Wishing To Be

Throughout my entire adult life I've wanted to be a parent. Ideally I would have been married by the time I was 24 or 25 and started having children right away - 2 maybe 3. Life doesn't necessarily play to our ideals though. Instead I married at 29 and even though we started working on having a baby immediately we didn't have any luck. More than two years later we are still childless.

In reality our chances for having a baby are small. But we have decided to go ahead and try for a few months since our chances will only get worse with time. As you can imagine, I have all kinds of fears and doubts about my role in all of this as a result of my health situation. There is no way to know if my migraines will or will not go away during the pregnancy, but I do know I can't take any of my current medications if they persist. The prospect of having all this pain with no safe treatment is daunting. In the event that I do get pregnant and manage to bring my baby into this world I worry about how my chronic pain will impact my parenting. And, of course, I worry about never becoming a parent.

I know that between science and adoption we would be able to become parents. Unfortunately, we can't afford the steep fees associated with either without putting ourselves in serious financial jeopardy. We want to be parents very badly, but not at any cost.

Wanting to be a parent has become so much more complicated than I ever could have imagined it would be; complicated by time, endometriosis, chronic pain and even by money. I've certainly asked myself the "should we" questions in addition to the "can we" questions. There are no real answers to my should or can questions. But I sure do hope that I get the opportunity one day. What a high privilege it would be to raise a child.