Life After My Hysterectomy

I am grieving. I am mourning the deaths of babies I never had the opportunity to make. I've not lost any children, but I feel like I am in mourning because I've lost my ability to create them. I feel the same sense of hopelessness, the same overbearing feeling of loss, the same finality with my hysterectomy as I do about death. I am helpless.

The moments with my child are going by too fast. Soon she will be on sippy-cup only and whenever I wash a bottle now I can't help but wonder if I will ever do it again. I hear some parents say with glee that they're done with bottles or diapers. For me it feels like a death sentence.

Sometimes when my only existing child (a toddler rapidly entering her terrible twos) is having a tantrum or being extra clingy, a person will say "kinda makes you glad that you can't have more, doesn't it?" All I can do is force a smile and hope the topic is dropped. I know the words are said without malice—and usually from well-meaning loved ones. It doesn't make me feel better. Nothing does or ever will. I am replying on time to bring my grief to a simmer instead of this full boil.

My doctor has explained that I have every reason to feel sad. She was the second person to regard coping with life after my hysterectomy as a grieving process. I knew how I was feeling and it does very much feel like loss.

I want to mourn the children I will never have, and I am ashamed of myself for that. There are mothers that have lost actual pregnancies, actual babies, and actual children. I feel like I have no right to mourn. Logically I understand my situation and I wouldn't have it any other way. Logically I understand that this was medically necessary. I agree that a full hysterectomy was a must. I was in so much pain and I was bleeding so much. The bleeding finally stopped after approximately 108 heavy-flow days. Once the ovarian torsion happened, I wouldn't have cared if they broke every bone in my body as long as the pain would stop. I honestly thought I was going to die.

We'd been in Seattle all day anyway, preparing for this eventual surgery. The situation started earlier this year as unbearable pain in my lower left pelvis. I ignored it for a month before going to see my doctor for the first time. A second pregnancy? No. Ectopic pregnancy? Not that either. Cancer? Thankfully not. He suggested Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and referred me to a gynecologist.

The doctor I saw has been great to us. She seconded the diagnosis and sent me to a specialist in Seattle for further help. By then, I'd been bleeding for three months and having intense pains intermittently. When I saw the specialist and all was explained, a hysterectomy was the way to go. I knew that meant never having more children. I had to do whatever I could to remain alive and healthy for my daughter.

I went to Seattle with my husband and my daughter September 25 for a respiratory check-up. My gynecologist specialist was concerned about my lungs in surgery. We had just finished and were about an hour and a half away in Snoqualmie Falls when the pain started. We pulled over into a campsite but the bathroom was too horrendous. We went to a mini mart and I couldn't take it anymore. My husband had to call for an ambulance. They took me back to the same Seattle hospital I'd been to just hours before.

Logically I know that I am so lucky. I lived. I have a beautiful, healthy daughter. I had amazing doctors. I'll never have a period again. But I still feel so empty. I will never have the rush of anticipation while awaiting my pregnancy test results. I will never feel the tremble of a hiccuping fetus curled snugly in my womb. I will never breastfeed a warm, soft, small piece of my own heart. I will never name a baby again. I never got to have a baby shower and now I never will.

I had baby clothes saved, a baby book, albums, and I had names chosen. I have been collecting baby stuff for the last seven years. It has been the goal of my entire life. I used them with my daughter and saved them after she grew out of them for the next. I started the first part of my grief process after I knew that I wouldn't be having another. I have given away the clothes. I traded the antique baby book for a diaper bag that better fit our growing daughter's needs. I donated or sold everything I was holding onto in our one bedroom apartment.

But what do I do with his name? With hers? I have spent years collecting for my future children. Meticulously crafting their names. My husband, trying to be compassionate, said "use them on a pet." I love my cats very much, but he doesn't understand that these names already belong to my imaginary babies.

I feel so insensitive. I am the mother of a child, but I still feel depressed. I still feel like I have no surprises in my future. My dream of being a mother to a houseful of children is literally impossible now and I am in agony over it. I have no grave to visit and no trinket to clutch because they only existed in my mind and my heart. An imaginary friend, but my child. My children.

