Next Friday, if I don’t get Covid and if my medical team doesn’t get Covid and if the hospital isn’t completely overwhelmed by Covid, I’m going to have a hysterectomy.
All of the pamphlets warn that I might be depressed, because I won’t be able to have children anymore, but aside from the general concern about having a major surgery, I’m elated to lose it.
When I started birth control after my son was born, I told God (I was a believer then) my terms: I would faithfully be on hormonal birth control until I wanted another child. If I got pregnant beforehand, I would have an abortion.
I expected that at some point I would want another. I expected to get married and build a family. Let me be clear, though: I was a kid myself, and I didn’t know myself very well.
A few years on, I knew I did not in fact want another child. Every time I pictured it, I pictured all of the hard parts: the sleeplessness, the not being able to go to the bathroom by myself for a few years, the arguments over pickiness. I love my son, and, even more importantly, I like him, but motherhood as a practice and vocation didn’t appeal to me enough to start over. Many relationships have either not really started or have ended because I won’t budge on this.
I was also afraid that since my son was so great, I couldn’t possibly get another child I liked. Would another child share our humor? Our affinity for reading and learning over sports? Our intellect?
Having another seemed like hubris, tempting the gods to temper my good fortune.
Having been abandoned by my son’s father when I was seventeen, two weeks before I gave birth, I was also wary to have another child unless I wanted one enough to do it completely alone. I didn’t think I would necessarily be abandoned again, but divorces and deaths happen. Now, too, I know that I don’t ever want to live with a partner again.
Being a single mother is really fucking hard, and I have no desire to repeat it.
So I’m thrilled that I don’t have to worry about an accidental pregnancy anymore. Excited that I can tell all the men my age and older who are just now ready to have children, as women their age approach menopause, that I’m not the one for them and that they won’t be able to think they can talk me into letting half their genes take up residence in my womb.
That’s not to say there isn’t sadness, though; it’s just not the kind the pamphlets warn about.
I’m sad when I think about how my one and only pregnancy, birth, and motherhood should have gone.
It should have been planned.
I should have been an adult.
I should have had even one person say, “Congratulations.”
I shouldn’t have wondered where I was going to live as I held him in the hospital.
I should have known more about who I am.
I should have been able to live as an adult for a while without also being someone’s mom.
I should have been able to date for a while without being a single mom. (So many men were jealous of my son and the fact that I’d carried someone’s child.)
I should have been more financially secure.
I should have been more in step with my friends as they were having kids, so we could have gone through this together.
I should have had fewer people assume I’m my boy’s sister, or sometimes now, even worse, his girlfriend.
I won’t be able to have another child at this time next week, but it doesn’t change anything fundamental. I’m still a working single mom; he’s just an adult now.
And I’m still the woman who wants to hold all the babies. Until they’re gross or crying. I’m still the woman who loves my son and my nieces and nephews. Even when they’re gross and crying.
