I Don't Want to Have Children.
When I was eighteen, I remember wanting nothing more than to marry my high school sweetheart, have four children, and live in a wonderful little suburb just like the one I grew up in. I was ready to be the next June Cleaver. But, as all childhood dreams eventually clash with harsh reality, this did too. And it didn’t take long. When I was eighteen, I had an “oops” moment. I knew that I didn’t have the means to support a child, and was scared out of my wits. A few weeks later, it was over. This was my first miscarriage.
Unfortunately, this was a pattern that repeated itself four more times in my life. Three of them occurring when I was in an abusive marriage and being forced off of birth control. Three miscarriages in a span of seven months. Even if pregnancies aren’t necessarily what we want at that time in our life, the realization fills you with so much hope, that when it fails, you feel complete and utter despair and disappointment in yourself. You feel empty and hollow. I was 21.
After this point, I had resolved not to have any children of my own, because bearing the pain of losing another was too much to handle. And after having what we tend to call a “failed marriage”, though in reality that is probably the worst and most self-blaming term we have for it, I no longer believed in my eighteen-year-old dream. At 22, I felt I could live a fulfilled life just being me. At 22, I became pregnant yet again. This pregnancy lasted just shy of three months before it happened again.
Shortly after this, I began to experience my full on symptoms of being bipolar. Extreme manic highs that had me running five miles, scrubbing the entire house clean, writing three book reviews and 2,000 words for a novel of my own in a span of five hours and not needing an ounce of sleep; to extreme manic lows of depression, barely being able to get out of bed, complete emptiness, letting all of my responsibilities go, and hiding myself away from the world.
It wasn’t until two years and two psychotic breaks later that I finally realized I couldn’t fix this on my own, and sought treatment. Treatment, that told me I will have to be on medication for the rest of my life. Now, most people don’t understand the term “psychotic break”. Through my own experience, it is a break in time where you temporarily go insane. I could literally feel and see my brain unraveling. Many more disturbing things happened before I finally blacked out. I lost hours from my memory and didn’t know what I had done or where I had been, and woke up somewhere without realizing how I'd gotten there.
The thought of having a child and passing on this disease was, and is, absolutely horrifying to me. The fact that I could force this madness onto another human being was the worst atrocity I could ever think of. By 24 my resolve was absolute. There was no way in hell I would force another person to live this life.
I have been asking doctors to allow me to have my tubes tied for six years. Regardless of five miscarriages, and a mental illness that, if ever off of my medication, could cost me my life, they refuse to acquiesce unless I have tried every method of birth control offered to me. They say I’m too young to make decisions like this about my body. I should wait until after I’m thirty to really make sure because, and I quote, “women have a tendency to change their minds a lot.”
If my doctors had listened to me at 22, I wouldn’t have had to try over seven different methods of birth control, which have had lasting, painful, after effects on my body. I have been put through enough in 28 years of life that I can firmly tell you, I am still as staunchly against bearing my own children now as I was at 22.
I am now at the age where most of my friends are having their first or second child. Unfortunately, I had to watch a dear friend go through her first miscarriage, and if anything, it only furthered my resolve to finally get someone to listen. I don't care how many doctors I have to see, I will get this done.
