I don't think it would be fair to say that I never wanted to have children, but I definitely resisted and rejected the mommy label for most of my adult life. I always found all the swooning of my female friends over new babies to be nauseating. It seemed to me that feminism had amounted to nothing, if the only thing bright, and over-achieving women really wanted was to do was watch baby Einstein videos and subject all their friends to unrelenting descriptions of their child's perfection and brilliance. While everyone else was goo-gooing and gah-gahing, I have been rolling my eyes.
I like kids, but isn't it possible to have an identity that is more than just a future wife and mother? Isn't it possible to have a child eventually, and still be true to who you were before you and hubby made a mini version of yourselves?
This attitude has generally earned me the reputation of the anti-mommy. Baby hater. Nanny-Nazi. Whatever. My mother and everyone else decided long ago that just because I refused to start buying baby clothes and toys and furniture in my 20's for a child I had not yet conceived, or planned to conceive, that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, and that I would inevitably be one of those pathetic and lonely career women who never become fully-fledged females through the miracle of conception.
Little do they know that I have conceived not once, but twice, with two different men.
The first time I was 25. My husband and I weren't yet married, but we had been living together for several years. I had been on the pill since the first time I had sex at age 18 – but my Aunt had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, and I suddenly became very worried about what all those years of hormones might be doing to my body, and I decided to go off the pill. I figured we could use condoms. That did not go over well.
This is something that I really do not understand. Some men have absolutely no problem using a condom. It's the most natural thing in the world. They keep a few on hand, they know how to put them on and take them off without a big to-do. An then there are other men who would rather forgo sex altogether than allow a micro-thin layer of latex (or whatever they are made of these days) to separate you. All I want to say is, REALLY, is it that bad? Can it possibly feel that different? And if it desensitizes you enough that it lasts a little longer, is that such a bad thing??? I think not!!
Anyway, the man who would eventually become my husband fell into the latter category. He wouldn't even buy the damn things because he said it was too embarrassing. So I went and bought them, and reminded him, that it must have looked far worse for me, a single girl, to be buying the jumbo pack of condoms at CVS than him. Still he resisted. Putting it on was a process. He didn't like the interruption. I insisted a few times and then they sat in the drawer unused. Our de-facto birth control became the withdrawal method.
Now if there is anyone out there reading this who is under the slightest misconception that you can successfully use the withdrawal method for any real length of time to avoid getting pregnant, let me clear things up: It absolutely does not work. Little sperm leak out before the big moment and find their way to your eggs. It might not happen the first few times, but eventually, it will. It happened to me.
I remember wondering what the hell was wrong with me. My breasts were incredibly sore, and I suddenly had the worst heartburn I have ever felt in my life -- all the time. I wasn't nauseous, but my whole body felt sore. My skin hurt all over, like I had the flu, and then suddenly I realized I was late. I home pregnancy test later left no doubt.
I cried at first. I had all these big plans. I was in graduate school. This was not the way I wanted to begin a family. I had always been a little self conscious about my origins – so many of my friends from high school already had children, many out of wedlock. I thought I was better than that. I didn't want to conceive the white-trash way. I wanted a wedding, and a family I planned.
But at the same time, I wanted my future husband to want it. I wanted him to tell me he would love to have me have his babies. I wanted him to encourage me to keep it. I know that sounds crazy and stupid, but if there was one person I wanted to have tell me that this was not the end of the world, it was him.
However, he felt differently. He had just started a new job. He had plenty of ideas about how he wanted to use our new financial resources, and raising a baby wasn't one of them. Terminating the pregnancy was actually his idea.
It's not like he really twisted my arm or anything. I knew this wasn't the right time. I knew I wasn't ready to be a mother and we weren't ready to be parents. But I think I felt like he should have been ready to shoulder the burden, since this "mistake" was his fault. He pressured me into being careless. He took no responsibility for preventing this child from being conceived, and now he wasn't ready for the consequences of his actions. I felt hung out to dry, and I suddenly realized how when it comes to a woman's body and her fertility, there is no one looking out for it but her. That in the end, even the most well-meaning and loving men can't think farther then the tip of their penises. And now I had to have an abortion. All because HE refused to wear a condom.
