2. Why Don't I Want to Have a Baby?

Hi, Friends!

Here’s chapter 2, a week early but hopefully not premature. I got such lovely responses from you all on Chapter 1. Thank you. I’m especially fond of this one from my college friend Caleb Nelson:

I really appreciate this question – “is God kind to women?“

A sort of latter-day Milton, your chosen task is to justify the ways of God to women. You’re right—there is a crushing need for someone trustworthy to speak to this! Which is why I’m glad you’re doing it.

Because who doesn’t want to be compared to Milton?

I also love this response from my OTHER college friend, Tiffany Chamberlain. This is her answer to the question about God’s kindness:

"Is God kind to women?" I think one reason He allows such pain (physically and otherwise) is so He can be tender to us. That's a pleasant meditation.

Also, pregnancy and birth are a profound way to be united to Christ both in his creating and sustaining life, and in His suffering. We know He calls us to fellowship in His suffering, but He also allows us a sort of fellowship in His life-giving power. The miracle of creation not simply written on the first page of Genesis, but happening within us. We keenly feel Him creating, knitting together the eternal from nothing.

Some of you sent me clarifying edits too, all now incorporated. Thank you!

Anyway, you’ll remember I left you last week hanging in the abyss wondering what would happen to my baby after the doc said she wouldn’t live. If you didn’t read chapter 1, catch up here.

Chelsea

Chapter 2: Why Don’t I Want to Have a Baby?

In Search of the Suppository

I neglected to mention earlier that before Dr. M. sent me home to await his fateful phone call, he prescribed me progesterone suppositories. Only one compounding pharmacy nearby supplied these, he warned, the one in my husband’s childhood hometown.

My husband had often told me this town “was always on fire or underwater.” But on the day I went for the suppositories, it was under snow. I crossed the street in winter boots and a coat, carrying the knowledge of the imperiled baby, a secret between only the doctor, Jonathan, and me. As far as I knew, this progesterone suppository, whatever it was and whatever you did with it, was the only thing that might save the tiny baby.

I climbed the ramp, pulled the door, spotted bottle-filled shelves. Were the little feet inside me marching to “The Little Drummer Boy” on the overhead radio? No, of course not, not yet.

“I have a script for progesterone suppositories,” I said bravely to the dough-faced attendant, though this was something I’d rather not be talking about anywhere, to anybody.

The druggist froze me with a plastic gaze. “We’re out.”

I waited to hear what else she might offer, but she only said, “It takes four days.”

I needed these mystical death-reversing sticks to save the seed I carried. I needed them yesterday. I needed them last week. But polite till death, I did not press my need. At 27, I didn’t know how to stand up for myself.

Okay, now we’re caught up.

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The Phone Rings Two Days Later

“I’m calling to confirm your appointment.”

It’s the lady at the front desk at Dr. M.’s office.

“Yes, but what did the doctor say?”

“What did the doctor say about what?”

“About the pregnancy hormone levels.”

“Oh—” a long silence— “They look normal.”

I stop pacing to get my brain around this. Is this a miracle? Or was the sonogram full of mistakes? I’ll never know for sure because I’m too sick and scared to chase the problem to its source, but I think both.

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Ordering Seeds

By February in Pennsylvania, the couch and I are really deepening our relationship. I can feel the springs in my back, the layer of brown corduroy upholstery growing thinner by the day. I smell, always, like progesterone suppositories.

“What day even is it?” I ask my best friend Kayla on the phone. She’s a nurse in Ohio with babies of her own.

“The seventeenth.”

“Time to plant seedlings.” I’m staring at the Baker Creek seed catalog on the coffee table. “But I’ll be nauseous through planting season and nursing a baby through harvest. I’m starting to wonder if I should even order seeds.” A stab of migraine pain behind my left eye. “Besides, cats.”

“Cats?”

“Yeah, when you’re pregnant you can’t garden unless you wear gloves. Toxoplasmosis risk.”

“But you don’t have a cat.”

“Doesn’t matter. The book says a neighbor cat might come poop in your garden.”

“What book?”

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”

I can almost hear her eyes roll. “Then wear gloves!”

My stomach churns and a spring stabs my back. Bravery curls against my swelling abdomen, watching cartoons. I feel guilty she watches so many cartoons. “I don’t do garden gloves. The whole point of the garden is to touch dirt.”

Women have babies every day. Every person I see was born. So what is wrong with me, that I am horrified by the idea of birth?

I want my baby to live. I want her. I even want more children in the abstract, philosophical sense. To fill my house with life. To fill my world with meaning beyond myself. The toothpaste is out of the squeezer, the camel’s nose is in the tent, and the invisible has become inevitable. You can’t be a little bit pregnant. You’re all the way there as soon as you start.

At the same time, though, I don’t want to give birth. This morning I stared in disbelief at all the people I passed in Walmart: How could God be so cruel—I’m asking myself, the universe—to make women everywhere endure birth? I ask this, but I don’t ask it aloud to my best friend. I don’t know how. I don’t know anybody else asking this question. I’ve never even heard anyone ask it.

“Order the seeds” my best friend tells me. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

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⁉️A Question for You . . .

Do you/did you believe childbearing would mean the end of the good life—or the beginning of the good life?

💌 More from Chelsea

It’s the close of the last week of Advent—Hope Week. It’s also the very beginning of seed season. Do you ever feel naive for hoping? Naivete and Nativity share a rusty old Latin root: just born. To hope is not to be naive. To hope is to know God is coming to live with us forever.

My advice: Instead of poring over the Amazon catalog, order one of these babies for free and start dreaming of spring. My kids love the pictures of giant vegetables. So much fun for no $. To fail to garden is to fail to hope.

(credit: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds)