Born from Love

Summer 2009 “Did you try to become a mother before you came to live here?” my lawyer asked. “No,” I answered. “I have known that I was willing to be a single mother since I was ten,” I responded, and my lawyer seemed surprised, “but no, it all started when I moved to Albuquerque.” Summer 2006 When you move to a new city, you need to find the first essentials: a place to live, your way around new roads, a good supermarket, a new church and the nearest hospital, just in case. Because I am a woman and I am me, I also needed to find a new OB/Gyn, so I made the dreaded appointment. I was glad to discover my new OB/Gyn was a tall lady with gray hair tied up in a bun. She wore a long colorful skirt and sandals. A hippie, I thought. She sat across from me at her office, chair in front of chair, chart in hand. “When was your last period?” I never remembered so I guesstimated, plus or minus a few weeks, and she wrote it down as fact. She continued with her questionnaire and when she was satisfied she placed the chart on her lap and smiled directly at me. “So what brings you to Albuquerque?” “I was offered a postdoc at The National Labs.” “Ooh, impressive!” she said, her eyes opening wide. “I have a lot of patients whose husbands work at The Labs.” Yeah, husbands, I thought. Not a single patient who works there, I bet. I smiled while waiting for the next question. I really wanted to get the conversation done with. I wanted my prescription and to go home. She must have read my mind. “You said you use Toradol, right?” she said flipping back through her chart. “Yes, 2cc’s.” “You mean 20 milligrams, right?” she asked sweetly. “No, I inject myself.” “That sounds serious,” she said, looking at me again. “Why don’t you take it orally?” The office felt cold. I wanted to brace myself. “Because the pain makes me vomit and it turns into a positive feedback loop.” “You should take contraceptives.” “Oh, no,” I shook my head decisively. “I used them during grad school but then I stopped,” I answered as I rubbed my hands together to warm them up. “It would help you regulate all those symptoms.” “I just want to be able to get to work, instead of missing work for three days every month,” I assured her, and she nodded, understanding. “You could try one with low estrogen. I can help you choose a good brand.” I took a deep breath. How could I explain it to this nice lady? I looked at her and she looked back, expectantly. “I don’t want contraceptives because I want to be able to have a child instead of preventing it, even if it means doing it on my own.” I blurted it all out in a single breath, and then I couldn’t inhale. I fought hard to keep my face calm, to keep my best professional poker face, but I could feel hot itchy moisture filling my eyes. I had never spoken those words out loud, not even to myself. I wanted to rub my eyes but that would make it more obvious, so I forced my hands to stay where they were, frozen. Meanwhile, she stared at me open-mouthed. “Oh,” she said, clasping her hands. “Oh!” she repeated more enthusiastically. “I get it! You are a young professional woman who has no need to wait for anyone else.” I finally breathed again. She padded her hands up and down on her lap, then reached over the desk for a prescription pad and wrote something on it. Finally, I thought, I can get out of here. “I have a friend who is a fertility specialist, I’m going to refer you to him.” I felt the blood drain down my face. “Oh, no. No, no. I’m not ready, I didn’t mean now.” “It’s OK. You can get an appointment and ask all your questions!” She ripped off the prescription-referral and handed it over to me. I reached for it and held it between two fingers, staring at it without reading it. I could not, for the life of me, look at her face again. “Let me know how it goes,” she stood up and left the room to give me time to change. As soon as she was out the door, I folded the paper into tiny squares. I didn’t know what to do with it. What if it fell out of my pocket at work and my new boss figured out what I was up to? Or worse, what if I put it in my wallet and my mother discovered it while getting some cash? I placed the paper in the cell phone pocket of my purse and closed the zipper tight. I walked around with the piece of paper in my purse for half a year before I had the nerve to take it out. When I did, I looked at the wrinkled piece of paper, a bit torn at the edges, and asked myself the question I always ask before making any big decisions: What will I regret more, doing it or not doing it? In this case, not doing it was not an option.