This October my husband, R, and I will celebrate our third wedding anniversary, and at the end of November we’ll celebrate our “four years together” anniversary. During the past 3 and a half years that we’ve been together, we’ve ridden out lots of storms and disasters, clinging to each other and we’ve sailed on the glassy waters of lazy weekend afternoons spent neglecting our lawn, laying around in bed together and reading books.
Last Christmas, we had a “pregnancy scare”. I’d been on Lupron for a year for endometriosis treatment, and was officially due to get my period back in December (or so the doctors told me). When it didn’t come but the pregnancy tests were negative, R and I were surprised that we were almost as sad as we were relieved. Many long talks later, we decided we were ready to start trying to have a child.
For many years after I quit being what I thought of as “young and adrift”, I was unsure whether I’d like to bear a child, but I’ve always wanted to adopt. I’m a creative person, and in my years working as a nanny I saw lots of people sidetracked from their personal interests so they could provide well for their children. I felt if I could adopt then I could wait longer, be more prepared, financially sound, and emotionally ready. Plus my family has a history of health problems, including quite troubling mental health ones, and I had an unfortunate legacy of abuse I was up against in the parenting column. I also am a big sassy gal and I don’t want to worry about gestational diabetes or the awful preeclampsic-caused hospital stays which my little sister with both her pregnancies.
But the idea of the feminine capacity for pregnancy has always had a pull for me, whether I bought into it completely for myself. On occasion I even thought about being an egg donor or a surrogate (during my single years).
So I can’t explain what made us decide to have children. I can explain the timing, the way we’re going about it, and more, but what made me suddenly willing to risk all the horrible, scary things of pregnancy and parenthood and try to get knocked up? I don’t know. But here we are, here I am. Ready as I’ll ever be.
