I was always the girl who liked to fly by the seat of my pants. A free spirit. And I loved having no responsibilities to anyone other then myself.
When I was 24 I met someone that I thought could maybe change the way I saw myself. We got married. Now I wasn’t sure that I ever wanted to be a mother. I mean the world was and still is a mess and the thought of bringing a little person into that just didn’t sound like the best idea in my 20’s so I told myself, and that man I called my husband, that I wanted to wait to have kids until I was in my 30’s. He didn’t like this idea because he had wanted to be a dad since the birth of his nephew a few years prior. We both agreed that there would be no birth control and that whatever happened, happened.
We went on with our lives and everything was fine until just before I was going to turn 30. He started pressing me about wanting to try and start having kids. Obviously he didn’t understand me when I said 30s…plural form. But he had been patient so I decided to give expanding our little family a try. We tried for months with no success what so ever. So finally we decided to see a specialist about the subject.
We started with the easiest test…him, in a room, with a cup and some “reading” material. Like so easy…men always have it easy. Well his tests came back with super high numbers…like the highest sperm count that the specialist had ever seen! Great so now I knew it was something wrong with me. I had wished myself right into now not being able to have a baby even if I wanted to.
They poked and prodded me. Drew more blood then I thought I even had in my body. And of course there is no escaping “the speculum”(duhm duhm duhm music here). The shuddersome tool which is always a few degrees below freezing that the doctor uses to sweep the opening of the vagina with.
(looks like this)
To me it looks like a mechanical duck beak. Wouldn’t you agree? Oh but let’s not forget that before this cold, harsh instrument is propelled into the vagina, we women must place our feet in stir-ups with everything to be exposed to the doctor and nurse standing there staring at your hoo ha while you just ramble on about your shopping trip that day. Well this is how I used to feel but once I had children I realized a pap test is a walk in the park. Because in a hospital your privates are now on display for everyone within a 100 foot radius to see. But it’s ok cause by this time you have started feeling the good drugs and could care less what’s hanging out.
The doctors checked my hormone levels and the levels of whatever else needed to be checked. They had me follow my menstrual cycle and buy ovulation kits to see when I was ovulating. What a pain that was to pee in a cup for days after my period and then if I was ovulating it was like having sex under pressure. I felt degraded and unable to fill what was suppose to come as the natural task of being a woman.
All the tests finally came back and off to the specialist we went so they could go over the results with us in the office. Because for some reason they feel that being in the comfort of your own home and hearing them over the phone just doesn’t seem plausible. What the fuck do they know? In there findings they discovered that I didn’t ovulate accurately and sometimes not at all. So in order to help this situation I would need to take fertility drugs. If I ever wanted to conceive at all then these drugs would need to be considered. Not only considered but an absolute.
Now me being the believer of “if it’s meant to be it will be” was ok with not taking the drugs. However the man I called my husband was not. He was very upset that I was against giving nature a boost. Remember when there were skits going around about “Here’s your sign”? Well that was how I felt…that how I had felt all along had been right and now here was my sign staring me in the face. Needless to say our marriage ended because of the choice I made not to take fertility drugs. I mean the horror stories I had heard of multiples. And sure you can choose how many embryos you want to keep and which ones you want to discard but for myself that just wasn’t possible. What if I ended up throwing my genius away? Or the embryo that was going to change the world? I didn’t want to be faced with those decisions nor did I want to raise six babies all born at the same time. So I opted out. I opted out of my marriage as well cause I was tired of all the weight being endured on my shoulders. His parents, my parents, brothers, sisters…enough was enough! It was my decision and I was sticking to it.
So now here I was at 30 years old, starting over, a new life, single and no kids. There aren’t many of us out there kidless at that age. Seemed like every potential date I had, had a string of baggage that came along with. I didn’t want someone else’s baggage …I didn’t even want my own let alone someone else’s.
So in walks the bass guitarist.
You know the type…he’s 30 with no clue as to what life is other then making music…music that will never be played on the radio or pay him a dime. Then he convinced me to join the band. Me, with the stage fright of a skittish cat that had been dumped from a second story window and left to die. I hated being the center of attention. And eventually this relationship ended. But did I mention that we never used birth control? I decided fuck it, I was told that I couldn’t conceive unless I took the drugs. So to me that translated as a freedom of sex with my partner that I trusted. But one day I woke up and realized that him nor this band life wasn’t anything I wanted anymore. And off to the airport I took him.
So now I am 35, without a man, no children, no nothing but me, myself, and I. Of course I had friends to hang out with but they all had “family” lives to live. And many nights I pondered whether or not I was in the right place in my life. Had I made a wrong turn somewhere? It was Thanksgiving 2008. I came home to a dark, quiet, and empty house all by myself. I cried myself to sleep that night after consuming every drop of alcohol in the house. It was seriously some sort of “hit bottom” for me. Or maybe a wake up call to my life…ring ring…answer the call you dumb bitch…this isn’t the life you were meant to be living. But I just felt that I had tried and failed…failed miserably and maybe I was just better off becoming the cat lady…although I am more of a dog person.
I enjoyed dating. No strings. No one to take care of. See each other a couple times a week…sometimes more then one person, but that was no one’s business but my own. And I liked that. I felt like that was how I could live for the rest of my life. But the reality was coming home to an empty house, alone, and sometimes afraid was not how I wanted to be for the rest of my life.
