(Warning: This post may seem really insensitive to those of you experiencing primary or secondary infertility. I’m very sorry if you find it offensive. My goal is to express my feelings and not come across as a martyr.)
I can’t have any more children.
Paul and I had always planned to have two children, and since the complications I had with David have a high rate of recurrence, the decision to make him our last child was something about which we were quite sure.
And yet, when the nurse called to schedule my C-section and tubal ligation last year, I flinched.
“And I have you down for a sterilization. Is that correct?” she asked.
A sterilization? Really? I mean, I guess that’s what it is, but ick. Tubal ligation is a phrase with which I am comfortable. It’s a term for a medical procedure with very little other connotation. But “sterilization” makes me think of Nazis and eugenics.
But I did have a tubal ligation, and now I guess I am “sterile.”
In the weeks before David’s birth and my surgery, I mourned this loss of reproductive ability. I would never tell any woman that her value is based on her ability to produce children, and yet I felt that a vital part of me was being taken away, even though I never planned to use it again.
Even when David was a few months old, I occasionally found myself crying when I reflected that he would be my last baby. Of course I didn’t want to re-live the anguish of bed rest and an endangered pregnancy, but in my hormonal state I would gaze at the sleeping bundle on my chest and long for six more.
Now that my last baby is growing into a toddler, I am finding a bit of peace. For one thing, those hormones are losing their hold.
Yet I do find myself grasping at David’s babyhood a bit, unwilling to let it go. I never was the type with Ian to fret as he grew bigger — I enjoyed each new development and very much lived in the moment. But with David, I do sigh a little as I see him growing up.
And yet I am also ready to move on. I’m excited to know that I don’t have to worry about maternity clothes ever again. I’m looking forward to starting Ian in Mothers’ Day Out next year and David in a couple of years and one day — gasp! — finding myself with free time. And I am already enjoying having two boys who sleep through the night (some of the time).
So while medically I may be considered sterile, personally I find this to be a very fertile time of life, a time for lots of exciting new things.
But I do miss squishy, new babies. So if you have one that needs holding, let me know.
