True Story:
I never wanted children. I didn’t see why anybody would want them. They’re noisy and not easily bossed around. I had a little brother I adored and a gaggle of cousins that I also adored. As a teenager, I did some babysitting because you are supposed to as a teenage girl, but more than once, I found myself staring stupidly at a child wondering, “What does it want now?”
When I met the man that was to be my husband, one of the things that made us so well suited to each other is that he didn’t have any hairbrained and romatic ideas about babies. I was saving money to back to university. We were going to be an educated and childless couple with Club Med vacations and designer clothes.
A couple of years later, we were engaged, had put off the wedding for a year to buy a house. Mark worked long hours, often travelling to Asia and I was gone more than twelve hours a day studying to be an engineer. Ahhh.. the good life. I knew people at school who had kids. And whenever they’d talk about their children, I’d imagine making that “L” with my finger and thumb on my forehead and rolling my eyes at them. I mean really, people are stupid, aren’t they?
Then one night, everything changed.
I had a dream. I dreamt I was holding a baby boy. He was my child. I could feel the weight of his head in my hand. I could smell his wonderful baby smell. I bent down and felt his cheek against mine. I stood in one place holding and just looking at this infant and he just looked back at me. There was no else in the whole world. Just me and my baby.
Then I woke up. It was still dark of course, but the alarm was going and I was still half asleep thinking about the joy this baby brought me.
But there was no baby. It had only been a dream. As I woke fully and came to the realization that it had only been a dream, I was heartbroken. And I cried. Mark put on the light and sat up. “I want a baby!” I sobbed. He looked confused. I’m pretty sure he was thinking, “Wow, her PMS is bad this month.” In the end, he had nothing to say and I pulled myself together and went to school.
That feeling never left me. Not for a single moment. I was haunted by that baby. Mark was not keen on the idea. He wanted me to finish school first. I offered to quit. He wanted us to get married first. I asked him to justify that with a reason other than, “because that’s what you do”. Through all of this, I cried and I cried. The sight of children and babies left me reeling. Once, I was in the library and a tour of kids from the daycare came through. I came out from between the stacks and found myself surrounded by them. The sight of those tiny heads and tiny snowsuits. I could hear them breathing and whispering and giggling and I could smell them. I wanted to reach out and stroke their hair. I kept enough control to remember that nobody likes a stranger touching their child and hurried back to the desk where I had been studying. It unnerved me so much that I went home early.
Eventually, two years after my dream, Mark agreed and suddenly we were Trying to Get Pregnant. The trying went on a lot longer than I expected. I went to my doctor several times, usually in tears. In the past I had brought up with my doctor my concerns that I might have endometriosis. It was always dismissed and I worried that I had been right. I worried that I was too old or too fat or just plain undeserving.
After almost two years of trying, I gave up. I just couldn’t take it anymore. The heartbreak every time I got my period had become unbearable. I truly believed that I wasn’t pregnant because I didn’t deserve nor was I good enough for a baby. I conciously worked to bring my thinking back to my old way of thinking – I was going to be all about career and travel and isnt-the-world-over-populated-anyway? Besides, I prefer to not have spit up on my clothes and I really do enjoy my sleep. I threw away all the fertitily indicator doohickies and I worked harder than ever at school. And I tried to forget that baby boy in my dream.
It didn’t work, of course and I was miserable. But with my fake-it-til-I-make-it attitude I was moving on.
One day in late October or early November in 1995, I was at a baby shower for someone else. It was in a beautiful old house in Rosedale in Toronto. I remember kicking through the leaves in the gutters as I walked from where I had parked to the house. I remember that I wore a black suit – wide legged pants and a vest and that I had made a quilt and crocheted a blanket for the baby. I remember that the food was amazing. And there was champagne punch. For so long I had not had any alcohol in case I was pregnant that I just automatically declined when offered some. But after a moment I changed my mind and went and got a glass. It was delicious. I had another.
A woman – a writer – came and sat with me. I had only met her a few times before and we talked for a bit. She asked me when I was going to have children. “Oh, not me!” I replied. “I’m just not the having babies kind of person. I don’t think I could have a career and be a mother and be good at both and well, I’m more comfortable with computer models than I am with kids!”
That day I was, of course, pregnant. I just didn’t know it yet.
