I had one TRUE pregnancy scare my whole life. It would’ve completely changed the trajectory of my life. I was 20. I remember sitting there, on the toilet, test in hand, him leaning hip against the counter. A million things run through your mind. How it would just be the two of you because your family kicked you out of the house in the recent months and his father was and angry drunk and his mother had abandoned her children. I loved this man. He would not leave me for being pregnant. But, when it was negative, as I should’ve hoped as a sophomore in college, but I was heartbroken. If I had known then, what I know now, I wish it would have been positive.
When I was 7, I asked my Mother why people kept having new babies when there were so many children without homes in the world. I also asked her for all of the dimes in the house (because, back then, a dime a day was all it to support one starving child in Africa). I wasn’t allowed to have all of the dimes, but it, wasn’t too long before we were the ones needing community charity. I always took care of my friends when they got sick (non-alcohol sick), cold compresses, puke buckets, hair-holding back, warm covers. I helped raise 2 toddlers (luckily, the oldest had just learned “you’re not my mommy, I don’t have to do what you say”), ;), but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle and didn’t love for every second. I am currently going on 4 years with my now 15 year-old step-son-to-be. Teenagers, ah, like a fine wine, better with age 😉
For those of you who don’t know, my Father had Bipolar Disorder 1 (more manic than depressive than type 2, just a note aside) with stomach issues, reflux, botched reflux surgery, heart disease, diabetes, and on and on and on. My own stuff is no shining star either: Generalized anxiety, panic disorder, PTSD, PNES, agoraphobia, etc, etc. I didn’t want to pass on my shitty genetics to some unsuspecting little baby, and, I always wanted to adopt anyway, so, who cared? Just another reason why I’m Notamomma. But when? I had to get a college education. For me, there was no other way out of the shit holes I’d gotten my heels stuck in over the years. But then, an undergrad turned into a Master’s Degree.
By the time I was 13, I had reflux and “was anorexic”, according to my dumbass GP. FYI, never had an eating disorder, but I have “always had a tell people off when I’ve hit my breaking point” disorder. That’s a different blog altogether. At 21, IBS. At 24, I started displaying symptoms for Crohn’s Disease, but wasn’t actually diagnosed until I was about 28 years old. Thank God, my millionth ER visit landed me in a CT scan, which found the inflammation in my intestines (another blog, ppl). But Crohn’s Disease is an auto-immune, which essentially means that, either the baby would be a high-risk pregnancy at best, multiple miscarriages, more than likely. Just one more reason I’m Notamomma. With any auto-immune disease, the body rejects itself, including a baby. OR you could stay on the very high-powered medications and take your chances that your baby won’t have some ramifications from this. I also have Fibromylagia (if you believe in stages, I’m typically a 6 or 7). It’s just an ass-kicker at this stage.
Adoption has been my dream since I was a kid. What more a gift than a gift of a home. But, when I began to be removed (by my own parents) starting at age 11, I wished someone would give me that home. That unconditional love. That security that no one would just send me away on a whim. It was then, that I had a true understanding of the life that I needed to accomplish and needed to ready for who my children would be one day.
If I’d had that baby at 20…
It took me 6 years to get a 4 year degree because I’d had to work a full-time job, or more than one job, and, with a baby, how could I have done that? Maybe I couldn’t have gotten through college, but I was an awfully determined girl who was kicked out for being a student and not paying my family enough of my money. It would’ve happened eventually. Oh, well, I would’ve had a teenager who hated me by now. Who doesn’t love one of those? I mean, the one that visits here already does… 🙂
Every once in awhile, I still cry quietly about it. I wish I had at least had the option to try. I think everyone thinks that I never cared about having my own children, but that 20 year old girl, sitting on the toilet with a pregnancy test in her hand, crushed by the results, wishes she had had the option.
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