I’m still adjusting to the whole “I’m sterile now” thing. Truthfully, I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it. And whenever I do think about it, my mind reels and refuses to consider it for longer than about 3 nanoseconds. Why? Because it’s strange. Weird.
For nearly ten years now, my focus has been either a) get pregnant b) stay pregnant or c) take care of newborn baby. I am dealing with c) right now, but both a) and b) are off the books. It has been a huge part of my life, having babies. Even huger than I think I realized. Virtually everything I did, thought, said, wrote, saw or planned was somehow related to having a baby. It colored everything I did and, in the end, who I am. Though I’d like to think otherwise, this whole business did define me as a person these last ten years.
We were married in August of 1998 and it wasn’t but a month or two later that I tossed out my birth control pills and started cruising pregnancy websites and eyeballing “what if” ovulation calculators. I think it’s safe to say that I had baby fever. I though we were “trying” back then, but it’s a notion that’s laughable to me now (now that I know what real “trying” is like). In reality, we were just open to the possibilities. Lucky for us, possibility became reality after Valentine’s Day 1999. I was pregnant for the first time ever and I truly felt like my life was fulfilled. I loved being pregnant. I loved maternity clothes and shopping for baby goodies and even going to my monthly doctor appointments.
There was a (very short) period of time after Harry was born that I didn’t want to consider having another anytime soon. I think that lasted, oh, about five months. Maybe seven. By the summer of 2000, I was ready to try again. I wanted to be pregnant again. I wanted Harry to have a sibling. I was charmed with the notion of having children close in age (*snorfle*). I was sure that it would be like it had been before. We would “try” for a couple months and then I’d be pregnant. Voila!
But… no. Didn’t happen. By 2001, I was starting to get a little nervous. I started to chart my morning temperature, take ovulation predictor tests and chat with other fertilely-challenged women. Becoming pregnant again became a mission to me. I think it’s safe to say that I became obsessed. I remember telling Kile one year that there were only three things I wanted: to be pregnant, to have a house and to have a new car (a minivan, to be precise). In October of 2001, we had the minivan. The following summer, we moved into a rental house. Still… not pregnant. It took several more months before I would return to the reproductive endocrinologist we’d been referred to in order to start a Clomid regimen. I put it off because I was scared. I didn’t want to admit that it would take such drastic measures to get pregnant. But soon, I was obsessed enough that I didn’t care HOW I got pregnant, I just wanted to BE pregnant.
I spent the next year getting pregnant and being pregnant. And then… the worst happened. God, what a slap in the face. After all that time, all that obsessing and dreaming and hoping. After all the money we spent. After all of that we lost the baby. It made me realize that simply “being pregnant” wasn’t the goal. All along, I think I thought it had been. After all, with Harry it was a simple as that. Get pregnant = have a baby. I learned, the hard way, that pregnant doesn’t always equal baby. And as much as I loved being pregnant, I wanted a baby even more.
It was a nerve wracking year. I wanted to get pregnant again, but I hoped that I would be able to without the aid of Clomid. I guess I still had some leftover denial rattling around in there. I was not in a good place, mentally, anyhow. I would cry at the drop of a hat. I would often spend entire days in a fog of sadness. I think of 2004 and I think of pain. At Christmas that year, though, I’d had enough. I told Kile we needed to back to the doctor and go again. So we did. And I got pregnant. Again. My doctor decided I was too big of a risk and referred me to an obstetrician. And for a while, all seemed well. And then… well, you know the story.
It might have been easy to call it quits then. Shoot, I think that’s what I wanted to do. Just crawl in a dark hole and pull it in after me. But Kile was determined and because of him, we got right back on the horse. And I got pregnant again, on Clomid, rather quickly. It felt “meant to be”. It had to be though. I was obsessed still, nervous and full of anxiety at every turn. Oh, I did a great job of hiding it out in public and even here on the blog. That’s just my nature though. But trust me when I say: I was a wreck. And you know what? I got a baby out of the deal. At long, long, LONG last. How marvelous that day was. A total fulfillment of YEARS of aching and wanting and needing.
So I felt pretty sated for a while. I had an adorable little baby to take care of every day and he charmed me at every turn. My focus shifted almost subtly from getting and being pregnant to taking care of a little newborn. It felt like starting over. It was awesome. I’ll always look back on Liam’s first year of life with very fond memories. I was so happy.
We talked about having our next child fairly soon. Let’s face it, I wasn’t getting any younger and as much as the age difference between Liam and Harry was turning out to be a blessing in disguise, we wanted to have a smaller gap between Liam and his younger sibling. We causally talked about maybe trying again in the fall of 2007 and left it at that. But (and who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?) I was already pregnant. Unbeknownst to pretty much everyone (but mostly me). No Clomid. No charting. No timing. No ovulation predictor tests. No, it was “the old fashioned way”. Bizarre.
So again, I was focused on being pregnant. By this point, it was a state that I was rather used to being in. But I knew, the whole time, that this was it. The last time I would be pregnant. Of course, it doesn’t have the same impact to realize that while you are still pregnant because, like it or not, your focus is still entirely wrapped up in the business of growing a baby. So it’s more of an abstract idea.
Even now, not being pregnant again EVER seems pretty abstract to me. But it is what it is. And now… Now what do I do? Who am I? Does this change who I am? What kind of person will I grow into now that I will no longer grow life inside of me? Does this mean no more pregnancy tests? Like… for EVER? What will I DO with myself?
I suppose the answer, for now, is take care of Evie and try to keep Liam from burning the house down. That will probably take up a great deal of time because Evie LOVES to be held 24/7 and Liam is determined to destroy the house in a way that I’ve never seen before. Still, I know this stage is short-lived. Evie will grow and become more independent (*sniff*) and Liam will (hopefully) mature and realize that when we say “NO” that perhaps we actually mean “NO”.
Call me crazy, but a girl can dream.
So that’s it. I’m done. No more babies. I can’t really wrap my mind around it. Does this mean I have to find a hobby? And if so, what should it be? Because I can’t craft worth a darn.
This is me. I'm a thirtysomething stay at home mom to three kids. For years I was a stay at home mom to one kid and trying very hard to have more. It took a LONG time (ie: 6 1/2 years), but finally Liam arrived and charmed us with his blue eyes and ginormous, round head. Then we got a shock: I was pregnant again and this time it was a GIRL. Our hearts and home are full at last and now that we're done having babies, we get to relax (snort) and watch them grow (not too fast now, you hear?). Thanks for coming by, feel free to dip into my archives, read my About and History pages (just don't do Jackson's Story without tissues!) and make yourself at home.
