All I ever wanted was your life.
I don't care if anyone wants to read this, I just need to tell the story and it's long and rambly. I'm listening to the same album I listened to as I was going to the hospital to have Dylan and the song always makes me think about that experience.
I also haven't felt well for about two straight weeks. Some of it could be attributable to allergies, but the rest has felt just like I did when I was pregnant with Dylan before I knew it and thought I just had a really bad illness. Since being pregnant doesn't feel like anything else, it's a pretty unmistakeable feeling.
Except this time, I'm certain that's not what it is. And because I've spent most of the past year regretting J's vasectomy and so has he, it's a bittersweet type of phantom sensation to think I'm experiencing something I would welcome that is now, in fact, impossible.
Now, the irony in all of this is that I've already experienced that "impossible." That's how we got Dylan, when J's first vasectomy failed. We now think that maybe the universe was trying to tell us something, but we over-ruled that and he had a second vasectomy. But the circumstances of that surgery make it unlikely that it will ever be undone like the first was, and the impossible surely won't happen twice.
Fertility is a far more complicated issue for me than for many others. As irresponsible as I now realize it was, I didn't use birth control at all for at least 8 years in my teens and early twenties without getting pregnant. I had to use fertility treatment for Logan, and I developed a strange sense of intuition about my body and fertility thereafter. I didn't need fertility treatment again. I got pregnant again 3 years after Logan, but I knew on some level that it wouldn't stay and miscarried. Three weeks after that miscarriage I was already pregnant again with Adam. J got the vasectomy when Adam was a few months old, and it was basically against my will. I wasn't sure that I wanted more children, but I was deeply conflicted about closing the door on it. I just *knew* that I wasn't done yet.
And I wasn't. When Adam was 13 months old I was pregnant again with Dylan, but because it was so unexpected I didn't discover it until I was almost done with the first trimester. I was so angry about being pregnant I had to seek counseling during the pregnancy and actually made two appointments for abortions, which I cancelled. I was eventually happy about having him, but it took far longer than most mothers ever want to admit and I certainly didn't want any more babies, ever. That state lasted for seven years, and I assumed I wouldn't ever want any more.
Until now, or more accurately, about a year ago. I stopped worrying about everything so much then. And I got to see that my kids were turning out not only to be good kids, but truly exceptional people. I know, every mom feels that her children are special snowflakes, but it's not like that. J and I have raised the kids with a strong sense of concern about humanity and each other and ethics and they're really phenomenonally unselfish. They're still kids, of course, and they are neither perfect nor are they expected to be. But they somehow took the best parts of J, and the good sides of myself that I'm always trying - and failing - to cultivate. I wish I could have more kids now because maybe their net effect on the world would be positive rather than negative. (Then again, it also doesn't escape me that another kid could be tempting fate and that one could grow up to be the selfish, violent exception.)
It's so ironic that we had difficulty conceiving for so long, then once we could, we chose to artificially cut it off. Not to be outdone by our efforts to thwart it, God/nature/fate, what-have-you, got the ultimate one-up on us and we got pregnant again. Determined not to let nature control our fertility, we fought back against it even harder. And now we both regret it, a lot. Because I monitor my fertility signs, I know that I'm much more fertile now than I was in my early twenties. But it's all for naught. That door is closed and probably cannot be re-opened.
I think that I've experienced many really rare, unlikely things medically, that some people might call miracles if that's in their vernacular. Going eight years without a pregnancy in teens and early twenties while not using birth control is extremely unlikely, and even more unlikely after that to get pregnant on the very first cycle of the least-invasive fertility treatment. Then, using visualization, I healed a huge dermoid cyst on my ovary that was supposed to be surgically removed. (That's a good story too.) Then I got pregnant after J's vasectomy despite all this.
I wish sometimes I had enough wisdom to understand what I really want and not angrily overreact to unexpected surprises. It really was ridiculous to be so angry about being pregnant with Dylan, when I hadn't really wanted J's vasectomy anyway. In truth I now think I was really angry about having moved back to Michigan but instead focused my anger on the pregnancy. Now he is the most fun person in our family. We were still in Dallas mode as far as money and acquisition and success and it took us far too long to shake that off. Of course in that mode, more kids were a bad thing. Most people in society now think kids are inversely proportional to success, and that having kids in general is a liability. But what if you don't measure success that way? We no longer do.
We both changed, and changed together in the same direction. But we closed off a lot of possibilities to ourselves. Maybe, like many of the other issues related to all of this, there is something more important to reveal itself later, about why we did this and what we have to learn from it, that we just can't understand yet.