My husband is perfectly content with only one child. We both come from large families. We both have four siblings. He doesn't understand my turmoil. His life is complete and he is happy. He has a loving wife, a wonderful daughter, and three gorgeous cats. I am also happy with him, her and them. She is perfect but I am not complete. I am thankful for her every moment of my life. I love my life because of my beloved family. I am unhappy with me. I know that the problem is mine—the problem is me. He is content to stop at one and she is content to be an only child. Only I am discontent. And I feel like I am not allowed to be. I hate myself for feeling this way.

I feel sorry for my husband and for our marriage. We haven't had sex since the beginning of 2017. I was in too much pelvic pain and bleeding for too long. Now, as I am healing, we abstain for obvious healing reasons. I know he is antsy. He speaks about it. He hints at it. He doesn't pressure, but I can feel his impatience. But why? What is the point now? We can't reproduce anymore. We can spend quality time doing other more meaningful things.

My sex drive is absolutely dead. Dead physically, emotionally, mentally, totally, and completely. It's gone. I don't know if it's my hysterectomy, the medical menopause I am in, my antidepressants, or a giant mixture of everything. I don't know what I want to do once the doctor clears me to have sex. I don't know how I should feel.

I feel like an old woman. I am past my child-bearing time. I am dried up. I am barren and empty. A dry fruit and a barren field. It's as though my life is almost over. If my daughter, like many people in recent generations, decides not to have any children, I will never be a grandmother. I may never hold a newborn baby ever again. It seems irrational to be so concerned since my daughter is only fifteen months old, but it is all-consuming for me. I feel the same hopeless, impossible dread about my own mortality as I do the finality of never conceiving another child.

I feel a chill go through my body when I see a pregnant woman or a mother holding a newborn. With practise, I am now able to keep my emotions in place. The first weeks, I would cry easily. I sat in the passenger seat once we had filled my prescription the day after my surgery and sobbed. My poor husband tried to drive and comfort me at the same time. Now I can hold it inside, but my heart still aches the same.

This loss of my femininity and my ability to create more children has caused me to feel overly-attached to my one and only. I feel scared of the future because I don't want to give in to her and spoil her. I don't want to be that pathetic coddling parent that can't let go. All of my hopes, dreams, expectations, and love will be thrust upon her. As much as she is my responsibility, I fear becoming hers.

My old-aged self will be on her alone. My funeral—God willing all should go right enough that I will never have to bury my beloved child—will be completely on her. My one and only.

I feel so angry and jealous when I see people unworthy of their children. People who say they don't want their kids and the ones that have lost custody of their kids for their own selfish reasons. It isn't fair. I know a woman that, for various reasons, has either abandoned or lost custody of all three of her kids. Instead of working on herself, she keeps having more. She moved through life and her responsibilities like they're meaningless. She moves on to the next man and has more kids. It's not fair.

It kills me, though. I thought it would make a difference if we did everything right but now it feels like I lost more time that way. I had a checklist. I required of myself a full-time job, health benefits, and a place of my own in which to live. I was prepared to have a baby with or without a partner. I met my husband before my personal goals were completed, so we had to merge our goal lists. Now we both had to have full-time jobs, health benefits, our apartment, and we wanted to be married first.

We signed our official marriage paperwork in June but we had our wedding reception on Halloween. November 1st we went to Seaside for our honeymoon and created our child. Maybe if we had not had so many goals and maybe if we had just gone for it instead of being responsible- maybe we would have a houseful, or at least more than one. Maybe I would be happy. Maybe having my female organs removed wouldn't have been such a harsh blow. But who knows? We tried for months with no luck—so maybe we never would have been able to have others.

And as I watch my one year old stomp around the house with her big, infectious smile while she chases the cats with a jingling ball I feel ashamed to admit that there are moments and even full days when I am depressed. Days and moments when I can hardly get out of bed or find the inspiration to brush my hair. I love her completely and encompassingly. I love my life with her as a stay-at-home mom. I cherish even the hard, gross, and miserable times with her because I wanted to be a mom so much and because I will never experience these moments again. I feel as though I have no right to be depressed while I have her in my life but I still am.

I feel selfish. I feel insensitive. I am ashamed of myself. I am grieving in silence. I am mourning and I have to do it alone because I've lost only my own fantasies. I have only lost my dreams.