Childless

This morning I finally made it into the doctor.
I resist doctors and I haven't seen anyone since I returned from Italy. Probably stupid but, oh well.
It became a matter of necessity when my medication began to run low. I needed refills - and this was the earliest they could fit me in.

For lack of better options, I returned to the doctor I used before travelling to Italy. As I walked from the Foggy Bottom Metro stop to the office, I had a visceral memory of the last time I was there. She'd implanted an IUD as birth control. I remember the pain of the experience and calling Hans on the walk back to the metro. I'm too sensitive for hormone birth control and I had a steady boyfriend - which made the IUD ideal. Hans and I weren't ready to have kids yet, although we were thinking about it. Truthfully, the idea frightened me.

Sjors and I started talking about having kids almost immediately after we started dating. It seemed so natural somehow. He brought up the subject. He talked about what they would be like, described their personalities and haircolor. He told me the names he wanted: Jullian and Lucian. Godawful names - but if they were boys, we would use them. If she was a girl, I wanted her to be Zadie. I started to think about it with greater frequency.  When I saw children on the base day care, something inside me ached. I had the IUD removed in May 2011 and, in the following month, Sjors' condom broke.

I didn't think I would ever forgive him for bullying me into taking the morning after pill. Maybe I never have. "We'll have lots of babies," he promised me.  

Months later, when he returned to MIVD and left me, I asked Sjors if he would donate sperm for me so that I could have his child. I would not request support or contact with him if he did not wish it. I would be a good mother. He told me he would not. Of all the promises he made and broke, this was by far the most difficult to bear. It has changed the world for me.

In Cameroon and Senegal, I watched women working challenging jobs in the sun with babies strapped to their backs and I envied them.

I haven't wanted to have children with anyone else. It was not merely an abstract longing for motherhood, I found. It was a desire for Sjors' children: little people with his eyes and his laugh and his sense of humor and boundless enthusiasm. In the years that have passed, I have never seemed able to let myself consider the possibility of having the children of another man. This pain has been a long time in dulling: this realization that I will not have children of my own. I have passed the ideal age for pregnancy and at some point it will not be possible at all.

My sister Corinne had her first baby last year - one day after my birthday. She's pregnant again, expecting another little girl sometime in March.

Tonight, I had dinner with a good friend and her husband, a couple who have tried unsuccessfully to have children since her bout with cancer three years ago. They've spent months looking for a surrogate. For just as many months, I seriously considered offering my own womb. It will not be used otherwise. I wish I had been able to do this for them. But I don't know that I would have the courage to face my own childlessness while I felt someone else's child grow inside me. I feel so impotent and angry that I cannot have what I long for - nor am I able to help them.