Letting Go
©2006

Hysterectomy is not a word that any 30 year old woman should have to even think about. The right words for 30 year olds are marriage and mortgage and professional development. Not hysterectomy.

Truly Lifelong

I do not remember a time when I didn't understand that I would someday grow a child inside me. I knew from an early age where babies came from. (I blame it on my grandma being a poodle breeder.) There were many pregnancies in my family when I was young, and oh how I loved my baby cousins and any other babies I knew from neighbors and folks at church. I remember sometimes putting dolls under my shirt to "play pregnant." It was both a fascination and a deeply growing desire. And while other dreams and wishes came and went, that one stayed strong and unwavering.

When I became very ill in my late teens, of course there were days when I wondered if I would ever be able to have children, but with each diagnosis, it seemed like my magic bubble of wishing was still in tact. Thank God for that because it was the only thing that kept me going sometimes.

30 Years Old

My magic bubble burst in 2004, when I was 30 years old, diagnosed with a rare bleeding disorder and finally talking to a hematologist who was straight with me. I now had absolutely no chance of a normal pregnancy, and little chance that both me and a baby would survive a very difficult pregnancy. The odds are so stacked against me with the combination of problems I have, and the risk of miscarriage and death during childbirth are high. I told the doctor I've always been open to adoption and probably would have considered including adopted children in my family even if everything was normal with me. Great, he said, then why wait to have a hysterectomy?

I nodded. Hysterectomy. Sure, yes, that made sense. I'm still nodding. My blood doesn't clot correctly, so I have fairly nightmarish menstrual periods and could, at any time, need an emergency hysterectomy. It would make sense to, therefore, do this in a planned way and eliminate the monthly bleeding risks now. I'm still nodding. But, my heart is breaking.

The Sadness

If this makes so much sense and if I'm totally open to adoption, then where is this deep sadness coming from? Ultimately, it is coming from missing out on an experience (pregnancy) that had been one of the most joyous parts of my daily thinking for as long as I can remember. The path that I thought I was walking in this life was not my path at all. I had all sorts of purely emotional thoughts about how this is so incredibly unfair after I've been through hell and back already with my health and worked so hard to be a responsible person and fought so hard to have a normal life. I've just worked so hard... and I was losing this one glorious wish I had held on to, like holding tight to a balloon during an awful storm and then having it float away anyway.

And, people try to understand, but unless you've been through something like this, it's just not possible. Trying to tell me that I could still have a family via adoption completely missed the point. I knew that already. And, if having a family via pregnancy and adoption were equivalent, I suspect there would be no such thing as infertility treatment. Why would anyone need it? The truth is that there is a significant loss involved in not getting to experience pregnancy, so dealing with this news involves a long grief process.

Initially, I also knew that talking to couples coping with infertility was not going to help, because in my mind, "At least they got to try." I don't feel that way anymore. I am a "pull the band-aid off all at one time" kind of person. It would be horrible to try to get pregnant and to not succeed, and to have to go partway through the grief process over and over and over again. As hard as this is, I'd rather be given a swift and devastating blow, deal with immense sadness of a fairly sure reality, and cope with a life that has changed course.

Letting Go

It takes time to readjust the forward-thinking narrative of your life. It involves a lot of letting go. I didn't consciously work on this but it was like some unconscious process took over to turn me, one degree at a time, the full 90 degrees I needed to go to get firmly on this other path. I was watching women give birth (on live TV) in March 2006 and realized that I no longer think of giving birth as part of my future life story. It was as though I was watching Olympic athletes and loving their stories and experience but knowing that that would never be me.

I'm still sad, but it's less overwhelming, perhaps because this isn't new anymore. I'm still not ready to lose my uterus, but it's no longer as much about losing a pregnancy experience but about losing a significant part of the normal female anatomy and all the hormones that go with it. I'd like to hang on to the hormones as long as I can.

I'm able now to imagine a time, maybe in a few years, when I would have a hysterectomy and would survive that experience without it destroying me or my spirit. It will still be very difficult, and I know that. Hopefully by then, I will have found a strong life partner who will love me through the experience and walk with me toward adoption and the children who we will love more than we could ever imagine.

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