Feb 01 2008
Snip-Snip
Stock up on the bags of frozen peas, we have a vasectomy scheduled for early March!
Yes, my friends, after 25 years of me being solely irresponsible about birth control, I’m finally passing the baton over to the male half of this partnership of fornication! My husband will undertake a modicum of effort to make sure that the little voice that is ever present in the back of my head doesn’t some how take control and have me decorating a nursery and asking all my internet friends to send me baby-dust while I rock in a comfy glider and cross-stitch HAZEL onto a quilt. (Yeah, I had you with me up until that cross-stitching part, didn’t I? Even I couldn’t keep a straight face on that one.)
Who needs baby dust when I already have a house filled with kid dust and dog dust and street dust and cookie dust and every other kind of dust there could possibly be?
The baby years are behind me. No more diapers, no more cribs. No more bottles, no more bibs.
Right now in my house, there are just a few vestiges of babyhood… some stepping stools near bathroom sinks for little bitty girlies who cannot reach enough to brush teeth or wash hands. Some woobies that need to be searched for at bedtime to give comfort or perhaps simply to forestall the inevitable tucking in.
Last month, when I took my casual winter coat out from my closet, I found a pacifier in the pocket, left over from last winter when we were still active members of the pacifier club.
Last weekend, a nice woman pulled up in a van and gladly carted off my bassinet, pack-n-play, high chair, baby bath, doorway jumper, stroller, and everything else that was still in this house and meant for a baby. Her daughter-in-law is due any day and her son, a roofer, fell from a roof and was injured. The couple has no income and nothing ready for the baby so I gave it all away to a struggling young mother, as I always wanted to be able to do. It’s gone.
Sigh.
Over the years, I have irresponsibly used lots of forms of birth control. Condoms, pills, diaphragms, sponges, jellies, pull-and-pray, abstinence, and my favorite - the Mucus Watch Method (I’ll never look at raw egg whites quite the same again).
But the birth control era is about to be put behind me. Because, dammit, I’m too damn old to have pregnancy scares.
I’m really OK with it. I have no desire to start down this path again. That phase of my life is over now. We’re starting to sleep late on Saturdays and sometimes have morning sex. I’m able to stay up past 10 o’clock most nights. We actually took the girls to a movie a few weeks ago - all three of them! This is huge because Jadie (now 6) hates how loud they are and Raena (still 3) in previous attemps just wanted to go visit the bathrooms 57 times during the film. But we DID it - we made it through an entire film with only TWO bathroom trips!
We also now occasionally go to a restaurant where I don’t end up feeling like we’re a family freak show.
Still, I sometimes see a little boy who brings to mind a young version of my husband and I have some pangs. Or I’ll hear a cute ‘all boy’ anecdote about a child (recently, it was a friend who relayed her toddler’s comment “Mommy, I keep pushing my penis down but it wants to pop back up again.” haha) and feel that part missing from my history of parenthood. So there is that, but I suppose there will always be that.
I dreamed about new little ones in my arms, in my family. I dreamed about taking in twin girls who were 2 or 3 years old. In the dream, I found them wandering in the street and I stopped my van and just buckled them right in and brought them home with me and suddenly I had seven daughters. There was a boy there too, not in the street but on the periphery. I did not take him home in my van. I don’t know what that means, but I suppose I choose to interpret it as evidence that I was meant to raise girl children. It may be too early to boast, but based on those first two, I think I must do a damn good job of it - they are amazing women.
Over the time I’ve been blogging, I think I’ve blogged on this topic more than any other. Does it mean I’m very certain or very ambivalent? Or both? How can one be both? Fertility is such a complex and emotionally charged subject. From every single angle… starting too young, waiting too long, having too many, having too few, gender balancing, adoption, birth control, vascetomies, and much more. So personal, so often fraught with hope or regret or fear or disappointment or… Still, even with my five children, even though I’ve been doing this parenting gig for so many years, even though I’m sure I’m finished, it’s hard. The end of an era.
I’ve been wearing that damn winter coat for a month now and each time I slip my hand in the pocket, I feel that pacifier in there.
And I smile.
