Motherhood

(originally written on May 9, 2011 - Mother's Day)

I sit here on Mother’s Day, with the only “children” I have ever had – the four-legged kind - wondering as I often do how come I ended up without the one gift I dreamed of since I was a little girl: motherhood. ‘Everything happens for a reason’, I keep telling myself. Some things I figure I’ll just give up trying to understand.

As a little girl my cousins and I often played “house”. Male cousins would play dads, the girls and I would play moms, using dolls as the babies. We’d use cloth diapers to change them, we’d shove water and baby food in their stiff mouths, then stick them in the bathroom sink to give them a bath with Dial soap and then put on a fresh change of clothes. As a teen I fantasized about being married to a handsome man with brown or black hair and blue or green eyes who was taller than me. I’d love on him day and night, tend to his every need and desire, spoil him rotten, and yes, we’d have children.

I think we want to be the type of parent ours weren’t, in a way, in the sense that we want to improve on it. We want to keep those things we loved in our parents, but then compensate for the deficits. If our parents were cool, great listeners and non-judgmental, then we vow we’re going to be the same way with our own kids, because we found those to be such great traits in our parents. But if our parents were judgmental, or hit us, or after a while started sounding like the adults in a Peanuts cartoon, we swear we will never be like that when we have kids.

When I started graduate school I met the guy I thought was “the one”. We met and the chemistry was there from the very beginning. He gets credit for the first kiss – I’m too old-school to have made that kind of initial approach myself – and everything just flowed perfectly after that. As the relationship grew more serious – moving in together, him flying to my home to meet my parents - it became apparent that it may go somewhere someday, but we were both too broke to plan anything. When it came time to select the next graduate school step (we both wanted doctorates), the talk of marriage came up. We said we’d do it one day (though he was your garden variety male making endless jokes at the mere mention of the “M” word), but not until we finished all of our schooling and had enough money to do it, as we didn’t want to burden our parents with that. I remember there was a toy in a Captain Crunch cereal that we saved one time – a big plastic blue lock. He put it around my finger one time saying that it was all he could do since he couldn't afford a real engagement ring. We both had a good, long laugh over that! At any rate, marriage – and therefore, children, too - would have to be postponed. At that time I was in my mid-20, prime time for childbearing. Education was prioritized.

Little did I know at the time, but that relationship would end a few years later. Despite my changing my first choice of graduate schools and choosing a different one to be closer to him instead, the relationship still had a five-hour drive, long distance component. Add to that a new person in the mix and, well, he found someone with whom he felt he was more compatible. By then I was in my early thirties. Still an “OK” age for childbearing, but I suddenly found myself partner-less.

Fantasies ended for a long while. I’d never find another person to call “the one”, how could I ever again find someone to feel so perfect, I thought, so dreams of motherhood shattered for a while. I felt so jealous of everyone my age whom I saw having children, and me sitting there perfectly willing and capable, yet circumstances rendering me perfectly unable. I asked God once, twice, a million times why. I never felt I got an answer. Never sensed an answer. Never saw it. Never read it.

Then along came marriage several years later. At age thirty-five, I married for fear of ending up alone in life. I have always believed that we were not put on this Earth to remain alone. Why else would we have natural instincts of attraction towards one another, of love, of want, of need for one another. However, ironically enough, as much as I cared for this person, I was not in love with him. I guess I married “in care” but not “in love”. Probably one of the biggest lessons life has yet to teach me: Marriage HAS to be about honest, true love; only then will it prove successful. But yet I thought that maybe this was my chance to finally become a mother. If nothing else, I thought, here’s my chance at motherhood. That, like the love in the marriage, also proved to be lacking.

Four months after my wedding I had to have a myomectomy. This was the beginning of a 10-year gynecological ordeal the likes of which I was not prepared for. On the first follow-up visit with my doctor, he was crystal clear: “If you want any children, you have to have them now”. Without any medication to prevent the regrowth of fibroid tumors or prevention of further endometriosis tissue from forming, the longer I waited for pregnancy, the harder the latter would be on my system. It might entail bed rest during the last trimester, bleeding, etc. I could carry to term, but there was a chance they wouldn’t be easy pregnancies. And of course, they would all have to be C-sections. My husband was always afraid that financially we would not be able to support a child. So the postponing began. As much as I wanted a child, the postponing continued. As much as medically I had to have one soon, we continued to postpone. Finances were prioritized.

Meanwhile, the marriage continued to take a turn for the worse in other aspects. It got to a point where, as much as I felt like I wanted motherhood, I questioned whether or not I wanted the other half of my child to come from this particular person with whom I was not in love. Being a terminal, hopeless romantic, I have always felt that a child should be a reflection, a product of love between two people, and therefore if I had a child, it should be with someone with whom I was deeply and truly in love. For that reason alone I started rethinking and questioning my desire for motherhood, and I stopped pushing the issue. I felt like I shouldn't have a child "just to have one" the way you purchase an iPod or a fine leather handbag. Then in my early forties, with medical risks mounting and emotional questions resonating in my mind, it appeared like I was having to say goodbye to the one dream I had embraced since childhood. It was during this time that it started to hit me that I may not ever have a child.

I found myself envious, jealous and angry at the world at times. So many women have more children than they can care for. So many women are abusive towards their children. So many women don't nurture their children. So many women are just plain unloving to their children. All I ever wanted was to give birth to at least one and love it more than I could ever love myself.  But somehow it wasn’t in the cards for me.

My marriage came and went, and my reproductive health got progressively worse. The evening before I was scheduled for my hysterectomy I received a phone call around 9pm from one of the gynecologists in my doctor’s group wanting to go over procedure one last time, and giving me one last chance to ask questions. While the plan was for them to let me keep my ovaries, she reviewed the possibility that these, too, may have to come out, depending on the extent of the endometriosis. This they could only determine when they had me at the operating table, she explained. If they found endometriosis was extreme, the ovaries would have to come out because if they left them in, endometriosis would continue unchecked, I would continue experiencing severe pain every month to where it might require future surgical intervention. I said I understood and agreed to this. But there was a little part of me that was clinging to a tiny little bit of hope that I might get to keep my ovaries, and that the little ‘seeds’ inside might miraculously lead to a child via in vitro fertilization someday. But the day after my surgery, when one of the physicians in attendance at the OR was explaining what happened, I learned that my ovaries, too, had to come out. He paused his explanations to apologize, as he watched my face flood with tears. "I'm sorry, I thought they had already told you" he said. There was a female resident with him – she turned to look away as I cried. I doubt that she really knew why I was crying so much in that hospital bed.

I’m sure he didn’t know the real reason for my tears, either. At that moment, every single glimmer of hope was officially, completely obliterated. At that moment I was told there was no way on this earth I could ever have my own flesh and blood. I knew going into that hospital that I would not be able to bear children when I came out. I went in knowing there was a chance that I wouldn’t be able to genetically have them as well. But I guess sometimes we want to hold on to hope, perhaps foolishly so. That night in that hospital bed, when no one was watching and the tv was off, I continued to cry. I held my own private, silent funeral, mourning the children that never were and never would be. That dream had to officially be put to sleep.

Now I sit here on yet another Mother’s Day thinking about how I’ll go to my grave never getting a Mother’s Day card to hang on the fridge, or flowers, or breakfast in bed. Most painful of all, I’ll go to my grave never hearing the word “Mom”.

They say everything happens for a reason. I’ll just never, ever understand the reason for this one.