When you’re 14 and lose so much weight you no longer get a cycle, the doctor doesn’t talk about future fertility.
They cover the problem in a birth control-sized band aid and hand you a picture of the food pyramid.
When your sister gets pregnant and you see her body change, you decide you don’t want children anyway.
You just want to stay thin.
When you go to rehab and ask about fertility, they say nothing.
You’re 17.
Complete your weekly EKG, don’t go to the bathroom alone, and eat all your chicken nuggets.
When you’re 18 and start dating a man you’ve loved since boys had cooties, you think maybe you want kids someday.
Someday....
When you’re 24 and newly married, you ask the doctor to check if you are able to have children.
Why want something you can’t have?
They tell you they won’t test until you’ve tried for a year.
AKA – we will wait until you decide you want to get pregnant before we will tell you that you can’t.
And then you’re 26 and go off birth control after 12 years and you get pregnant immediately.
At your 20-week ultrasound, the doctor tells you that it will be her or both of you.
2.5 weeks & multiples tests after that, it’s her.
And for the next year and a half you spend your days trying to move on, and your nights combatting flashbacks of the ultrasound room, watching the tech measure and re-measure parts of your daughter’s brain.
Getting Answers
Finally, you meet with your doctor.
Because finally, you’ve hit the “criteria” of being worth an explanation.
The explanation is simple.
The one thing the female body was biologically created to do, you naturally can’t.
And as the doctor goes over your options, you wonder why.
You do nice things for people without expecting anything in return.
You bring people coffee when they don’t ask and never ask to be reimbursed.
You are kind to everyone and only sometimes honk at stupid drivers.
Everyone you know has gotten pregnant, had a child and gotten pregnant again.
Their 20-week ultrasounds come and go and you’re still in that hospital bed, clinging to your stomach, begging your baby not to go.
Their children are healthy and crawling and you’re covered in night sweats from the 800th flashback of the amniocentesis and the heat that rushed over you when they confirmed the diagnosis.
Pictures go up on the internet and the only one you have is a print of the foot your child will never walk on.
Answers are nice when they’re the answers you want.
When they’re not, they’re brutal.
We feel yiur pain and agony and loss. We pray for help and a way where there is no way for you to have the desire of your heart…
You are an amazing young lady. I love you how you are. You are my Jammie.
❤️