Reproducing Oneself

Something I've often been asked, is about my 'choice' to not have children. In my Eight post, I mentioned that my only regret in life was not having had children, or even a child. And while I wouldn't change anything in my life, for to do so would take me to a place I'm not at now, there is still a tiny pang of guilt within me.

This is going to be a painful post, but one so much a part of me, that to not write about it would be to almost misrepresent myself.

It's not that I haven't been pregnant, I have been. Twice. The first time I was in my early thirties and it was totally unplanned. Not only unplanned, but forced upon me. Not in some ugly violent attack, it wasn't as 'horrible' as that. But in its own way it was a violent abuse of power over me, by someone I trusted. Not quite date rape, but work colleague rape. To explain, I have to go back a little bit.

As I've written about before, I've had some bad experiences in life. Too early in life. Trusts were broken and I was abused. Those experiences damaged my understanding of intimacy for too long. I was unable to be touched without thinking back to the darkness of my childhood when my brother and his friend were too interested in my prepubescent body. I blocked out so many things just to survive. I tried in childlike ways to explain, to those around me, what was happening to me, but seemingly no one could interpret my tears, my tantrums, my fits.

And the blocking-out continued for so long, for so many years. After freaking out the first time I was touched 'there' in my adult years, I relearned to block it out, to just let it be done to me. I didn't know how to stop it from happening, how to remove myself from a situation that I didn't want to be in. I didn't know how to stop someone touching me, whom I didn't want to touch me. So I found a coping mechanism by transporting myself mentally from the situation. I did that way past my childhood. And that's how someone I worked with managed to impregnate me.

He came to my room one evening during a conference, on the pretext that he wanted to go over his presentation and get me to make some last-minute changes to the handouts. I tried to make him stop by using the word 'no', but he wouldn't. My mind went onto auto-pilot and my childhood coping mechanism kicked in. I was there physically, but I felt myself emotionally, mentally, spiritually, disappearing from that room, from what was happening to me. All I remember, even to this day, is lying on the bed in the hotel room, silently staring at the ceiling, blocking out all physical sensations, with my arms held as tightly as I could across my chest, believing that would stop him from touching my soul.

How ironic that such an experience would leave me pregnant. And this was three months before I was to be married. To a man who hardly touched me and chose to never consummate our relationship either before or after the marriage (but that's another story for another day). In the dark recesses of my mind, perhaps that's why I chose him and he chose me. But what I knew was that the marriage wouldn't go forward with me being pregnant and so, after an agonising six weeks, I had a termination. Alone, with no one there by my side, in fact no one even knew about it for many, many years afterwards. I really just didn't feel I had any choice and I didn't know any other way out. I thought I could make my marriage work, even though we clearly both had issues in the physical side of our relationship.

A few years later, after my divorce and thinking I was in a relationship that was finally going to work out for me, having given a man unlimited access to my heart and body at last, I got pregnant. Something we'd discussed and both wanted. I was totally overjoyed. Until several weeks later, he left me and went back to his ex-wife, simply because she asked him to. And my world caved in around me. I thought long and hard about being a single parent and decided I would go ahead. Unfortunately, Andy's ex-wife decided that my having a child would pose too much of a threat to her hold on him and she spent the next two months abusing me with phone calls day and night. I'm ashamed to say I didn't change my home number (she was calling at work too, and anyway I couldn't change that one) because I didn't want to remove any avenue for Andy to call and tell me he was coming back. That's how desperate I was for him to be in my life, even after he'd done all these awful things to me.

Well, it got worse and worse and I was stressing about it all. Hearing her words, replaying conversations over in my mind. Remembering things he'd said to me while she coaxed him on in the background. Recalling him saying to me once during a rare conversation when she wasn't there, that if I could let him say these things to me, let her hear him say them, it would make her feel better. My blood pressure was through the roof. It was too much for my system and I let the child growing within me, down. I didn't keep her safe, I didn't make sure she was in a place she could thrive. At almost four months, after one particularly evil phone call, I lost her. And with her I lost any chance of having a child. I didn't know it then, but I would never again become pregnant.

Relationship issues got in the way. Even though Andy came back almost a year later, he was drowning in the bottle by then and showed little interest in me physically. Partly it was me, as every time he initiated anything, after the lights had been turned off at his request, his ex-wife's words rang in my ears 'Andy says going to bed with you was like going to bed with a pig'. And he was there when she said that. He let her say that to me. He never loved me, he used me. And I was just as bad, because I let him use me. Never again will any man do that to me. I have since taken back my life. It's mine.

So, today, here I am at 48 with excellent ovaries and still ovulating, but with absolutely no desire to have a child so late in life. Do I sometimes let myself dream of it? Yes. Do I know it will never be? Yes. I have hopes for my future, to be with a man who already has children and I would never want them to feel threatened by another family. I want them to know that he will be their father, and only their father, always. They deserve that from him.

When I see babies or young children, I do still feel a tightness in my throat. And for the longest time after I lost my baby, I couldn't bear to be near a baby or touch a baby. I just couldn't. I'm getting much, much better. I can now see the joy in a child, I can now witness a woman's pride and happiness in being a mother, without tearing up. I do sometimes wonder if I was being punished that second time around. Probably most women in the same position do.

I'm where I am, today. And I'm happy being here. This is where I'm meant to be. For me and for the man I want to grow old with. Had any little aspect of my life been different, chances are I'd not have met the man I'm in love with. And that, for me, is unimaginable. I want him and I need him. He brings out the best in me. I celebrate his fatherhood and I adore the fact he is such a wonderful father. I will always support that. And I will always cherish him with every fibre of my being.

A sad path at times, but I'm where I need to be, today. And I have learned so much along the way. About myself, most of all.