My Womb, My Business

I am the subject of a strange and unsettling phenomenon.

Four years ago, shortly after getting married, I was transported to a time resembling 1950’s America where I ceased to be my own person with my own aspirations, and instead became little more than a baby time-bomb. I’m not sure why “putting a ring on it” plummets a woman to the depths of an oppressive time where the sole purpose of her life is to procreate but I’m both appalled and disappointed that this is where I have ended up. I thought we’d come farther than this.

And I thought people saw ME for me, not the absence of a child in my arms.

“Observe things as they are and don’t pay attention to other people.”

-Huang Po

Sage advice, which was my only resolution for 2017 when I couldn’t face writing “lose weight” and “write a book” for the twelfth year in a row. It’s also what I need to remember now that I’ve returned from Brazil amidst a 160 day alcohol fast which has sent everyone BUT me deeper into baby-mania. The nudges to my husband to just “put one in there”—as if it’s OK for a man to get his wife pregnant against her wishes, but absolutely taboo in reverse—started rolling in before I left.

Where. To. Begin.

I guess I’ll start with a question: when did it become OK for anyone and everyone—friends, family, distant relatives from across the pond, the neighbors, the bartender at the corner pub, friends-of-friends on Facebook, the old acquaintance you tried to avoid but who cornered you in aisle ten at the grocery store on a day when your stomach looked particularly rotund—to ask why you haven’t started making babies yet? This is actually an extremely sensitive subject for countless couples who have tried and failed to get pregnant on their own—most of whom, I’m venturing, don’t advertise their fertility struggles because it’s deeply personal, and it’s nobody’s business but their own.

Which brings me to the point of this whole thing:

It’s My Womb, My Business

Though no further explanation is required, I’m going to continue if only to stifle the folks that find it unfathomable for a woman to have dreams outside of motherhood. While every woman nodding her head right now has a different story, here’s mine:

I lost roughly 3-5 years to severe pain the likes of which made even the simplest things unbearable. These were newlywed years. Child-bearing years. Now I’m almost 35 and people are straining to hear if my biological clock is still ticking (it is, lay off). While most couples got married and started nesting, I battled a misdiagnosed illness and mourned the unexpected loss of my father, among other things. These aren’t excuses. But when I tried explaining to a friend that I needed to take care of myself before I could take care of a baby, she seemed to think they were. Forgive me if I didn’t want my kids’ first memory to be of mum stopping in the middle of playtime (or the middle of the street, or the middle of a bath, or the middle of anywhere) to put her head between her legs until the pain stopped, or locking herself in her room to bawl over not being ready to care for another human life, and dreaming of falling unseen off the face of the earth.

Well, that will probably happen anyway.

It’s foolish and downright narcissistic for anyone to think that their ill-timed joke or speech about the blessings of being a parent will be the magic bullet that finally primes my uterus. I don’t need family passing hopeful glances when I order water instead of wine, or friends with kids pitying me for the emptiness I must feel since I don’t spend Friday nights around a campfire with a toddler on my lap. I certainly admire the multitudes of women called to motherhood. For some people having children is their wildest dream. Illness and other factors aside, that has never been mine. If I can respect their choices to give their lives to their children, can they respect mine when I say I want something else right now?

That’s not to say I don’t want kids—I do. But it’s not going to happen any sooner by reminding me that I’m not fulfilling my “wifely duties” (as a friend kindly reminded me) or staring at me like I have two heads when I admit that I want to learn how to live again before I breed.

I want to create a life I love before bringing a child into it.

I don’t think that’s an unreasonable aspiration. It’s actually the best thing I could do for my future kiddo! I’ve been told that if I just sucked it up and had a kid now, suddenly all that stuff that I want to do with my life won’t matter because the child would be the most important thing. To those people I say THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’M AFRAID OF. It’s sure as hell not a selling point. I am finally starting to reclaim the parts of myself that were on hold for ages, and I’m not ready to push them to the back burner—again—until I’ve sucked the life out of them…or until they're established enough that I don’t have to fear losing them in the shadow of a child.

I didn’t plan on being in my thirties and behind the curve, but now I’m perfectly happy setting my own. Had I “sucked it up” and had kids sooner, or married any of the men—good, bad, or evil—I dated before Peter, I’d be divorced by now and stuck in a custody battle, while desperately hunting for hubby number two (must love dogs, ride a motorcycle, and look like Chris Evans. Will travel). With that in mind, I’m doing better than at least half the people I know, and yet I’m the asshole for not following suit.

Yes, I feel the clock ticking, so I don’t need any less-than-gentle reminders. What I need is time (yes, I still have some) and enough respect from others that they refrain from imparting their wisdom about how I’ll never know love like that of a child—while their toddler throws toys at them from across the room—until the unlikely event that I ask for it.

For anyone who STILL thinks they should have an opinion—other than my husband—here’s a friendly reminder that I’d like you to write down and read any time you feel like speaking up:

MY WOMB, MY BUSINESS.