in a hurry to catch up.