I also haven't felt well for about two straight weeks. Some of it could be attributable to allergies, but the rest has felt just like I did when I was pregnant with Dylan before I knew it and thought I just had a really bad illness. Since being pregnant doesn't feel like anything else, it's a pretty unmistakeable feeling.
Except this time, I'm certain that's not what it is. And because I've spent most of the past year regretting J's vasectomy and so has he, it's a bittersweet type of phantom sensation to think I'm experiencing something I would welcome that is now, in fact, impossible.
Now, the irony in all of this is that I've already experienced that "impossible." That's how we got Dylan, when J's first vasectomy failed. We now think that maybe the universe was trying to tell us something, but we over-ruled that and he had a second vasectomy. But the circumstances of that surgery make it unlikely that it will ever be undone like the first was, and the impossible surely won't happen twice.
Fertility is a far more complicated issue for me than for many others. As irresponsible as I now realize it was, I didn't use birth control at all for at least 8 years in my teens and early twenties without getting pregnant. I had to use fertility treatment for Logan, and I developed a strange sense of intuition about my body and fertility thereafter. I didn't need fertility treatment again. I got pregnant again 3 years after Logan, but I knew on some level that it wouldn't stay and miscarried. Three weeks after that miscarriage I was already pregnant again with Adam. J got the vasectomy when Adam was a few months old, and it was basically against my will. I wasn't sure that I wanted more children, but I was deeply conflicted about closing the door on it. I just *knew* that I wasn't done yet.
And I wasn't. When Adam was 13 months old I was pregnant again with Dylan, but because it was so unexpected I didn't discover it until I was almost done with the first trimester. I was so angry about being pregnant I had to seek counseling during the pregnancy and actually made two appointments for abortions, which I cancelled. I was eventually happy about having him, but it took far longer than most mothers ever want to admit and I certainly didn't want any more babies, ever. That state lasted for seven years, and I assumed I wouldn't ever want any more.
Until now, or more accurately, about a year ago. I stopped worrying about everything so much then. And I got to see that my kids were turning out not only to be good kids, but truly exceptional people. I know, every mom feels that her children are special snowflakes, but it's not like that. J and I have raised the kids with a strong sense of concern about humanity and each other and ethics and they're really phenomenonally unselfish. They're still kids, of course, and they are neither perfect nor are they expected to be. But they somehow took the best parts of J, and the good sides of myself that I'm always trying - and failing - to cultivate. I wish I could have more kids now because maybe their net effect on the world would be positive rather than negative. (Then again, it also doesn't escape me that another kid could be tempting fate and that one could grow up to be the selfish, violent exception.)
It's so ironic that we had difficulty conceiving for so long, then once we could, we chose to artificially cut it off. Not to be outdone by our efforts to thwart it, God/nature/fate, what-have-you, got the ultimate one-up on us and we got pregnant again. Determined not to let nature control our fertility, we fought back against it even harder. And now we both regret it, a lot. Because I monitor my fertility signs, I know that I'm much more fertile now than I was in my early twenties. But it's all for naught. That door is closed and probably cannot be re-opened.
I think that I've experienced many really rare, unlikely things medically, that some people might call miracles if that's in their vernacular. Going eight years without a pregnancy in teens and early twenties while not using birth control is extremely unlikely, and even more unlikely after that to get pregnant on the very first cycle of the least-invasive fertility treatment. Then, using visualization, I healed a huge dermoid cyst on my ovary that was supposed to be surgically removed. (That's a good story too.) Then I got pregnant after J's vasectomy despite all this.
I wish sometimes I had enough wisdom to understand what I really want and not angrily overreact to unexpected surprises. It really was ridiculous to be so angry about being pregnant with Dylan, when I hadn't really wanted J's vasectomy anyway. In truth I now think I was really angry about having moved back to Michigan but instead focused my anger on the pregnancy. Now he is the most fun person in our family. We were still in Dallas mode as far as money and acquisition and success and it took us far too long to shake that off. Of course in that mode, more kids were a bad thing. Most people in society now think kids are inversely proportional to success, and that having kids in general is a liability. But what if you don't measure success that way? We no longer do.
We both changed, and changed together in the same direction. But we closed off a lot of possibilities to ourselves. Maybe, like many of the other issues related to all of this, there is something more important to reveal itself later, about why we did this and what we have to learn from it, that we just can't understand yet.