Jealousy Demanding as the Grave

 The internet seems to have exploded with women posting their personal struggles with infertility and on the opposite end of the spectrum, there's the mother's posting about how hard motherhood is and they just want someone to take pity on them. The Wine Mommy club ensues.  Anyone else notice this trend? I see these posts and I can both identify with them and loathe them all at the same time. Somehow my Instagram account seems to think these are the posts I long to see the most and bombards me with them. The thing is, self-pity doesn't look attractive on anyone and that includes struggling mothers and this is the main reason my eyes roll to the back of my head. The other reason my eyeballs get lost up north is because maybe I'm a little jealous. You see, I see these posts that fall on opposite sides of the spectrum and I'm not sure where I fit in the middle. I am not suffering from infertility. I am not suffering from motherhood induced insanity either. I just simply am not supposed to have kids because I probably wouldn't live through it due to my congenital heart condition. It would technically be incorrect for me to say I can't have kids but rather I shouldn't have kids. I've not yet met anyone else in the same boat so I tend to keep quiet. But here's the truth.

I hate kids and I love kids. What I mean is, I want to have kids of my own to love, I don't love everyone's kids. My family has never been big on kids and I'm not an exception. Call it selfish or sociopathic but we just aren't a big fan of kids and  that's OK. Some people LOVE kids and are great with them and that is great too. The world needs both types of people. But what I can say is that once I got into my twenties and got married to my wonderful husband, my desire to have my own kids grew drastically. Growing up with congenital heart disease I knew that having kids was considered high risk and since I didn't have a desire to have children at that point, I found it almost a relief that I wasn't supposed to have them. Because lets face it, if someone finds out that you don't want kids, you're dubbed a horrible person who is sociopathic. So what better excuse than to say I've got medical issues? As I stated earlier, I grew up and two years into our marriage, we decided to check out just how high risk it would be to get pregnant and we were pleasantly surprised by the answer. My cardiologist at the University of Washington told me that my pulmonary heart valve was leaking 35% of my blood and needed replacing but once it was repaired, my heart was likely up for a carefully planned pregnancy. In April 2017 I had the heart procedure to replace my valve and everything went smoothly. We returned in June 2017 for a follow up where I was so sure I would receive the green light to begin trying. What I did not expect was to be diagnosed with a new condition to add to the alphabet of other diagnosis - they discovered I'd developed secondary pulmonary arterial hypertension due to my heart issues taking a toll. PAH is a lung disease where your arteries within the lungs get narrow, hard and inflexible. It constricts blood flow and causes your heart to work very hard. This results in a shorter life span (most people don't live beyond 20 years past their diagnosis), low oxygen and a significant chance of heart failure because your heart just gets too worn out from working so darn hard. With my other heart conditions, this is not a good combo. My cardiologist told me that he believed I had 50/50 chance of surviving pregnancy and that even if I do survive, it may shave many years off my life due to the strain it puts on me. 

     Many women fight ferociously for pregnancy and they would have consulted multiple other doctor's for a second opinion. For me, I trust my cardiologist greatly and took his word for it. The thing is, many women put up a big fight for their infertility issues which I can appreciate - however it leaves them in a state of constant unhappiness an despair. If I were to hyper focus on pregnancy, I would be hyper focusing on a reason not to enjoy my life and I couldn't handle that. I have already been through too much with my health issues and I wasn't about to add trying to conceive safely. I could write a whole other post about how this new diagnosis has changed my life and my perspective but I'll save that for another day. This news led us to fostering children for 1.5 years where we had 7 different kiddos in our home. Fostering was a blessing and a curse and there are a 101 reasons we did not continue but I'd be lying if I didn't say that quite honestly, we just really wanted our own and  there is nothing wrong with that. I fiercely loved each of our foster kids and in some ways I wish I could still foster but the system is horrific to deal with and I wanted my husband and I to experience pregnancy of our own, even just one would have been enough. 

      So there it is. To all you women who've struggled with infertility or shouldn't have kids for other reason, I've been trying to find my place amongst you. And for all you women out there who share your motherhood struggles, my heart tries to find grace for you because I would love to experience what you are calling a struggle. I HAVE been a mother and I have cried my heart out due to foster kids out of control in my house so you cannot say "you wouldn't understand, you are not a mother". Still, my jealousy is strong. 

Here's one other little silly secret to let you in on. Sometimes when Aunt Flo is late, I secretly hope and pray I'm pregnant by some miracle which is beyond silliness. My husband had a vasectomy, pregnancy could kill me and we live in a one bedroom cabin. Who am I kidding? 

-L