I have fought myself so hard to post this. It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard, but it has been. To the point where any time I try to write a different post my fingers say “NOPE!” Then I come back to this post and begrudgingly try to make it more light-hearted and less of a big deal than it actually was to me. There are just certain stories that are not meant to be shared. Sometimes you share parts of it, like a synopsis for the general public, or a cliff notes version with some very close friends, maybe even a deeper summary with your family and spouse, and maybe you never even fully acknowledge the story yourself. But you never, EVER, share them on a public website.
This is one of those stories I would never share, but after years, I’ve felt like I have to share it. I’ve fought that feeling ever since.
I am not sure what will come from it but, here I am. Raw, vulnerable, and hoping that my experience has a positive effect on someone.
This story has a happy ending.
I was 13 years old when I started having insane abdominal pains. After several tests and doctor visits everyone settled into the determination that my body would make a bazillion cysts in my lifetime. They slapped some birth control in my hands and sent me on my way. When I was 15, I had begun having abnormally severe pains in my abdomen and my doctors found a cyst the size of a grapefruit on my left ovary. The doctor wanted to surgically remove it but couldn’t separate it from my ovary so they told my mother that they would have to take my ovary out with it. Thankfully, my mother refused to let them take my ovary and agreed that she’d “see where things went” with it before talking about surgery again. Months later it burst while I was sitting in computer lab. An ER visit later showed another cyst the size of a walnut on my left ovary that had been hiding under the grapefruit and, “taking out the cyst along with my ovary” was again on the table, and I was diagnosed with PCOS. That marked the beginning of a search for new doctors and within the next ten years I would see seven different specialist. I was too young to remember or understand most details, but I understood clearly when each of these doctors shared that down the road, getting pregnant would be extremely difficult for me, if it happened at all.
When I processed this information I was 13, so it was early enough for me to change my “life plan” and I simply became used to the fact that I wouldn’t have children. Despite my mother telling me she’d carry my babies for me, I suppressed the thought, was sad a little, and then focused on my future as a lawyer (which I planned on being at the age of five.) I pictured myself as a fancy lawyer in a fancy condo, by a beach, with my fancy golden retriever, Rocket, my childhood dog that would no doubt, live forever. Picture an emotionally stable Kate Hudson in Bride Wars plus Marley. And because I convinced myself that I didn’t want kids, I didn’t care to be married either. Then Seth and I started dating by accident and got married down the road.
Before we were married, sometime between the time when I realized “this was happening” I was getting married, and our actual wedding, I realized that I needed to talk to him about my barren fate. I suppressed that feeling too (which I’m beginning to see might be a thing that I do.) Eventually, I sat him down and had the dreaded reveal. I remember a pit the size of that same grapefruit-sized cyst that just sunk-in my stomach until I told him. I had to pump myself up for this conversation and force the words out. I warned him. I did. A few times. He always responded with such clarity and confidence, “we’ll have kids, I know it,” and that was that, having kids or not didn’t matter to him, I did. It was no big deal to him, he married me anyway, and I let him before he changed his mind about his line ending with him. Though my “condition” at times made me feel unworthy of love, I was lucky to be so loved anyway.
Fast forward a few years and I was prepping to go to law school, taking advantage of the great medical insurance we had before student insurance plagued our lives and bank account. I had to “fix myself” because I couldn’t live with the thought that I caused someone pain in not being able to have his kids. I’m not even sure why I thought this because Seth so obviously loved me and didn’t care at all about whether I could give him kids, he still simply insisted we’d have them and that was that. Unlike Seth, I had stopped being able to face the question of when we’d have kids, despite my responses having become increasingly hilarious and dripping in creative sarcasm. The breaking point was when good ol’ gossip got around that someone, whom was completely aware of my condition, was telling others that my husband wanted so badly to have children (lie) but i was so focused on my career that I wouldn’t LET him have them (another lie.)
So, I took advantage of a laparoscopy because at that point, I had found out that I have Endometriosis also and it could only help. After the surgery my doctor confirmed that she had burned a ton of extra tissue around my abdomen and found that GUESS WHAT? THERE’S MORE! I had an EXTREMELY, not slightly, not normally, not like a little more than normal but, “SEVERELY” is the word she used, tilted uterus.
