My heart is tender, and although I know that it is not broken, right this minute it almost feels so. All for a thing that I had never thought to mourn, a thing about myself and my life that I have felt joyful, even gleeful about for well over a year.
I am done having babies. I have known well and solidly that I am done, and i won't bore anyone with the various and obvious reasons (and a few personal reasons too) why I am done; because I just felt done. Done and done, and relieved to be so. Able to set about the rest of my mortality with all of that, fertility and timing and fretting about am or am not gone by the wayside, a dance for younger or more energetic women. I have indulged in this running countdown of lasts in my mind, gleefully treasuring up Henry's baby accomplishments. His unhurried pace through his life, the happy and almost senseless whanging around of his little fists all about his little boy person. So very done even before his arrival on earth, that I agreed to a c-section a bit easier than I think I normally might, just so I could have the tubal and have done with all of it, have that door shut for good.
Only earlier this week I realised I was late after a weekend of exhaustion and queasiness, and a suspiciously familiar itchy rash that had started again on my lower stomach two weeks earlier got me feeling a little uneasy. Then a friend from the neighborhood announced she was pregnant and had gotten so on the very same IUD that one of the OB's from the doctors office had tried to talk me into, proclaiming it had the same rate of efficacy as the more final surgical procedure I was asking for. And then somehow the tales of women started in a torrent, women who are right this minute pregnant in impossible circumstance. So I checked with Dr. Google, and sure enough, tubals done in conjunction with a c-section have a higher fail rate than the usual 1%. And then there is that 1% in normal circumstances.
And I have been waiting. On the one hand quite sure that I have just been put off schedule by the past month of pneumonia and colds, and on the other hand discovering...
...discovering to my shock and dismay, that there was a familiar flutter of hope.
damn.
As it turns out, I do have to mourn the passing of this time in my life; regret, after all, that there will be no more. I know, I know... I honestly suspect that my body might break irreparably if called on to create another life. I would be forty one. I know.
There are reasons and logic and knowledge... and then there is my heart, and of course I am not pregnant. This afternoon saw the start of the end of that brief hope. There is my astonishingly fickle heart, and there, this little crack in it.
7 comments:
Oh. This is why I haven't had my procedure yet. Because I am done. So very, very done.
And yet? To never hold a newborn baby again, never smell that new baby smell or wake up in the middle of the night and feel a cuddly little body curled against my chest? Is too much for me right now.
I so understand.
Sighhh. Do you remember the span of time that I made dolls? Well that was probably part of it. Then there were 4 round bellyed sculptures in a row and several "Eves". And I understand. And you can do this, not now, but later...after, after all. Love you much, Mom
As we well know by the tone of my posts lately that I'm perimenopausal. My periods are not on time anymore and I have little symptoms that make me think, despite my own tubal, that maybe just maybe...
I don't want a baby. I don't. That new baby smell and the cooing and the sweetness? Loved it when they were my gifts. Don't want that gift again. And yet, my womanhood is betraying my brain instinctually telling me I'm supposed to want this!
Oh I'm looking forward to not incubating these little lives forever even as I cherish them now.
Won't be long until I'm a Grandma most likely...snicker.
Yeah. I'm done too. You are braver than I. Lately I've been marveling at the bravery of women who have more than two and wondering why I don't have it in me. I don't feel as sad about being done... yet. But sometimes, sometimes I get this little pull at my heart when I think about it.
yeah. I get it too.
hugs
I know that feeling, that ache.
We are done. I know it in my heart and my mind that we are done. I've been saying we were done from the second I got pregnant.
But I haven't made that a PERMANENT decision. Because I am afraid of my fickle heart. I like leaving the door open, just a crack, to see that comforting beacon of light.
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