Well I think it is true what they say that love has a way of finding you when you aren’t looking for it, because in walked the man that would change not only the chapter of my book of life but my entire book! Now I have to admit that when I first laid my eyes on him I was a bit intimidated by him. I had given up hope that men like him existed. Attractive, good job, owned his own home, cool style of clothes, and just an all around nice guy. The only flag that was raised was that he had a son…a son that he had sole custody of and for me this was a new experience. I had to tread lightly.
Now mind you on our first date I had told him that I was not looking to get married(been there done that have the divorce decree) and I had pretty much come to an age in my life that children did not look to appear in my future. Boy was I ever wrong. We were almost instantly inseparable. I knew I had a keeper. He was everything that I had searched for my entire life and eventually I fell in love with him. When I say eventually it sounds like a long time but the truth is it was only a couple months.
After a few months of dating I asked him if he had ever wanted more kids. He told me that he had never really put much thought into it. He had his son at a young age and there was an entire story behind that whole ordeal. But he said that at the time his son was born he wasn’t ready to be a father and felt like he never really had the chance since him and the mother were estranged. So after a few conversations such as this one we decided we wanted to have a child together. Now this scared me because of what I was told before and the fact that I hadn’t been on birth control since I was 24 and had never gotten pregnant. He knew my history but we went into it with the mind set that if it was meant to be it will be and if not it’s nothing to be upset over. The first month we tried…I got pregnant.
I remember the night I took the test like it was yesterday. He was convinced that I was pregnant so much so that he went to the store to get the pregnancy test. I told him that it was going to be a waste of money and that like so many times before I was going to pee on the stick and my period would start the next day. So I took the package which contained one test and went into the bathroom to pee on the stick. I set the stick on the floor while I finished up in the bathroom and when I reached down to retrieve it there were two lines. The second one was faint but it was there. I could barely get my pants pulled up fast enough to yell to him. He came upstairs with a huge grin on his face like he knew he was right. I of course thought the test was wrong and told him we had to go get more tests. I peed on probably 10 sticks over the next couple of days and all of them were positive.
The confirmation for me was my first doctor appt, the ultrasound and….the heartbeat. It was like nothing I had ever heard before and suddenly this feeling of joy, fear, and relief all came over me. Joy for the obvious reason, fear that I was going to be a horrible mother, and relief that all along I had thought I was broken and now this confirmed that I wasn’t. And the next 9 months were spent in a whirlwind of bliss. And when baby B was born he made me realize that this kind of love only existed between a mother and a child. My life had never felt more fulfilled then at that very moment.
Now I grew up pretty much an only child and even though baby B had an older brother there was a 10 year difference between the two of them. Therefore we decided that we would try for another and that we wanted them to be close in age. Baby B was born in January and in late summer that year we decided to try for another. Now mind you I thought that baby B was just a miracle… that now would come the time that it was going to be harder to conceive. But yet again my past had fooled me and on our first month of trying we were pregnant again.
Once baby M was born we new that our family was complete. During the time we had also taken responsibility for an older boy that wasn’t ours but my husband had pretty much cared for him his whole life. I told you I picked a keeper. Therefore four children was enough for us. My husband decided that he would get a vasectomy and scheduled the appointment shortly after baby M was born.
During this time my husband was working out of town and only coming home once or twice a month. One afternoon while at a girlfriends house we some how got on the subject about menstrual cycles. It had been a couple months since I had baby M and I hadn’t gotten one yet. Which wasn’t really a surprise to me since I was nursing and even with baby B it took awhile for my body to get back to “normal”. It wasn’t until a little time later, while at the grocery store, that a thought came to mind. It was like a wave. And the next thing I knew I found myself standing in front of the pregnancy tests.
My husband had been home at the time and when I told him what had happened at the grocery store he looked at me kind of confused. So once again I peed on the stick. Now in the past the two lines popped up almost immediately. But this time only the first line came up. My husband proceeded to walk away. But for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the stick in which I held between my fingers. And then there it was…the second line. I couldn’t believe my eyes! This was my third pregnancy in three years! Yes let me repeat that…I had a baby in 2010, 2011, and 2012. And baby M and baby Z, both girls, are 11 months apart.
We were getting ready to go on vacation when we found out. My emotions were everywhere. How was I going to do this? I don’t think I could even enjoy the vacation due to the fact that I was pondering over every thought of having another baby. Upon returning from our vacation my husband kept his scheduled appointment for his vasectomy and after it was done I had a brief sigh of relief knowing that this would be our last child. The doctor had no objections once my husband informed him I was pregnant and we already had 4 children.
Baby Z was born on my 39th birthday. She was perfect. And somehow everything that I had worried about just some how worked out like it always does. I am the oldest and she is the youngest and everyone else in our “anything but small” family came in between. I look at her now at the age of three and realize that a force bigger then me knew she belonged here. I wish I could visit that doctor from so long ago who told me that I would have to take fertility drugs if I ever wanted to even think about being a mother. Just to prove that sometimes fate has the upper hand even when you think you have it all planned out.
The One And Only Momster,
Domesticated Momster 