Dear Future Baby
Baby,
I’ve developed a new habit for Tuesdays during this in-between time. Well, it’s a habit in that I have done it twice now.
Basically, I wear myself out about being worried about this or that, and then I decide I need to get out of the house. I put on my lemon bathing suit and a white cover up (both things your grandma bought for me), and I walk the two block to the beach. I lay out my table, facing the Lake, and then I put on music that I am much too old to listen to (last week it was Billie Eilish and this week was Machine Gun Kelly). I watch the clouds float on my by and I try to make sense of the present world.
It’s in times like this that I wonder if I am ready to be a mom. I know that’s a weird thing so I am actively trying to become one, spending so much money and energy to help nature do its thing, but I wonder if I have the right temperament for motherhood. I don’t have a lot of patience, I need lots of sleep, and most things terrify me.
Take my current life. I slept 10 hours today. It’s 3:30, and I am resisting the urge to have a drink. And, I don’t have the things a mother should have, like a steady income or a stable home. What makes me thing I can just bring a child into all of this? And, do I even want this?
Infertility is a trip. At each moment, you have to ask yourself do you want a baby so much that you are willing to do this? Are you willing to pay that? The big fertility business world wants you to not ask that question but throw whatever you can into solving this issue, but in those lull moments, between cycles, you wonder, is this what I really want?
Becoming a mother isn’t something I ever decided, it was just a given. I’ve always been good with kids and enjoy being around them. Plus, I didn’t know many women who didn’t have kids, so I wasn’t even sure what that looked like, and I certainly wouldn’t be the first to pave that road. There was maybe a brief time before we got married in which I questioned whether or not we should, given that I was unhappy in my career, but those doubts soon dissipated. Then we set out on that long journey to have you.
We are still on that journey, and when you are on the same road for so long without a destination in sight, you start to ask yourself if you are lost. Am I lost right now? Is this the path I should be on? Everyone around me tells me it is, but do I believe that? Baby, I hope you learn to listen to your inner voice because I’ve been ignoring mine for so long, in order to better hear others, that I am not sure what it sounds like anymore.
I think this is right, and I feel so connected to you, a creature that doesn’t yet exist, that I come to this space just to talk to you. Maybe I question whether or not motherhood is right for me because it’s easier to do than admit that you may never come. I am OK not being a mother if I get to chose that and that’s my choice, but if it’s chosen for me by things beyond my control, than I would be devastated and stripped of something essential.
Baby, I don’t have any concrete answers or conclusions here. All I know is that I have an appointment in two todays to check for signs of ovulation, and I will certainly be there.
