The Need for a Child

There are two sides to this aspect of the story. There's a positive, there's a negative. There's everything in between.

I'm talking about the absolute, overwhelming need for me to be a mom. Since I was little, like many other girls, I carried around baby dolls, dressed the cats up and held them like an infant and dreamed of the day I got to be the mom. My dreams and pretend life went deeper than most other girls. This wasn't just a role I was socialized to fill. This wasn't just a job that I idolized because I wanted to be like my own mother. This was a need, a longing, a love. The kind of need and longing you have that cannot be filled by any other thing except that thing. The kind that leaves you incomplete until it's come to pass.

Being diabetic, it's always been realistic for me to think that getting pregnant and fulfilling my need could be difficult. It's always been a fear that I woudn't be able to carry a pregnancy to full term. The risk for micarriage and premature birth as a diabetic is not minimal.

But with the recent developments in my health, a new fear and a new reality has hit me. Anovulatory syndrome (or polycystic ovarian syndrome) is plainly a lack of ovulation in my body. It doesn't make it impossible to conceive or impossible to carry the baby to term. I am not saying it's impossible. But I am saying that it adds to the risk of miscarriage, infertility and premature birth.

If I add both diabetes and anovulatory syndrome into my baby need, I'm not looking at such an easy or bright future in pregnancies. Oddly, I'm not as upset about that as I expected myself to be. Maybe because there is still hope in my mind. Maybe once I actually start trying to conceive and nothing happens or I have a miscarriage, maybe then it will hit me.

The other side of this story is the genetics and the risk on my own body. Should I even have a baby? Should I put myself through that? Should I put a baby through that? Should I risk my life with the complications that will arise? Should I risk a baby's life as it has to fight against diabetes and anovulatory syndrome?

This is the side of the story I'm not comfortable with. It's the side of the story that everyone's opinion differs on, even my own opinion differs on. There are options if I choose not to have a baby myself (surrogacy, adoption). But that doesn't fill my need to have a child myself. Yet it also leaves my conscious unclear as to what the best option is for myself, my child and my family.

Only time will tell if these medicines straighten my anovulatory syndrome out. Only time will tell what my future husband thinks of the risk, pregnancy, adoption. Only time will tell.