Quiet Mountain Essays
Copyright,2004
The Mom/Not Mom Issue
(to be, or not to be)
Suzanne Sunshower
Welcome to the Mom/Not Mom issue. Sorry for the play on words. This became a themed issue simply
because back in the Spring I received a couple essays on the topic of motherhood and thought, 'Hmmm,
okay.' At the time, marking down the essay titles on the office calendar under October, I had no idea
what a difficult issue this would be for me to put out. When it came time to pull it together, I really
didn't want to. Screwing up my guts to finally do it, all I could think was, "What timing! What freakin'
timing!"
Recently I was on "medical leave" from my home office, fretting over the latest ovarian scare
caused by the fertility drugs I took last year. Of course, no one at the fertility clinic says there are
direct links between such things as ovarian cysts or cancer and fertility drugs, they like to say there
is an association.
By the way, if anyone reading this has taken fertility drugs - most especially the injectables - I
would caution you to arrange periodic vaginal ultrasounds to check your ovaries (at the very
least), for the rest of your life. Yes, I mean the rest of your life.
Even after two fertility drug-related scares, I still tried fertility drugs again. I figured what the hell,
I've already upped my chances for cancer, what's a little more jeopardy? Talk about insanity!
One nurse, listening in on our conversation, looked at me smugly before moving on. She was one
whom I knew assumed, as soon as I walked into the clinic, that I was another career woman who'd
not made time for kids, and now expected technology to correct my screwy priorities. The clinic is
in a rural state, just the kind of place where women have their priorities clear - they have kids first,
before they do anything else. Even if they have to unhappily marry an inappropriate mate to do
so.
The staff could see from my medical history that I was from Detroit... 'Damn eastern city woman
wasn't following god's plan, and look how she ended up; serves her right', I imagined that one smug
nurse was thinking, each time it was her turn to attend to me during a visit. She liked to remind
me of age and pregnancy statistics. I liked to remind her that I managed to get pregnant (and
miscarry) at age 40 without drugs, and that my infertility didn't begin until I came to the clinic for
all those crazy hormones. At which point, on one occasion, she noted that I'd terminated a
pregnancy while in my 20s, overlooking the fact that it had been recommended for my health.
One thing I discovered on the 'fertility' odyssey was that women can be mightily presumptive and
righteous towards other women, around this subject. God forbid a woman put off childbearing,
for whatever reason, and then try to conceive after others have decided she should stop trying.
Whatever that nurse had really thought about my situation, she still might have been wrong.
Dead wrong. I'd tried to follow the plan, but life kept getting in the way. And my sense of
responsibility.
It wasn't that I was enjoying working too much to stop and get pregnant while say, in my 30's;
with no family to lean upon, I had to work to pay the rent. That was not a choice, it was a
necessity. I kept track of my monthly ovulations, hoping my present situation would change into
a sensible time to have a child. I would have loved to have been barefoot and pregnant back
then...if I had found a supportive partner, or if the rent could have been magically paid!
Before I attempted to rev up my eggs with drugs, I consulted a book on herbal remedies. I looked
up the entry for fertility. There were several pages of herbal instruction on raising a man's fertility
(go figure), but only one notation regarding fertility and women: Most female infertility
problems could be solved by women having children at a younger age.
How foolishly simple was that? (Of course, the book was written by a man.) I almost threw it
across the room. What was that saying to women?!
Was a woman supposed to bear children before she was emotionally or psychologically ready, just
to make sure she didn't run out of time? Were she and the child supposed to live in poverty, if she
wasn't financially solvent? Not many women choose to begin a child's life that way. It happens a
lot, but it's rarely by a woman's choice. Worse, was she supposed to marry, or become pregnant
by, someone - anyone - even a man she did not want, simply to ensure she became a mom while
she could?
Personally, I could not have, on principle, chosen to do any of those things. And so I didn't.
We all know how precariously, hangs our right to Choose... Now we read in the media that a
woman who's had an abortion is at greater risk for developing certain cancers - the same as we've
been told that women who have not borne children are at risk. Does it sound fishy to you, too?
What about women who have had a d&c procedure after a miscarriage, aren't they then at great
risk? We don't hear that. Maybe they are magically okay again, after they've successfully borne a
child?
The warning that stood out most to me, from the fertility drug pamphlet, was the one in which the
risk to women taking the drug was compared to the risk women are at for not bearing children.
As if a woman is damned if she takes the drug to conceive, and damned if she doesn't bear a child.
Either way, damned.
For women, it's a reproductive mine field out there. Women do have the tough choices to make
regarding parenthood: if to be a mom, when to become a mom; among others. It isn't as simple as
that herbal remedy book infers, to just have children early. Or, to find a supportive mate.
Unfortunately in this country still, in reality, few women experience ideal circumstances in which
(to decide) to bear children. When we are, indeed, free to choose, we make the best choices we can
- for ourselves, and for our children.
Choice is part of being a thinking, caring woman - and a thinking, caring mom. The women
sharing their stories in this issue of QME are sharing their individual experiences of being
thinking, caring women.
As always, when a woman gives voice to her own life and inner experience, regarding her
womanhood - be she a mom or not - we all should listen to, think about, and respect what she
has to share. No judgement.
