Every female older than me in my family; grandmother, mother, aunts (those I know of) all went through menopause early. As a family; we seem to start our "flow" early, be incredibly fertile, and have all sort of feminine issue eventually leading to hysterectomy or early menopause. I've always known this, always expected it.
But the story starts when I was expecting my second child, Tori. I was 21 when I was expecting her and we were living in the guest house at my in-laws. I was on WIC and we were getting unemployment and food stamps. All I could think about was ending up with 5 kids; like my mom or even my husbands mother. They were still getting food stamps and other government aids.
I was also consciouses of the type of life, I as a child, had lived due to the extra mouths in the family. (I have to say, that is one of hate few times being the oldest comes in handy. I was here first. )
So I made the decision to have my tubes died after Tori's birth, and I did. I did not regret my decision until some years later when after I divorced the girls dad, I met and married Steven. While I never had more than my two girls I truly felt that having children was a life-changing experience. I would never have become the person I am today if it had not been for that experience, for my girls. And I didn't want to take that opportunity away from Steve.
We discussed it for years and finally about 4 or 5 years into our marriage we arranged and paid for a tubal-reversal. Although we both had full-time jobs with benefits at the time; neither of them paid for the reversal and we were out $5,000 for the chance at having a child.
After the surgery, which was classified as major and left me in the hospital for 4 days, we went in for testing to see how everything seemed to be working. The tubal repair had been successful. However, the doctors noted that my extended length of time with tied tubes may have put me in, or near, early menopause. I was ovulating very rarely. With my issues and some of Steve's own, they offered us less than a 5% chance of conceiving without the aid of hormonal treatment.
So I started a hormonal program and all I can say is it is HELL. It is like the worse day of your period every multiplied by at least 4 for the entire week surrounding your ovulation cycle. Besides cramps, you have to deal with out of whack emotions that would send most sane people to the loony farm. With my escape clause, of not being sane to begin with, I managed to survive. Barely. During the year+ I took the hormone therapy we conceived and lost two children.
The second one we lost we had known about for over 6 weeks. We'd carefully monitored it. Named it -- we were going to call it George (after Steve's granddad and the comic "I'm going to love it, an squeeze it, and call it George"). I had already crocheted it little hats and booties. When we were far enough along for a sonogram it came up empty. Even though I had been in for blood work 2-3 times a week for 5 weeks; and all signs showed adequate increase in the pregnancy hormone, there was not a baby in the uterus. We were forced to abort.
I almost didn't survive this loss. I would lay for hours in the hammock in my back yard and just look at the sky with tears running out of eyes. No energy, not enough life, to even cry. We decided that was that. I got off the hormones and we moved into our future without the thought of children.
The combination of losing George and making the decision not to try made it nearly impossible or me to be around other children for over a year. It just hurt to much. About two years after we quit trying we found out we were expecting Will, our less than 5% chance baby, our miracle -- later spelled T R I A L.
By this point we were both looking 40 right in the face. While maturity does have much to offer in the way of raising children, it lacks a lot too. I have patience, a better understanding about not sweating the small stuff, a true enjoyment of every time thing he does, and the easy ability to insert life lessons in everything he does. I do not have any energy or design to sit in the dirt and play cars.
After Will was born, Steve and I reserved the right to readdress the possibility of another child after Will was a little older. We both pretty much decided before he was out of his first year that he should be an only child (not discounting Bonnet and Tori; but they are so much older than him and don't live at home). The older and more adventurous, athletic, energetic, curious he got the more we reinforced to each other -- only child.
I can't begin to explain to those of you who are younger, or who do not have children at our age, how very difficult just keeping up with them for the day is.
So every month that mother nature is a little late, that I don't start on exactly the date I thought I would, you can hear me chanting in a call for it to be so . . .
"Come on Menopause"
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