Oh Baby

Babies have always been a tricky topic for me.

I was a little mommy from the start... there are pictures of me before I was out of diapers trying to mother something.
I always knew that I would be a mother. Always. I was never entirely sold on being someone's wife, but there was always someone in my future who would call me Mom. (Or, more recently, mo-THER).

I was pregnant at 17, and knew about it for two full weeks before I told anyone at all... and then I miscarried. It was terrifying - all of it. Knowing that it was the wrong time and the way-wrong guy and then the pain and the blood and the depression that followed. Bad depression. Scary bad. And once I came out of it, babies and baby-related stuff was not safe for me to be around. Baby powder scent could send me into a very dark place, let alone the curl of a chubby fist around my finger.

Then I was pregnant again at 20 and it was the wrong time (and a different but equally way-wrong guy) and when I started to cramp and bleed again at 9 weeks, something in me broke loose. This baby was mine and these changes in my life were going to move forward. I didn't lose that baby... the sonogram I had in the ER that night showed just this tiny, kidney bean-shaped flicker. That flicker was important because it meant that Bean was alive in there... and she stayed put. Good kid from the start. I married him (of course I married him) and we were too young and too stupid to breathe, but initially at least we tried to build a replica of a family.

We tried for another baby just after her first birthday and... nothing. But we were 22 and there was time... still, after a decade of safe sex talks where just one slip leads to a pregnancy it was strange to not be pregnant after 6 months of no birth control.

Then he went to Korea and then our marriage fell apart and then I was single for a long time... so the whole baby thing went on the back burner. I was fully functional around babies and baby-related things. I could walk past the baby section in Wal Mart without a passing thought. I could gather around my pregnant friends and talk about labor and delivery for hours... and it was all fine.

Except that one little thing. That knowledge that there were issues with my fertility... the PCOS which turned my 30's into "the barren zone." Lots of women with PCOS have babies with varying degrees of medical intervention... but there was this tiny worry in the back of my mind that if I waited too long there might not be anymore chances for me.

Enter Bartleby... in the Pre-Bartleby days. Back when he was just Jeff. The first time he talked about marriage I brushed him off. The second time I said, "You don't want to marry me," and wouldn't say anything more. The third time he mentioned marriage and having more kids and I told him I wasn't sure that I could have more kids... and he said that wasn't important. Except that it was. It was really important to me.

Six months before we got married we were already talking to doctors and making plans. I was charting and could tell you on any given day what "cycle day" it was and we were excited. About a month after we got married we met with the fertility specialist who seemed certain that we would have a baby within the year. I bought a car seat. I submitted to their rounds of testing and chemical alteration. I kept a log. I peed on sticks. I ferried specimens from the house to their office. I spread my legs for every intern on the east side of town.
My sister got pregnant.
I found internet groups... women just like me. I learned to drink Robitussin as though it were the elixir of life. I rubbed walnut oil into the small of my back. I did "fertility yoga." I fed him Red Bull an hour before sex. I stayed in bed with my ass in the air for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour at a time. I had more tests. Peed on more sticks.
He lost interest, I became more focused. Obsessed with the mythical baby.
My sister got pregnant again.
His dad got sick.
I threw away my fertility books and my months and months and months of logs and tried to give up.
I went back to school.

But the baby section of the store was no longer safe for me... and when a girl at work announced her pregnancy I had to leave for the day.

When Jeff's dad got really sick I went back on the pill and started taking anti-depressants. I knew what was coming... OK, I thought I knew what was coming... and I knew that pregnant and not medicated were not places I wanted to be when the shit hit the fan.
You all know, when the shit came it started out a normal shit and then became a torrential downpour. Of shit. That didn't stop.
As things got worse and worse with him - as he became Bartleby - I was so grateful that there was no baby. Nothing tying me permanently to him, no toddler to shield from the shitstorm.

And I said, "My baby days are over." I've been saying that for a while... but still at the store I stay away from the baby aisle. I was afraid that those were just words and that at any minute that baby-lust could blindside me again.

The other day I bought some baby things for my friend Lia, who is due to pop any second now. I felt that automatic anxiety start, and I put the defenses up... but there wasn't anything there to defend.
I am really done.
After a lifetime of mixed emotions and secret baby-yearning and all of the crap that goes along with it... I am finished with that want.

I love Bean... more than love her... and the fact that she is my only baby is actually, finally, completely fine with me.

Wow.