Our TTC journey effectively ended when the last two embryos were used. One of those became Emelia and all I wanted and hoped for was that IVF would work one last time and we would have a second child. When we got her, I felt complete. I felt good about ending our parenting journey.
But of course, infertility isn’t that simple and I was left scarred, traumatized, and an emotional mess. Of course, I had a newborn occupying most of my thoughts. But while I knew I never wanted to be pregnant again, while I knew our family was complete, I still couldn’t go through something like, you know, permanent birth control.
Chris was more than happy to go through with a vasectomy. At first, we joked about the sheer absurdness of having a vasectomy after we had been having unprotected sex for the last 14 years. Not only was I confident that the odds of getting pregnant spontaneously were next to nil, I couldn’t fathom doing something so permanent as a vasectomy.
Does that make sense? To recap:
- Truly don’t ever want to get pregnant again.
- Feel panicked when I thought about closing the door forever on ever getting pregnant.
Makes perfect sense, right?
So Chris initially brought up the idea of a vasectomy when Emelia was really little. Like, probably when she was still in the NICU. I said god no, are you serious right now? I’m infertile, I’m never going to get pregnant on my own. How can we shut those doors forever?
Then one night, not long after Emelia came home with us, I was riding in the passenger seat of the car, with the worst heartburn I’ve ever had in my life and sky-high blood pressure. Those are two signs of preeclampsia and I was terrified it had returned. We were on our way to the ER to the hospital I gave birth at the direction of my OB.
In the car, I told Chris, never again. I’m not ever getting pregnant again. My body hates it, it sucks at it, and not ever again. Let’s get the vasectomy.
Turns out it was….heartburn. The most holyhellfire heartburn I’ve ever had in my life that wasn’t helped by any OTC med I had, but my preeclampsia labs came back normal, and the whole thing was really weird, but it was enough for me to say no thank you to ever potentially going through this again.
But then a few months passed and when Chris brought up the vasectomy thing again I…hesitated.
I was a fucking idiot.
Then we had a legit pregnancy scare where I skipped a period and wrote about for YourTango. I encourage you to read it to get some idea of how fucked up it would be to actually get pregnant on my own.
Again, I wanted the vasectomy. We talked, but nothing really came of it, time passed, and we got complacent, in that, we knew we were really never going to get pregnant on our own.
In the last few months, I’ve made a lot of strides in working through the trauma infertility (and my two pregnancies) had left me with. Not only was I feeling really content with life with two girls, but I was really happy. I was at peace that we were moving on from the baby-making part of life and really moving forward. My business was taking off. No more was I going to be backing off because of a fertility treatment or a pregnancy or maternity leave for being a SAHM with a baby. In fact, I was going to be ending this year with my highest income yet, far higher than any job I ever worked as a nurse.
And even more so, I was accepting that getting a vasectomy was a good thing. Something that would give us some insurance that I wasn’t going to be 46 and find myself pregnant. Because it happens, right? Look at Father of the Bride Part 2.
No thank you.
So let’s fast forward because I have one more story before we get to the point, which I know you could have guessed from reading the first paragraph of this post.
I had my friend over one day earlier in the month. She had her tiny new baby girl, her second, and we were sitting downstairs and I was holding her daughter, loving on her but also at the same time joking that I was so glad I was never going to have another baby again.
I mean, realize, it’s not necessarily the baby I didn’t want. It was the pregnancy. Having preeclampsia twice now, with gestational diabetes issues for at least one of them, and no. Just no. No more high-risk pregnancies for me, no siree.
In fact, we were both talking about how nice it is knowing we each had our two kids, and our families were complete. “I’m going to talk to Chris about doing the vasectomy,” I told her.
Two nights later, I was getting into bed and felt some slight cramping, making me wonder if I would get my period soon. (Nothing worse than getting your period at night when you have white sheets.) In the dark, I pulled up my period tracker on my phone.
9
DAYS LATE
I stared at it for a moment, not initially freaking out, but like, oh weird.
For the last week or so my nipples were sore when Emelia would nurse. She only nurses now once a day or every other. And it doesn’t happen every month, because I don’t think I actually ovulate every month, but when I do, I have that soreness for a few days around ovulation.
The fact that I had been having soreness for a week didn’t ever cross my mind until that night. Because if it were true, that would mean I would have had a period two weeks ago. Clearly I was losing track of time because it was more like a period over five weeks ago.
So I’m in bed curled up next to Chris who is snoozing away and my head is racing.
My period’s late. But it’s been late before when I had those two other scares.
But have my nipples ever hurt during that time?
Oh god, what if I’m pregnant?
You’re not pregnant, you’re infertile.
It’s probably just late.
We’re getting the vasectomy. Wake the husband up and share this with him.
Stop being a psycho.
I should take a pregnancy test tomorrow.
No, right now.
Stop being a psycho and go to bed.
I went to bed, telling myself I’d take the test in the morning. I had one left over from the last pregnancy scare.
The next morning, Chris got up before me, so I was alone when I woke. Take the test and see that it’s negative so you can move on.
I found the lone FRER in the bathroom drawer, so reminiscent of the days of infertility. Of course, it’s been a while so I had to actually read the package instructions. I watched in real-time as my pee moved across the test window as I perched on the toilet. I don’t even think I had wiped yet.
And that second line, a raging dark pink showed up immediately.