There was not that much to the procedure itself. He came with me. He held my hand. I was sedated, it was over quickly, and there was some bleeding and cramping for the next few days. I didn't have any complications. I didn't have any horrible and lasting guilt over what I had done.
But what did leave a lasting impression on me, was the shame and the secrecy of the whole thing. I always imagined that women who had abortions could just go to their doctor. That the procedure would be treated with integrity and respect. That it was a choice every woman had a right to make, and would be treated that way. I was in for a very rude awakening. The clinic I had to go to was only open for a few hours on certain days, and the protesters knew the schedule. They greeted you with guilt at the door. The waiting room was cold and sterile, and the doctors tried not to smile. I remember trying to lighten the mood a little and joking to the doctor I said "Well I guess this isn't the happiest thing you get to do." He looked at me very seriously and said, "Well someone has to." He was right. A lot of doctors won't do it. It was nearly a new millennium, and yet when it came to getting an abortion it was clear we weren't that far away from coat hangers and illicit midwives in back alleys. It's a knowledge that has haunted me ever since, and I am grateful that I still had the power to control my own fertility.
It's fair to say that that experience put the first kink in our relationship. I went back on the pill and less than a year later we got married. There would me no more babies for us, and perhaps it was a good thing. From that point forward the relationship began to unravel. And then ne day I realized I wasn't 25 anymore. I am nearing 35, and the window of opportunity was closing.
Now perhaps it's nothing more than age and the ticking of the proverbial biological clock, but lately, an affinity for Desitin, pastels, and talcum powder has begun to assuage my aversion to childbearing. I am suddenly looking at rocking chairs and wondering where they would fit in my apartment. I find myself admiring vintage highchairs in antique stores. I wonder what it would be like to feel a baby summersault in my belly, or to have an infant instead of a man suckle at my breast. I look at women with infants and toddlers and find myself longing for one of my own.
The irony of the fact that I now have no one to have this would-be child with has not escaped me.
The transformation didn't happen overnight, but a pivotal moment occurred when I discovered I was pregnant with Berlin's baby. That conception was the result of complete and utter carelessness on our part. I had stopped the pill again altogether years ago when my husband and I stopped having sex. When I sought affection outside our marriage, I used a combination of a diaphragm and condoms (without fail). But Berlin and I were careless from the start. That first night we didn't use any contraception – not even the faulty withdrawal method. I had started my period that afternoon and when things got heated that night I had to tell him maybe the timing wasn't the best for a first encounter. But we were both rather keen on each other, and it sure felt right. When I disclosed the reason for my hesitancy his exact words were "we can work with that." I guess we both knew that chances of babies were very low given the timing and so we took the risk. After that I insisted we be more careful, but then, one night, exactly 11 days later, in the throws of passion we threw caution to the wind once again.
It was nothing short of idiotic. It was exactly what we would have done if we were trying to get pregnant. And the next day I just knew. The timing was too perfect. The night was too perfect. I knew I was going to get pregnant.
Now here's where I have to admit, that there was a part of me that did not think this was entirely a bad idea. There was a part of me that had already decided, perhaps even in the heat of the moment, that having a baby with Berlin would not be the end of the world. It might even be nice. Yes, so I had known him 11 days. So what? The sex was great. He was great. I really liked him. And you know what? I was ready to have a baby, even on my own.
But I also knew that this was insane. And I felt like maybe this would be unfair to Berlin, who while an equal and enthusiastic partner in this irresponsible sex, might not want to have a child as much as I did, and he would not be around to be a father to it, seeing as he was moving to Germany to chase after Marion – who I still believed to be more of a casual infatuation than an actual girlfriend. I reluctantly suggested I get a prescription for "Plan B" – otherwise known as the "morning after pill," which is basically a big dose of birth control hormones. Supposed to be something like 60% effective if you take it within 3 days, it seemed like the prudent thing to do. But getting it proved more difficult than I anticipated, and I when I finally took it on the third day I looked at the pills and thought, "I don't really want to do this." I sort of wish I would have listened to my instinct instead of the rational part of my brain that said to be responsible. I took the pills and waited.
The next several week were torture. I immediately developed sore breasts, and some nausea and heartburn. I was pretty sure it hadn't worked. But I took three home tests and they all came back negative. And then I got my period. Or what I thought was my period. I figured it must have been the hormones making me think I was pregnant. Phew. Crisis averted. It wasn't meant to be.
