I can no longer bear children.
I’m ok with this, but lately, with the help of my medication, I’m beginning to understand the craving for a baby that some women have.
I have never, EVER felt this before. I never wanted kids at all. My experiences with PPD after the births of my children helped ensure I’d never have anymore. It’s not safe for me to breed. It’s why I can relate to Andrea Yates. Because I know that the next child, or the one after that, would be the death of me, and some of them too. Because I’m wired wrong, and it does bad things.
I’ve noticed in myself what I’d almost term a mourning for a part of my life I’ll never, ever live again, and a sadness for not embracing it to begin with.
What defines a woman more than her ability to bear and sustain life? It is what makes us female-and I don’t mean that having kids defines us, but our potential makes us woman. My breasts which can produce milk, my uterus which can bring forth what will become a child-these things are so much a part of being a woman, and I shook them off, ignored them for so long.
What power! How fantastic is it to create life! I remember sitting when pregnant, and meditating on the duality I held at that moment. I was the host for something that would hopefully spring forth alive and healthy and ready, full of potential. Feeling the quickening for the first time is something I will never, ever forget.
It’s comforting in a way to feel the way endless numbers of women have felt, wanting a child in my belly, but it’s disappointing to only feel it now, after the option is gone. And maybe that’s why I’m able to feel it-because there is no chance of it actually coming to fruition.
For now, I’ll stare wistfully at the newborn sleepers, and remember when, and remember if. I could drive myself crazy wishing I did it differently.
Or I can smile at the newborns, and quietly walk away, holding my daughters hands.
