God Had Other Plans For Me

In the summer of 1991, I had an ectopic pregnancy.

The small 3-4 week old intrauterine gestation sac within me ended in miscarriage.

I was 22 years old and remember thinking I stressed the baby out of me.

Why?

Because the father was not father material and I was struggling mentally, inwardly lost in a world I didn’t know how to navigate – so how could I bring a baby into this?

As well, with a deeply religious family, abortion was absolutely not an option.

What was I to do?

I later came to believe that a God of my understanding answered my prayers because I didn’t have to make a decision, my body did it for me.

Hysterectomy

January, 2013 I had a hysterectomy.

At 43 years of age I didn’t foresee children as an option and at the recommendation of my gynaecologist, I said yes to the surgery rather than an endometrial ablation.

That was that.

No children for me.

I Wonder

For a variety of reasons that are not the scope of this blog, I find myself reflecting back and processing this pregnancy and miscarriage.

I wonder about a few things.

I wonder how my life would have played out if my pregnancy had been a regular one and I gave birth to a child.

I wonder what the baby would have looked like? Maybe with my dark hair and skin and her father’s blue eyes?

I imagine my family would have stepped in to help, as his family would have helped as well.

Would I still be with this man or would we have separated?

Would I have ended up a single mom?

So many what ifs.

Today

I think I’ve never had the maturity to properly consider having a baby.

With a history of alcoholism and decades long struggles with mental health, misdiagnoses and then a final proper diagnosis of Borderline & Histrionic Personality Disorder, historically, I was never in a right mind to ever consider having a baby and raise a child.

Maybe that is what I am missing the most – the years lost to mental health and alcoholism struggles – that robbed me of any ability to coherently consider having a baby.

How does a woman know if she does or does not want children?

How can she truly know that answer?

I wish I had had whatever a woman has to have to be able to authentically contemplate this question.

But then again, there are women who want children and can’t get pregnant. There are women who do not want children and unexpectedly are pregnant.

Then there are women like me who never thought about having children, and when I did – it just didn’t seem possible.

S, 🌻

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