Boom. There I was, a Triple threat. PCOS, Endometriosis, and a “severely tilted uterus.” Imagine my surprise a few weeks later when I was told that I was pregnant and that I had been pregnant DURING the laparoscopy (remember that surgery we just talked about where they were burning around my uterus? They were basically cooking my baby camp-fire style.) Apparently blood work and urine tests didn’t “catch it.”
There I was on the steps of Bass Pro Shops in Islamorada, PREGNANT, despite the odds that were stacked highly against me. But the baby might be dead. So what did I do? I suppressed that feeling of terror the best I could because we were hosting guests that had brought their baby into town with them and just kept insisting we “HAD TO HAVE CHILDREN.” Not a bad reminder of the possible roasted-marshmallow fetus I was backpacking around.
I remember whispering the news to Seth, letting it sink in and then calling my big sister. I broke the good news to her and when she immediately became excited, I told her the pregnancy was probably not viable and fought back tears next to some fish hooks.
The next day, my doctor rushed me in for an ultrasound where they confirmed a viable pregnancy! I thought I was out of the woods, take THAT science! But science just laughed back at me. Apparently anesthesia and heavy pain killers are SUPER bad for babies in the first trimester. I was told that the baby may not survive the pregnancy and if it did, it may have several developmental issues. Like bad vision, improper or incomplete spinal development, and my personal favorite, “its brain may not fully develop and since brains continue to develop up until a week following birth, it may die within a couple weeks after birth.” She then, cautious to not show too much bias in avoiding a malpractice lawsuit, told me about the “Watson Clinic” where I could have an abortion because “she could not legally perform one for me unless it were a medical emergency.”
So there I went, off into the sunset with my viable-ish pregnancy and the choice of whether to kill off the one chance I may have at being a mother. To “help”, my doctor referred me to a high-risk OB to give me further insight. Essentially the information was the same and, I kid you not, he started off our meeting with the words, “so it was not her fault,” like I was there to establish liability. I took his “super helpful” insight, decided to push forward with my pregnancy and wait for the bad to happen on its own. I moved across the country, started law school, and was too busy and emotionally scarred to really connect with the baby for fear of becoming too attached. I was excited, but I didn’t want myself to be, because the universe told me I didn’t deserve this baby. Unless they were family or very close friends, I didn’t announce it to the general public until they just realized the obvious, and I finally announced it on social media when I was 35 weeks along.
By 41 weeks, I had Isabella. Her labor story is one for another post. Still, I waited for something to happen after her birth. Like I didn’t deserve to be a mother and that she’d be taken from me. She was healthy, happy, and aside from her vehement distaste for carseats, a great baby. Four and a half years later, despite the same issues, we were blessed with Kate. I completely impressed each ultrasound tech with the fact the I had become pregnant with my “severely tilted uterus.” In my first meeting with the doctor I asked her if I’d likely lose the baby because somehow, based on my history, I assumed I would and couldn’t let my hopes get high until I knew for sure she’d stick around.
I still, at times, feel like I was not built for motherhood. I don’t know what makes me think that, maybe the impostor syndrome or the fact that I am incapable of sewing or sleep training children, but it’s not right.
I know I’m lucky. I know and respect the women whom have to deal with so much more pain than I have, with so much more medical treatment than I did, and for so much longer than the many years that I had before my first miracle baby. I want them to know that I love them, I feel for them, I feel with them, and I hope for them.
The point of this all may simply be, that you’re built for whatever you want to be built for, even if it seems so far out of touch with reality or science. You deserve to be loved and to be happy, regardless of what you physically can or can’t do, including the children you may or may not have. Sometimes good things do come from dark places, even when the road is long and the outcome appears bleak. Motherhood, that’s the LONGEST road of all. What makes you a mother is not the child, it’s the trying, the wanting, the things we put ourselves through to have children from doctors, surgeries, shots, treatments, or adoption costs and paperwork, and all of the things we do to improve ourselves before we even think about having children, like our education, dating “good-dad level” men, and being morally and emotionally stable.
My story has a happy beginning, with two beautiful mischievous redheads that fill my home with absolute chaos, love, and laughter. Happy endings and happy beginnings are not simply reserved for fairytales and Disney movies.
I will not sit here and lie to you, the journey is not always beautiful and it is not guaranteed, sometimes it’s ugly, and awful, and heart-wrenching, but you can’t base your value on its outcome. You deserve happiness in whatever form you can create it.
In the meantime, I’ll be here rooting for you.
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