The Nuanced Grief of Infertility
On losing something I wasn’t sure I wanted
It’s been 82 days since I had my uterus and all its appendages removed in what my surgeon and I have affectionately dubbed “not your grandma’s hysterectomy.”
Once removed, my fallopian tubes and uterus were found to be so ravaged by endometriosis that my specialist was confident I never would have naturally conceived a child. The disease had also compromised my bowel to the point where we required a second surgeon to shave off layers of it and stitch it up. They even prepped me beforehand for a possible ostomy. I didn’t need this, but they had to leave a little of the disease inside me, just to keep things spicy.
Of course, we knew all of this definitively only after they’d completed the surgery, which may be why before they would consent to operate, they made me see a counselor and write a letter proclaiming my certainty that I didn’t want kids and would not regret my decision. They couldn’t know that my chances to procreate were so minute without going in, so instead, they needed to know that I was completely okay with the fact that I’d never bear a child of my own. And in some ways, I was okay with it.
I’ve written about this before, but I’ll sum up. Having children was always on the periphery for us. Something I assumed I would do…
