When I am ready.

For more years than I can remember, I have wanted children.  I have craved to have a full, big, protruding belly like the women I so often pass in the street.  I feel the organs deep inside me tingle when I see a newborn, or hear the cry of a hungry bub.  I know I was made to do this, and I will.

When I am ready.

At the age of 19 I had a big scare.  It was highly probable that I was pregnant, luckily to someone I was very much in love with.  He promised to stick by me no matter what, but admitted he was not ready for parenthood.  I found this funny, because he was quite a bit older than me.  I was the one who shouldn’t have been ready.  But when I saw the result – negative – I couldn’t help but feel completely hollow inside.  

I had, however, considered what I might do if the result had been in the affirmative.

‘Can I do this?  Can I really be a mum, when I have so much to do in my life before I am ready?’  I asked myself many questions in those few minutes as we waited, cuddling each other in the kitchen.  ‘I don’t think I can do it; I’m far too young’, my reasonable and logical voice was the stronger one.  But the very thought of that horrific surgical procedure made my stomach churn, and I ran into the bathroom to be sick.

It was all I wanted, to have a little human growing inside me.  But on my terms.  I cannot imagine how I might have been affected at the time, had an alternative choice been available.  My fear of that invasive surgery was palpable.  I was adamant that I simply could not undergo such a procedure that would damage my ingrained desire to be a mother, and quite possibly damage the important organs required to become so.

I cried with grief that I was not pregnant… and yet I cried with gratitude that I did not have to face that procedure.  To this day I am thankful for that experience.

Having to make such a choice can be excruciating – when not just your own body do you think of, but the possibility of another forming within you.  It is made even harder by lawmakers – mostly middle-aged, white men – who will never in their lives know what it means to really struggle with that choice.  They will never know the emotions, sensations, fears and insecurities that come from that first missed period, nor will they ever understand what it feels like to be pregnant.  Yet this has all been left in their hands.  

Why are the whistle-blowers and decision-makers responsible for my body in this regard?  Why am I simply not allowed to face that decision again if I have a change of heart, or a medical condition, or an abusive partner?  Why do I still have visions of lying on a table?  They still make me sick to my stomach.

Why have I found myself right back at the beginning, asking myself so many questions?