It was my decision to wait. Wasn’t it?
I took women’s health in college. I knew that fertility after 35 dramatically decreases, that the risks genetic abnormality increas along with the rates of miscarriage. I decided, however, quite based on my gut, that I’ve always been young for my age and that things always seem to work out for me.
My husband had just finished graduate school and his job prospects not stabilized. Though I had a job that could easily support mother and child, with good health insurance, I figured it would be better to have two parents, equally available and to have a bit more time to commit. Plus, we liked our lifestyle; heading out on school nights, eating out at nice restaurants, not worrying about our finances or budgeting for vacations.
We decided to wait – I decided to wait.
Then my mother happened, the cancer, and everything in my life and emotions turned upside down. My survival instincts took over, my depression closed in and I turned to drugs for the first (and to be only) time. I decided to take an anti-depressant, anti-anxiety med to escape all the noise in my head for a bit. And it was wonderful. It was one year of bliss. I felt like myself, only without all the voices telling me what a bad person I was, how much better I could do, what a terrible daughter I am. It was the store-bought heaven that brought me inner peace so I could properly deal with my mother dying or not dying over the course of a year. It was bliss. until I completely lost my menstrual cycle. So I went off it – deciding I couldn’t let an external substance take over my body to that extent.
My hormones and my adrenal system turned upside down.