Cold Comfort

I talked about it on my main blog, but I want to add a few notes here.

• One of many reasons I am thinking it's time for The Snip is birth control. The options suck, as we have discussed many times before. Right now I don't want to use hormonal birth control so we're using condoms/spermicide, and every time we use them I feel like I've been injured internally. Plus, if we use them two days in a row I get a UTI.

• Mike is a laid-back guy. It's one of his strong suits (as a neurotic over-fretter, I need his balance and calm), but it also means he's unlikely to make the appointment. If he waits too long, I'll stop using birth control and tell him so; that'll get him to the urologist in about 24 hours, is my guess. But I would resent being made to MANIPULATE him into something that is HIS CHOICE.

• I feel like this is his last chance to change his mind. I also feel that the fact that I am saying "Okay, go ahead and do it" gives me permission to make several last-ditch attempts: once the official surrender documentation is in place, the prisoner's entreaties don't have the same political impact. Tonight I said I thought his "no room in his heart for another baby" was bullshit, and I drew his attention specifically to our fifthborn, who is, frankly, his favorite, and I reminded him that he didn't think he had room for this one, but he did, and in fact he had more than enough room. Mike didn't argue, and he looked affectionately at fifthborn child as I was talking, and I know that he agrees with me---and yet I don't think it will change his mind.

• At this point, if he DID change his mind, I don't even know what I'd do. It's been two years since I thought I might die and/or divorce him if we didn't have another baby, and at this point I guess I must have mostly adjusted, because if he said, "You know what? I really think we should have just one more," I would have mixed feelings. Part of me would be ON THAT in about 2 seconds, and part of me would be thinking I'd rather risk having a baby than risk regretting one---and part of me would be thinking, "Hey, wait, really? The barfing, the worry, the diapers, the potty-training...?" ...Never mind: as I was typing that, I was doing the math and those tiny things don't even register on the scale against how wonderful it is to have another person here.

• So, if he said yes, I would have another baby. In fact, that's what kills me: that every month, another chance at a person disappears. The person who could have been absolutely essential to my continued happiness is gone forever. EVERY MONTH. And worse: we're running out of months, no matter what the decision is.

• I think the whole "both partners have to be 100% on board" thing is an enormous load of crap. ENORMOUS. load. of. crap. And I think it's used because it SOUNDS true---as do many other things that are believed fervently without any intellectual investment.

• I'd like to redirect my natural inclinations (loving babies, wanting babies), but it seems to me there isn't anywhere to put them. Before I had any children, I tried working in daycare, thinking that would help my baby fever---and I don't know how to explain it, but FAIL. The baby name blog helps. The idea of future grandchildren helps. Other people's pregnancies help. Buying baby things for charity helps. My niece, and the possibility of another niece or nephew---that helps. But there is no real outlet for this, um, "gift," this ability to want and love many sons and daughters. I'm stuck. People say "Be yourself! DO what you ARE!!" but sometimes that's not possible.

• At my last OB appointment I started crying and asked him to tell me when these baby cravings would GO AWAY, because this was RIDICULOUS. He said kindly, "Well, I can tell you this: the women in their sixties don't talk to me about it anymore." I was not comforted by this: after menopause, of COURSE women wouldn't be talking about it anymore to the OB. And my sixties are more than twenty years away. But I found his tone of voice comforting: it was sympathetic, and it implied that I was not the only one going through this. That I was not the only one crying to him in the exam room.

• I'll tell you where I find comfort right now: in thinking of each human being's insignificance, and in thinking that even if I DID have a sixth child, in a hundred years we'll still all be dead. My great-grandmother had eleven children (with two sets of twins), and now she is dead, and so are all her children, and it doesn't matter if she had always wanted a twelfth and pined the rest of her life, or if she'd wanted an eleventh and her husband didn't but went with it. Nothing matters. THAT is COMFORTING.