The Five Month Game

I can’t believe I forgot to mention the anniversary of my aunt’s death in my last post.  Being as this was the “inciting incident” to where I am now, it would be more than appropriate to write a blog post about it.

My aunt died October 30, 2010, after a prolonged battle with cancer.  Like many people with long battles with cancer, it was a real rollercoaster – just that February we had celebrated her 70^th birthday and the announcement she was officially in remission…only to have it come back like gangbusters some months later.  I last saw her that August, and will always treasure that visit.  She and my sister and I visited her in her small town in Connecticut, went antique shopping, and had an English tea (she’d always been a huge Anglophile).  She was very thin and frail, and I sensed she was kind of on edge, but she’s always been very nervous and uptight, so I didn’t think much of it.  She did cry a little as we drove away, and later when I got an e-mail from her admitting the cancer had been back for some time, it explained a lot.  I think she knew it was the last time she’d see us (or me, being 3,000 miles away).

So a year ago I had a short trip to Hawaii planned, but heard my aunt was going downhill rapidly a few days before, and had an agonizing time trying to decide if I should cancel it and go to CT instead…but I, and everyone else, believed she’d be around for a few more months at least, and I was going to see her at Christmas, and in the end I was encouraged to take my trip, something I’ll always beat myself up about.  She died that weekend.  I got to talk to her one last time, and say all those things you want to say.  It was the most poignant moment of my life, for sure.  How often do we get that chance before loved ones die?  To let them know they’re loved, and how much they’ve meant to you?  Especially in an uptight WASP-y family like ours, the “I love yous” aren’t exactly a daily occurrence (although we’re working on that).  I had a day of driving around to beaches and crying my eyes out, then in the middle of the night my phone “dinged” and there was a text from my exhausted sister saying she had died. 

The grief was all-encompassing, as it usually is.  We have a tiny little family, and we had just lost a very important member.  My cousins had lost their mom (too early, in my opinion), my uncle his wife of 40+ years, my mother her only sister.  She was the first of that generation to go, which immediately spawns the ugly thought, “next it’ll be us.”  She had filled a very important role for me and my sister, as we “broke up” with my mother, she really stepped in as a mother figure for us.  I had lived with their family for a year when I was a kid, which was my only exposure to any kind of normal, stable family life.  I literally felt like somebody had chopped off my arm – part of our very small gene pool had shrunk. 

Then was that drive home from yoga a week later.  While on the 2 with the autumn mist hanging over the trees, I thought about all these things, and how sad that one day our awesome family would be forgotten, that nobody would be there to tell our stories.  Then the idea popped into my head.  “You know, it may not be too late for you to have your own biological children.”  It was like somebody dunked a bucket of cold water over my head.  My whole body started tingling.  Really…?  I had never thought of that.  Is this really something I might be able to do…?

I raced home and started Googling like a maniac, immediately finding the Choice Mom website, listening to every podcast they had available, and ordering every book I could on the subject off of Amazon.  Much to my surprise, it appears you can possibly have your own biological children without the benefit of a mate, and quite inexpensively sometimes, and quite easily sometimes.  A couple of days later I called my sister, and after a long conversation in which I couldn’t get up the balls to mention my plan, as we were about to hang up I finally said, “So…I have this notion.”  A couple of weeks later I asked my Mom Guru friend to dinner to pick her brain about everything fertility/mom related.  And interestingly, as many friends called or messaged to ask how I was feeling after my aunt’s death, quite a few off-handedly mentioned they’d had this crazy dream about me with a baby.  I had told no one at that point – but it’s like everyone sensed this shift in my universe. 

Within two days the decision to go ahead (which I initially told myself to wait a year for, then read some fertility by age stats and disregarded this plan) had been made.  I ditched the Nuva Ring.  I bought a basal thermometer and started temping.  I found my clinic and had my first consult the day before Thanksgiving.  I bought a fertility monitor (which turned out to be useless for my purposes, but was fun to play with for a while).  I felt my body return to normal – the first period, the first “fertile time”, as I tried to remember from my pre-birth control days five years before.  I had a trip to India planned for Feb/March so I knew I couldn’t “try” before then as much as I was itching to.  But it was good because it gave me time to chart, plan, read, and really think about all this stuff without rushing in (I am very impulsive). 

So five months after my aunt’s death I started the trying process.  Five months later I was pregnant.  Five months from now I will have a baby.  Five months after that I will have survived my first event with an infant, and five months after that I will either be contemplating having #2 or making a decision that one is enough.  I feel like time will mean something now – there will be so many milestones to meet, with a child.  Holidays (like Halloween) will mean something and not just be an inconvenience.  I expect my life to expand in amazing ways, and to have a lot more joy, even when there are hard times, which I know will be many.  So thanks again to my dear auntie for showing me what motherhood is all about, for stepping in when our mother couldn’t, and for being a part of our dear little family.  It hurts every day that you’re not here to share this pregnancy with me, but thank you for giving me the idea.  Had your loss not hurt so much I don’t know if I ever would have thought of doing this.  Wherever you are, I hope you’re watching Rachel Maddow and cackling!