When did you know that you wanted to have kids?
I realized that I wanted kids before I met my husband. I was nearing 30 and my biological clock was clanging in my head. It was one of the reasons I willingly paid $500.00 to Matchmaker in a last ditch effort to meet a man that I would want to spend the rest of my life with and start a family. I hadn’t met anyone worthy on my own. Desperate measures were called for. So in a last ditch effort I paid my money and waited.
I was sent a lot of duds before my future husband came along. When he finally did, I found we had so much in common that we continued to talk on the phone all night long. By the time we came up for air, it was morning. We decided to meet, and I soon knew that he was the only one for me. We married and spent the first couple of years enjoying each other. All of a sudden my biological clock began ticking in my head again. I was in my early 30’s and realized there was no better time. If I was ever to have kids the time had come. I knew I was ready and there was nothing else I wanted more in life than to have a baby. It seemed what life was all about and had ever been about.
I quit taking my birth control pills and we waited…and waited. It seemed the more I wanted to get pregnant, the more I failed to. I took it as a personal failure when my first pregnancy ended at 5 months. I went to the ultrasound expecting to see pictures of my baby only to be told the baby was dead. As I sobbed uncontrollably, my OB/GYN told me over the phone that the only way to get pregnant was to surgically remove the dead baby and try again. I agreed to the surgery, and with a heavy heart went to the hospital days later to have my dead, deformed baby taken from my body. I still wanted children, but that one event put a deep fear in my heart that if I ever became pregnant again the same thing would happen.
I quit taking my temperature and caring whether I was ovulating. I got rid of the baby things I had collected in preparation for the baby that died. I still wanted kids more than anything in the world but believed with every fiber of my soul that I wasn’t able to have babies that would live. When I became pregnant again, I faced the whole thing with a deep seated fear that never went away. I refused to get excited about a baby that would most likely die anyway. I threw up every time the wind blew on me. I had diarrhea constantly. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and forced to take insulin by the 6th month. As the last months played out, my blood pressure shot sky high. Because I had massive areas of scar tissue from previous surgeries, the baby was breech, and I was high risk I was automatically scheduled for a C-section.
I arrived at the hospital the morning of my C-section only wishing the pregnancy was over. I will never forget the pure joy and elation that overcame me when I first laid eyes on my daughter, or the moment when I first spoke to her and she stopped crying and stared at me the first time. I realized in those first precious moments of my daughter’s life what the true meaning of life was all about. I realized that all the days and heartaches that I had lived through before had brought me to that point. If I had not lost that first baby, I have little doubt that I could have possibly appreciated that moment as much as I did.
When I became pregnant for my son, the specter of that first failed pregnancy still hung in the air, but with the successful birth of my daughter I was able to look forward to the birth of my son more. I took great joy planning for his arrival buying tiny blue clothes, crocheting a baby blanket, and gathering all the things I no longer had from my first.
For me, marrying my husband started a natural progression towards having the family I always wanted. I have always been a very old fashioned, traditional girl at heart. It is their love that sees me through. Like the old school yard chant goes first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.
