Here’s Your Brother, the Dog
Had we gotten pregnant as quickly as we did the first time, I would be giving birth during these very weeks we’re in right now. Instead, we have a new mini Australian Shepherd and no plans any time soon to make those appointments for starting the clomid that my OBGYN said I’d likely need to kickstart ovulation again.
What would it have been like? Welcoming number two during a global pandemic, that is. Doable, sure—I can gather as much from posts of those freshly out of labor and delivery themselves. Maybe nice in some ways? All of us at home, tucked in, sharing maternity leave with the rest of humanity rather than feeling left behind by a moving world. Probably really sad, too, because I’m one of those needs-the-village-it-takes (and also Zoloft) kinds of moms who would have had a dependably hard time not having her own family for such events and support.
But we didn’t. We haven’t. And these aren’t the waters we’re navigating. Alternatively, Bridger gets older every day, and I work hard in moments not to wonder what sibling reality my weaknesses (first mental, then emotional, now physical) have kept him from. It’s a cliff I can come down with my own inner fact-checking and shame-batting decently enough. But, a cliff nonetheless. Did we wait too long?
The inner dialogue sounds a little like this: Is it the weight—brought and kept on by postpartum depression and unsustainable restriction dieting—that dictated this outcome? Or the pre-diabetes and colon cancer that I have diagnosed myself with having thanks to my very reliable education in medicine from—you may have heard of it—Google? Yes, Bridger might have a wonderful brother or sister someday, but will he have a buddy in them? How could I risk coronavirus for fertility meds when I don’t even know if we’ll have income in four months or how the world will change or if the body I haven’t *done right by* would even take to it? Waiting is fine, to wade social distancing and work on health. But what about time? Time and these ovaries, are they friends? Not at the moment it seems. Maybe I’ll get just old enough and fertilized(?) enough to birth twins . . . can you imagine? With my anxiety? You’d have to hide the alcohol.
Most of the time, I’m not thinking about it. But when I am, it feels significant. The makeup of one’s family and future and all this control that is never there . . . it’s not light reading IYKWIM.
But if I was talking to someone else instead of listening to me, I’d remind her to celebrate the story she’s got and not open herself to the jeers from the one she wonders if she was supposed to have. It’s a good one. A great one. Different like all the rest, wrapped in permission to be enjoyed and not haunted by all the shoulds. So much of my life has been haunted by the shoulds. I’d tell that girl, “Those are imaginary lines that you yourself drew. Paint over them.”
So we have a dog now. He’s a good dog (except for the poop I mentioned earlier). B is in love, and our home feels whole. We’re still sewing seeds for other things, too (this wasn’t meant to be a euphemism but here we are)—still coming down from cliffs periodically; but this is a life worth celebrating. This one.
Friends whose family hopes or considerations have been thwarted or confused by Covid, I see you. Hugs.