A Heavy Door to Close
Becoming a mother was the first thing I wanted that wasn’t easy to get. I had been able to wrest almost everything else I desired through hard work, diligent study, or sheer willpower. Say what you will about unmanaged anxiety disorders, but they do wonders for controlling a situation. Until they don’t.
For most of my adolescence and early adulthood, I did not want kids. I was friends with girls who had known they wanted to be mothers since they were still babies. I’d never felt such a pull. My earliest memories of interacting with babies is covering my ears and feeling resentful that my new baby brother was so incredibly loud. It wasn’t that I did not like children, so much that I did not like the accompanying chaos. Ultimately, though, it came down to an imagination problem. I could not imagine what it would be like to parent a child, could not picture becoming emotionally attached to another person with that amount of permanence and responsibility.
That changed when I met my husband. We had been dating a few months when he mentioned this vision he had for his future, one that involved playing video games and watching cartoons with his children. Our eyes met for a moment, and I felt the ice around my heart and mind shatter. I wanted to have kids, as long as I could have them with him.
Our Wedding Day | March 23, 2013
We married young—he was 25, I was 22—and quickly settled into our life together in a quaint, charming one-bedroom studio apartment in what used to be an old movie theater. Our picture window overlooked main street of the small southern town where we attended college, and for a while it was perfect for us.
If you’ve ever lived anywhere that can be described as quaint and charming, I’m sure you know what it didn’t take us long to discover—those are often code words for “not a forever type of place.” The air quality suffered due to lack of centralized air and a dryer that vented back into the apartment. The concrete floors and uninsulated brick walls made it difficult to cool in the summer and impossible to heat in the winter. The hot water heater was undersized, resulting in lukewarm showers and ice-cold dishwater. All this combined with the tiny footprint of the apartment translated into one prevailing thought: if we want to have kids, we need to find somewhere else to live.
We buckled down, worked hard, and started saving up for a house. During that time, it felt like a knife in my heart to prevent pregnancy. More than anything, I wanted a baby—although I’ll be the first to admit that at that time in my life, my desire for motherhood wasn’t necessarily the healthiest of urges. As fast as we could, we saved up enough money to purchase a home, a fairly small to average sized place that felt downright palatial after our time spent in the apartment. We had three bedrooms, and we could finally work on trying to fill one of them with a baby. We moved in right before Thanksgiving and settled in with the comforting idea that the following Christmas we would have a child.
Moving Day | November 18, 2015
When we started trying to conceive, we were confronted with the reality of my irregular menstrual cycles, a problem I had hoped would sort itself out by the time we were ready to get pregnant. After the almost three years of waiting to try, not knowing what was going on inside my body was torture. All the tricks of trying to predict ovulation times—at-home ovulation kits, charting basal body temperature—told me absolutely nothing, and the longer it went on the more confused and depressed I felt.
After ten months of this, I went to my gynecologist who provided a diagnosis: PCOS with insulin resistance. After about three months on metformin, we moved to medicated cycles, which is the lowest-level fertility treatment protocol. Three months in, we conceived our daughter F, who will be 5 this fall.
Baby F | Born October 26, 2017
Once F was in my arms, I had a hard time imagining ever preventing pregnancy again. My doctor told me there was no reason I needed to adopt contraception if I didn’t want to, so I didn’t. When F was 14 months old, I had a chemical pregnancy, and then one month later I found myself spontaneously pregnant with baby T.
Baby T | Born September 10, 2019
My pregnancy with T was a nightmare wrapped in a daydream. I never thought I would conceive without medical assistance. She was strong and sweet, craved but completely unexpected, and the grace of the surprise of her healed so many of the scars I carried from our previous journey through infertility.
But this was by far a more difficult pregnancy. For one thing, I already had a baby on the outside who needed my constant attention. For another, I got hit hard with morning sickness so bad I could barely lift my head most days. After that finally subsided, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes for a second time and ended up having to give myself insulin shots. Once I finally got used to that, my blood pressure shot up and after a few tests I was diagnosed with preeclampsia. With that came weekly visits, additional monitoring, a scheduled early induction, steroid shots, panic attacks, and a weekend stay at the hospital due to hypertension and premature contractions. If you’ve never had to suddenly adapt to modified bedrest while also parenting a toddler and preparing for a newborn, you are very fortunate indeed.
Thankfully, all’s well that ends well. T arrived safe and sound, albeit two days before her scheduled induction day since she refused to let my blood pressure go down. But after that experience, I was left shaken at the prospect of ever being pregnant again. I had to figure out what would win out—my prior dreams of having a large family, or common sense.
T’s 1st Birthday Photos | September 2020
The last three years have been an almost constant mental battleground as I try to figure out what I want. I’ve enjoyed being able to engage with my kids as they grow and develop instead of being hampered by the exhaustion and illness of pregnancy and newborn parenting. I’m able to be present for them now in ways I have never been able to before. And I’m finally getting back to doing more and more of the things it was starting to feel like I’d never do again—like writing this, for example. I told myself if I felt the same way for at least one year, I would seek sterilization. At this point, it’s been nearly three.
Family Christmas Photos 2021
In early June, I scheduled a procedure that will sterilize me and will also hopefully eliminate some of the uterine and ovarian pain I’ve been experiencing lately. I was glad to have it planned out, and I’m looking forward to having it done. But also, when I hung up the phone with the surgery scheduler, I cried.
This is a heavy door to shut behind me. A journey to parenthood like ours makes these decisions mental landmines, because it’s so hard to flip your mindset from “babies, babies, babies!” to “no more, please and thank you.”
“...I have learned how to be content in any circumstance. I know the experience of being in need and of having more than enough; I have learned the secret to being content in any and every circumstance, whether full or hungry or whether having plenty or being poor. I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength.”
The Apostle Paul penned these words to the church at Philippi from a prison cell. I pen these words now from the comfort of my own home, with a delightfully gloomy summer storm raging outside. We are not the same. But I think I understand what he meant, anyway.
It is hard to close this door. I’ve spent the better part of three years trying to move forward while still keeping a light grip on the knob behind me. There is a strange finality that comes with this choice, but I’ve grown to accept that finality is not a bad thing. Closing this door allows me to move forward, onward and upward into the rest of my life. For that, I will raise a glass.
