Shoved to Them
Four years ago, our youngest daughter was born with her hands and feet in front of her face, effectively doubling the circumference of her head. (If you’re thinking ‘OUCH!’, you’re right.) The damage that kind of thing does to a girl’s body is pretty ugly – stuff was torn and falling and collapsing/prolapsing. I’ve been limping it all along for the past four years, knowing that I needed surgery, but not able to have it because of the time off from my life that it would require.This week at my annual gynecologist’s appointment, I scheduled my hysterectomy for February.
My friends and family keep asking me if I’m okay with this, and the truth is that I am. I’ve had four years to come to the conclusion that this is the best decision for my health and well-being. While I always thought we’d have eight children, it doesn’t seem like that’s actually the plan for our family. I’ve had two miscarriages related to the fact that my lady-parts are hanging around all un-tethered in my body. My humongous uterus (8-10 lbs is my doctor’s guess) is leaning on top of my right kidney. It’s excruciatingly painful some days, and probably not doing that kidney any favors. I don’t think they’re meant to get squished like that. And then there’s my age…I’m 41, which isn’t too old to have babies, I know that. The thing is, I’d rather be a grandmother than a mommy again. My eldest daughter’s friends are getting married and getting pregnant, and I don’t really want to be room-mothers with the girls who used to have sleep-overs at my house.
All-in-all…it’s time for me to be done….and I’m thankful that I am with no regrets. What I do regret is the story I told for years about how having all these babies wasn’t hard on my body, when it clearly was. When I was in my 20s and early 30s, I didn’t notice the wear and tear, but by 35 it was obvious and I kept silent about it in the face of what I saw as judgmental and nosy questions.
One of the most common things moms with a lot of kids hear is, “oh, your poor body…” and we feel this instinctive need to protect and defend our choices and our way of life. So we answer with “What do you mean ‘my poor body?’ It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Have babies.” We don’t allow any discussion of how hard this actually is, or the physical toll that it takes on us. We don’t talk in public about how we get to the point of being held together with levers and pulleys and a judicious amount of duct tape. Denying how hard big family motherhood is is a protective reflex to most of the moms I know. It’s a knee jerk reaction to the condemnation of those who are “not us.” It would be better in the long run if we were bravely honest about it instead.
What if, instead of denying the logical and obvious, we actually told the truth? What if we said “Heck, yes, it’s hard. I can’t sneeze without having to take a protective posture, and there are parts of me which ache that I don’t even know how to describe. I may need surgery to put this hot mess back together when I’m done. It’s been hard. It’s all true. But it’s also all worth it. Every single one of these children was worth the wear and tear on my now high-mileage body. There’s not a one that I wouldn’t have again if God offered me a do-over.”
I think it’s long past the time that we stopped offering people a glossed-over fairy tale, and started letting the world know that there are worse things than having a passel of children and all the physical ailments that that may bring. Things like all of these children not existing because I was afraid that their being would have been too hard on me.
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