Did you have your entire future reproductive history figured out in your early 20s?
I didn’t. In my early 20s, I had a vague notion that someday I might want a child or two, but I certainly couldn’t imagine motherhood as I understand and experience it now. It was impossible then. I was young, somewhat selfish, and made some stupid and short-sighted decisions.
There is a lot of arrogance in youth—the notion you have life figured out before you’ve figured out yourself is rampant and nearly universal in our culture. Granted, some people mature quickly because of life circumstances or inherent maturity.
I wasn’t one of them, which is why I am having trouble wrapping my mind around a blog post I read about a woman who allowed herself to be surgically sterilized at the age of 24. She has no children and feels she never will have the desire. Her name is “Jamie”.
She has the right to purposely scar her fallopian tubes into absolute oblivion. Just because I would never do that doesn’t mean she can’t. I like all the systems in my body to work. No other system in our bodies is as feared, misunderstood, respected, and disrespected as the reproductive system. I never hear of people obsessing over their skeletal system unless something is wrong. Only the reproductive system is manipulated, altered, or destroyed to prevent the functions it is anatomically created to perform—and most people applaud this in our society. Here I am, expecting my seventh baby, and I am glad for all the medical and surgical ways my body has been helped to achieve my family dream.
Left to my body’s wisdom, Beatrix would be dead due to her cord prolapsing during labor. It wasn’t going to sort itself out or go away. I was only 4 cm, nowhere near pushing. I had my first c-section to save her life. I’ll probably have another c-section. If that isn’t manipulation of the “natural” birth/reproductive process, I don’t know what is. So please don’t think I am condemning decisions to limit family size or undergo fertility treatments, either. I am not.
We think our hearts and our heads are in charge, don’t we? Really, it’s ovary and testicle that take up a great deal of our mental and physical energies, in the end. They bark the orders when we are adults, more than we care to admit.
Either Jamie is wise beyond her years, knowing with a deep and abiding instinct she isn’t mother material, or is a complete fool. There is no middle ground here.
