second thoughts

The feeling has not been fleeting. Two days after that first glimpse at the sperm bank’s website, I still don’t want those profiles to be the ones I’m perusing. A part of my brain is scurrying to think of all the new photos and text I could add to my online dating profile to try to make me more compelling; is thinking that maybe I should immediately join the various groups I’ve been meaning to become a member of for quite some time—the Sierra Club’s singles hiking group, Toastmasters, maybe another writing class with a new group of classmates—to give myself another chance at meeting someone whom I might fall for. And get to have this baby with. 

A part of me doesn’t want to have given up on (or put a multi-year pause on) that sort of love.

But some love would be better than no love, the other part of me seems to be saying, and you have never been lucky in romantic love. And familial love is pretty hard to rival. When I think about my grandma or my mom and the way they’ve nurtured me, everything in me aches at the thought of not getting to offer my own little one the same. I absolutely do not want to miss out on that. But am I rushing into it? That, I think, is the question of the day.

A number of mothers have questioned whether I am really prepared for this baby. What’s your plan for daycare? they’ve each asked me, appalled at the thought of me leaving a three-month-old at a daycare facility once maternity leave ends but knowing I can’t afford to hire a nanny or stay home longer. What is my plan? I’ve had to ask myself. Mostly, I daydream of hiring one of my co-worker’s moms, who is currently out of work as a nanny and is a truly lovely woman who raised the most amazing son (one of my favorite employees) so I’d be thrilled to have her help raise my own munchkin. But I don’t honestly know anything about the cost of that option or any other. I have definitely not done my homework in this regard. This week I’m wondering if maybe I should.

The thing is, I think my heart is, for once, winning out over my head.

Two images have been floating around my mind for the past few weeks as I’ve undertaken the first few steps of this process. They float, and they fill my heart with commitment to having this kid.

One image is of my nieces and nephew—their faces hover, and I am filled with a sensation of the deepest love I’ve ever known. It is painful to think that I go a whole year between visits with them. The ten precious days I get with them annually are ten of the richest in emotion that I ever experience. Every inch of my body responds to the thought of them with a desire to feel that way daily, yearly, for all the rest of my life.

The other image is of a bookstore in Harvard Yard. I am standing by a display table covered in books, my dear friend Lauren at my side. I’m crying, and she’s holding my hand and cooing at me in the way that a person who doesn’t hug others but who really really wishes at that moment she did will coo. In front of us is the book Our Bodies, Our Selves, and we have just read the section on the ovarian condition that I have recently been diagnosed with. We are 19, and though we are too young to have thought about having babies yet, now we know that my body may not be able to do it, and I am mourning for the child I might never have. I am too young to have thought about having babies yet, but knowing I might not be able to makes me know something else: I badly want to. And I immediately take on a sense of guilt, of disappointment for someone else—because I believe that eventually someone will fall in love with me, and that he’ll want to have children, and that I will break his heart if I can’t. I write my first long work of fiction from his perspective; I watch him struggle as he and his sister fall in love with her first child and he tries to accept that he may not get to have his own. How could a young me have foreseen my own future so vividly when I wrote him into being?

His almost-breaking point comes while watching his newborn niece sleep and reading this letter that hangs over her crib:

                                                                                                                                     December 9, 1998

Gracie, my angel,                                                       

     I am writing this letter to welcome you into the world, into our lives, into your life. I have awaited your arrival endlessly and now I await my (and your) discovery of you.

     We hardly even know you (you burst out to join us only two days ago), and yet we count you as our greatest blessing. You are our most precious thing. We are so eager to watch you develop, to see your life unfold—and yet we take joy in every moment, we savor each gurgle in your throat, each contortion of your wrinkled face. 

     We watch you sleep and we see promise—never ending promise. Please grow up knowing that your Mommy and Daddy will always be watching you like this: with wonder.

                                    with love the size of the ocean and then some,
                                                                        Mommy

That letter, I want to write that in real life. I have so much love to give, such a depth of emotional capacity. I know that I will be an amazing mom, and I know that I can’t let myself miss out on doing so.

But am I really prepared? And do I really need to do it right now??

I hit pause after looking at the sperm bank website. It’s not that I’m having second thoughts about having this baby, or even about being a single mom. I still want to do it. I will plan to do it. I am not wimping out. Nothing makes me feel more zen than thinking about my baby. But I may slow the process down a bit. My doctor told me, after I passed all the initial tests, that the next steps were to pick out a sperm donor, then go off the pill, then get two more fertility tests done when I get my period naturally, and then inject the sperm. I’m thinking I may instead go off the pill, get my period, and get those two tests done—minus picking out the sperm. And if the tests come back clear, just as the others have, then maybe instead of starting to make this baby artificially, I can take six months to be the most proactive dater you’ve ever seen. Maybe I can make one last try at doing this naturally. The reason I felt the need to start now was that I thought my ovarian condition would make it take years to get pregnant. But my doctor says cheerfully that with fertility treatments, it could take just a few months. And I’m only just now turning 36. So maybe I still have time. Maybe. It’s really hard to know.