Choices

Being at home, and having to be sitting down as much as I do (feeding Nate and all that), has given me a chance to look for some new people to follow. I can't remember how I found Julia, but I think it was through Tertia. From Julia I've also discovered Cecily. This morning I read Cecily's post about how upset she'd been by a marketer's failed attempt to get her to help them out. In the process I discovered that she had fertility issues, then managed to fall pregnant with IVF, only to lose her first pregnancy, with twins, because of severe pre-eclampsia. So severe, in fact, that she had to terminate the pregnancy at 22 weeks.

Just stop for a minute and think about that. You want kids, but can't have them. Then you manage to fall pregnant, only to lose them. And not only that, but YOU actually have to make the decision to terminate. Terminate is such a bland term. As a mother, when you terminate, you know that what you're actually doing is choosing to kill your kid/s. So here is someone who desperately wants a child choosing to kill one. Or rather, being forced to choose.

I'm not for a moment about to go down the route of the usual pro-lifers arguments. If I were in her shoes, I would have made the same choice. I'm just stunned, shocked, appalled by the choice she had to make. The babies weren't viable, one had already died in utero, and then she had to make the choice of whether she lived or whether possibly she AND the baby died. Not a great set of options there.

As I went back and read her archived story about those horrible days, I could picture it all so clearly. Although our circumstances were so very different, we experienced such similar emotions. I remember what it was like when I couldn't feel Zoe move - the panic and terror, the confusion, and trying to quash those feelings. I remember the moment when I was told there was no heartbeat. The sense of incredulity. The last ditch attempt to hold onto hope and sanity. The feeling of overwhelming panic and the deepest, coldest, darkest fears bearing down like a physical weight. Then grief so deep and physical I started to vomit. I cried as I read her story. I can only imagine how her grief at losing two precious children was compounded by the knowledge that she had been forced to kill one.

In life we are faced with so many choices. Some are of little consequence (unless you buy into the butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil causes a hurricane in Africa theory); others are life changing. Some aren't really choices at all, it's just choosing the lesser of two evils.

In the past few weeks since I've been home with Nathan, I've found myself having the same reaction I had after losing Zoe. As I held her in my arms on that horrible day, one of my first thoughts was that I wanted another child. I wanted to try again immediately. I didn't want my last experience of pregnancy to be one in which there was no positive outcome. As it happened, we had to wait nearly 18 months for financial reasons. Not a week went by in that time though, that I didn't think about our deadline - Oct 2008. No-one believed me when I said we were going to fall pregnant in Oct 2008, but I wanted a baby so badly that I wasn't going to wait a second later than I had to to fall pregnant. Lucky us, we have no issues in the 'getting pregnant' department.

Since Nate was born alive and kicking, despite scaring me nearly to death along the way, I expected that I would be satisfied. You all know how horrid my pregnancies are. (Did I blog about crying in Canal Walk a week before his birth because I was in such pain I couldn't walk and nearly stopping a passerby to ask them to ask at Information for a wheelchair? I can't remember now.) My body is not built for pregnancy, despite what God intended. I vowed that after Nate, there would be no more pregnancies for me. I know that my body simply can't handle another one. If I were to fall pregnant again, I think my body would literally fall apart at the hips.

So why is it that since Nate's birth all I really want is to be pregnant again with another baby? Is it just some innate biological urge? Or am I still feeling the void Zoe left and trying to fill it? (It's a good thing I can touch type cos I'm crying so hard right now I can barely see the screen...). The thought of never having another baby breaks my heart. I know I'd be completely brain-dead to put myself through it again. I know we can't afford another child. I'm barely coping with two kids despite having an incredible hands-on husband and a maid - how would I cope with 3 or 4 or 5????

None of that logic changes the way I feel though. I want a host of children, and not through surrogacy or adoption (although I do want to adopt a child one day - but that's another story for another day). No, I want to be pregnant and give birth myself to a host of children. I know, I know! If I were to go ahead with that, I'd be condemning myself to a lifetime of serious puking and pain. I know it's ridiculous to want to go there again. But I'm not satisfied with only 2 kids. Greedy of me, I know - some people aren't able to have even one, let alone two kids, and here I am saying I want more when I know it's completely out of the question for us on SO many levels.

I can't face sterilisation - either for me or for G. That's just too final. Pragmatically I know I must not allow myself to fall pregnant again though. So next week I'm off to the gynae for an IUD. (I can't take the pill anymore because of my APS.) I'm not thrilled about it. Far from it. It's not like I can just wake up one day and stop taking the pill and "accidentally" fall pregnant (not that I would do that to G!). This is hard core. The only reason I'm gong ahead with it is because it's not as final as sterilisation. It can be removed. It only lasts for 5 years. There is an 'out' for me, at least emotionally. Maybe in 5 years time I will feel differently. Maybe by then I won't have this inexplicable desire to put myself and my family through hell again. (Because let's face it - me when I'm pregnant? It's hell to live with me and it's hell to be me.)

But am I making the right choice? In 5 years time, if we decide we really DO want another baby, I will be 38 and G will be 43... Yes, I know that women over 40 are having babies nowadays quite successfully (Tertia being a case in point). Yes, I know that 38 is not old, except that biologically it is. What if we decide we DO want a baby and we can't fall pregnant because our bodies are actually too old? (New research suggests that the man's age is just as important as the woman's in terms of having a healthy child and pregnancy.)

All of this emotion of mine makes me stand in awe of Cecily even more. She is quite clear on one point: she is very happy with just her one daughter. She is perfectly happy with a small family. How did she get to that point, I wonder? Her experiences were traumatic, no doubt about it, and that has probably played a big role in her decision. Yet...

I stand in awe of the peace she has about only having one child, about the decision she has made not to have any more children. I wish I could be in that place right now. Maybe in 5 years time I will be. That's the problem with choices. You never really know whether they're right or wrong until it's too late to change your decision. Let's hope this is the right one for us.