Breaking the Facade

 **I’m baring my soul here. You can have strong feelings and even think I’m horrible, but please be kind.**

I was so touched last week by the outpouring of congratulations and well-wishes for our newest baby. I also felt like a bit of a fraud. You see, there’s this facade that moms of large families often have to wear. We’re harshly judged by the culture around us, and even the slightest public hesitation of joy is a vulnerable chink in our armor. We join in an unspoken pact with other big family moms to never show our doubt to the world.

And it stinks.

Because as kind and joyous as my readers seem to be, I am not. I’ve rewritten that sentence and deleted it three times because it seems like such an awful thing to say out loud, and yet it’s the truth. The night that I found out I was pregnant again, I sat on the floor of my kitchen and silently sobbed for hours. This wasn’t just bad news, it was devastating. Of all the things I’ve ever wanted in my life, I’ve never wanted anything more than I wanted to be not pregnant in that moment. The thought of it still brings tears to my eyes that well up and threaten to spill over.

This is not great news to me and the timing could hardly be worse.

Wendy was supposed to be our last baby. I have often wondered in the past how people could know that for sure, and then I did. Her traumatic birth plus other factors have made a hysterectomy a good idea for me. I’ve delayed it as long as I can, but I had tentatively scheduled it for June when the break in schedules meant that I could rest and help could come. I’m also tired. I’ve been pregnant 10 times in 17 years, and it has taken its toll on my energy. I needed to be done. Psychologically. Physically. Mentally.

And I was.

We played by the rules and successfully managed to avoid pregnancy for over two years, and then God had

other plans for us. I’m struggling to see the Divine Wisdom in this. All I’m finding are fatigue, nausea, and dread. I hate being pregnant, and I was happily prepared to never do it again.

And then I was.

And the mask I wear in public is slipping as I struggle not to cry in front of people. And the mattress is growing a permanent dent from the place where I curl up under the blankets in pain and sadness. And I remind myself that a baby is coming and that babies are happy things…and I don’t care. Because I’m numb to it all.

And then I feel guilty because this baby deserves better than a mom who could at best be described as ambivalent about its existence.

I called the doctor’s office two weeks ago to schedule my first prenatal appointment, and the doctor caled me back horrified. I had a hysterectomy scheduled…what was I thinking? And the pressure began for termination. And that’s the irony, isn’t it? I will spend the rest of this pregnancy fighting for the life of the baby that I never wanted to pregnant with.

And that’s what it means to be Pro-Life.

There’s this mental image of pro-lifers as people who are always happy, always excited by the sight of a positive pregnancy test. We project this Stepford image to the world of having never met a crisis pregnancy that we couldn’t joyfully embrace.

And that image is a lie.

Because sometimes Pro-Life means sobbing on your kitchen floor and begging God for the test to be wrong, and wishing with everything in you to be un-pregnant. It means crying yourself to sleep at night in fear and frustration…and anger. Goodness yes, the anger.

It means thinking about that tiny bubbly person growing and forming uninvited in my body…

and deciding that they have just as much of a right to life as I do. That this new life is just as valuable as mine.

Because sometimes God calls you on your beliefs and asks you to put your money where your mouth is, and that’s when you find out what it is that you really believe.

Me? I believe in LIFE.

**Edited to add: It’s not life-and-death, more like life-and-health. I’m not dying here….so….silver lining?***