But a week later after the initial bleeding had stopped, it started again. I knew something was wrong. I took another pregnancy test, and this time it was positive. Shit. What was going on? Berlin was gone to Boston. I decided to wait and be sure before I said anything. I made an appointment to see my doctor.
A few days later I had the pregnancy officially confirmed. But because of the bleeding, she had me go in for an ultrasound. It was really at this moment when I realized I was happy about the possibility of bringing a child into the world. I was lying there with the ultrasound wand inside me, about to hear the heartbeat of the 6 week old fetus. How cool is that? The heartbeat of your unborn baby? I smiled at the thought of the little jumping bean. But the ultrasound remained quiet. The technician was quiet and didn't look at me. Finally she said, "OK we're all done. I'm sorry dear, but I don't see a baby in there. It could be that you are miscarrying. I'll let you talk to the doctor and she'll go over the results with you"
I felt a wave of sadness come over me. No heartbeat. No baby. I'm having a miscarriage? But that would have been easier than what was to come. In an exam room down the hall, the doctor told me the ultrasound was inconclusive – first we had to get some blood tests – test my pregnancy hormone levels over the course of a few days and see what was going on. If the hormones rose, we could rule out a miscarriage – but it they rose too slowly it would indicate the pregnancy was lodged in my fallopian tubes, not in my uterus where it was supposed to be. I went downstairs to have my blood drawn. I had hope. Perhaps this baby was conceived after the initial scare. Maybe this was really early. Too early to see on an ultrasound. The first results showed really low hCG levels. Consistent with a very early pregnancy. Maybe it was all Ok after all.
In two days I came back and had it drawn again. I was hopeful. If the levels doubled, it was a healthy pregnancy.
I was at work when I got the bad news. The levels barely climbed. This was an ectopic. Still I was skeptical. Couldn't there be some mistake? Why didn't they see it in the tubes on the ultrasound? I had read that sometimes the levels are unreliable in the very early stages. "No," the nurse assured me. I should make arrangements to get a shot of methotrexate to terminate the pregnancy.
I hesitated. I decided to get a second opinion. But he confirmed the earlier diagnosis, and even insisted that this was a matter of life or death, not to be toyed with . Many women he said waited too long and nearly died from a ruptured fallopian tube. I cried. I had already decided I wanted this baby. I had already made up my mind that being a single mother was OK. I had already imagined the ultrasound pictures and the birth, and the little tiny fists gripping my pinky.
Berlin was still in Boston. Did I tell him? I decided not to. Maybe later. When it was over. I still couldn't bring myself to admit it was over. I cried the whole way to the hospital. I cried waiting for the shot. It hurt like hell, and I cried some more. I could tell the nurses felt sorry for me. They asked me if I wanted a counselor. I told them no thank-you, and practically ran out of the room, limping from the pain where the shot was still burning and throbbing in the muscle of my right butt cheek. When I reached the parking lot I broke down completely. I couldn't drive. I just sat there in the car sobbing. Sobbing for this lost life inside me. Sobbing for the end of a marriage, the end of my dreams of a family. The idea of a pregnancy – even an accidental one had given me a hope that I could make a family on my own. It might have been unconventional, ill-timed, and perhaps even unwise, but I would have loved this child. I would have loved it and cared for it, and I would have been a good mother. Now who knows when I'll ever be a mother. If I'll ever be a mother. Maybe this was my only chance. I cried.
Eventually I did tell Berlin. I told him in the letter I wrote him. The letter he didn't respond to until I became a nasty unreasonable bitch. But how could he not understand? How could he not want to comfort me? How could he be so dense as to not understand what a profound effect this experience has on a woman? Oh wait, I forgot – even my own husband had been incapable of looking past the tip of his own penis. Men did not get it. They simply do not understand. And the truth was, until that moment in the ultrasound, and in the parking lot neither had I. I had not realized how I could discover I was pregnant and instantly fall in love with a ball of cells. How that, which was not yet a baby, could still be a baby in my mind, and I could already love the potential of it. No man was going to understand that sort of logic. The sort of logic even I had rolled my eyes at all my life.
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