Old and Sterile

"Is she going to be the only one?"


"Are you all planning to have more?"


"When you gonna have another?"


Lately, these questions have been coming at the Hubs and I in rapid-fire succession. I wish it were so easy to look at the Hubs, give him a wink and then 9-and-half months later give birth to a healthy baby. I can't tell you how much I wish it.

I have been a mother my entire life. I know that seems impossible, but even before Z came around, I was cooking for people, taking care of them, and when Blade and A were born I was smitten. My entire being is engulfed in the need to care for people that need me. I am a mother.

The yearning to have another baby has completely blindsided me in the last few months. The sound of a crying baby breaks my heart in two, the softness of their skin, the peacefulness when they sleep, my entire body yearning to hold and cuddle and nurse...

I had my yearly check-up and as I am waiting for the nurse to call me in - belly after pregnant belly passes in front of me. The office walls are covered in pictures of new mothers with their infants, of beautiful portraits of mothers holding their gorgeously molded bellies and inside every part of me is hurting, yearning, wanting.

My doc, the same one that delivered Z 4 years ago (yesterday and eternity) asks the routine questions. He stares at me puzzled, "It's been 4 years", he says and I nod. "Not even a thought that you might be pregnant at all in 4 years?" I shake my head as he scribbles notes on a pad.

He sends me for blood work and I know what is coming. I know because I have been down that road. I know because I have already done this before.

It doesn't make it hurt less when the phone rings. "We have the results of your blood test. You are not ovulating on your own. You will need to take fertility medicine. Even if you are not planning on getting pregnant right away, this process takes a while and it would be best if you started right away. We're very sorry. Some bodies just do this and we don't know why. You are getting older and you should start taking that into consideration as well."


I hang up the phone as my body goes numb. Back to the painful road of blood tests indicating pregnancy and bodily functions assuring you that that is most definitely not the case, back to the road of monthly tears and disappointment as month after month your body fails to do what it was made to do, back to charting temperatures and moods.

I know that it is all worth it in the end. I know because I have a beautiful and funny reminder of that every single day.

I don't know why my body cannot just work the way it's supposed to, I don't understand how it can be so easy for other people and so very very hard for others.

I have been a mother for as long as I can remember. I pray that I will be one again.