On July 25th, 1978, Louise Brown, the world’s first “test tube” baby was born in England. I was eleven years old and had been infertile for three years, since the removal of my second ovary, and, I had thought then, the chance of ever experiencing pregnancy had been taken harshly from me. My doctor had shaken his head upon discovering that a second cyst had encapsulated a second ovary in 18 months. “I’ve never heard of anything like this happening to a child,” he had told my parents, and that admission, coming from a doctor, had left me feeling I if I were the only person to ever experience the isolation and loss and betrayal one’s own body can bring them.But with the birth of Louise Brown, I realized that there was someone else – Lesley Brown – Louise’s mother, who knew exactly how I felt. She had tried for years to become pregnant, only to be thwarted by blocked fallopian tubes and failure. She agreed to IVF – at that time a purely experimental procedure that had never resulted in a baby, and made history. She was my very own personal Neil Armstrong. Four years later, she had a second daughter, Natalie, who was IVF baby number forty for the planet. Leslie Brown taught me something else when I was only eleven years old and trying to come to terms what it would mean for me never to have a biological child – that choices remain no matter what the situation. At eight I had bravely announced, “So what? I’ll just adopt then,” when my parents explained to me that the second ovary had not been saved, but truthfully, even then, I longed for the babies that would someday be mine. (My mother nicknamed me “Mother Earth” when I was only three.) They would have my blue eyes, and my cute nose and my freckles and have really good singing voices and there would be ten of them.
“Oh my little Mother Earth,” My Mom would laugh, “ten is too many.”
Her voice had a different tone on July 25th, 1978, that monumental day, one that was hoarse with emotion and longing for me to have everything I wished for as a woman. She held me close and promised me that I would grow up to have the choice to be pregnant someday, if that was what I desired, because if in England they could fetch an egg through a blocked fallopian tube and whip up a zygote in a Petri dish, science would evolve, and it would be done with a donor egg. On February 3rd, 1984, eight years to the month that I lost my second ovary, the 1st IVF donor egg baby was born. Choices grew.
But loss remains. Infertility is an extremely private, and grueling struggle for women. In my own experience I have felt deep periods of depression over not having the ability to have a biological child. If what makes a woman essentially female is the power to create life, then does that make the infertile woman somehow less a woman? I know I walked through my thirties with a major chip on my shoulder, feeling that I was damaged goods, and totally unworthy of a positive romantic relationship. If I couldn’t give a man a child than what man would want me? So I stuck to the non-committal substance abusing man-child types. Sometimes I felt like I did have my own baby to nurture, but I digress.
And body issues! All women have body issues, but I had major ones, beginning with a medically induced puberty that began around the time that most of my girlfriends were already having sex. Hormone Replacement Therapy, or HRT, was a newer science when I was a teenager, and they moved me through it extremely slowly. My teen years were a never ending merry go round of blood tests, hand x-rays and very invasive physical exams. (“Your Labia is developing nicely,” one intern told me when I was fifteen.) I worried endlessly about my body, and continually pleaded with the universe to let me grow past four foot eleven, let me grow breasts, let me get thinner, let me get my period, let me stop looking like a little kid…and that was just the year I was fourteen. I love that I look ridiculously young now, but when I was the flat-chested 17 year old prom date of the shortest dude in the junior class and his Mother squealed during the parents-taking –pictures-ordeal, “Oh my God look how cute she is! She looks like a twelve year old!” I wanted to shrivel up inside my lavender Laura Ashley gown, crawl into a hole and not come out until I was finally on the rag. It is not until now, in my forties, that I feel comfortable in my own skin. But I get help from certain people, like that really hot really young Whole Foods check out guy who recently told me that I was a blessed woman while smiling sweetly at my breasts. I have to admit, it tuned out to be pretty nice skin after all. I am 5’2”, curvy and disgustingly adorable with a killer D-cup. I still want to be thinner, but don’t we all? But I also feel safe in my own skin now because of the choices that I have made. I may have lost the choice to have a biological child, and see my mother in my daughter’s eyes. I may not be in the financial position to give IVF a whirl and give birth to a baby who will not be biologically mine but will grow in my body. I may not even have the financial resources to adopt what I lightheartedly refer to as my “Gang Baby” – my fantasy thoughts of fostering a child from California’s State Social Services program for an eventual adoption – the sort of baby born with possible exposure to drugs in-utero and developmental delays. The small, sad unwanted offspring of criminals that had their parental rights terminated upon delivery. A most child in need that ever was that I could make a huge difference for. But all of those options remain a great big hazy IF, a blurry question mark hovering in the distant future. I’m not there yet.
But I certainly have children in my life, because professionally, I have been raising children for the past 20 years and if it takes a village to raise a child, then I am the mayor of many villages. I feel nothing but joy and validation from each and every child I ever loved, and then put in a time out, snuggled with over cartoons, and smiled at as ice cream dripped down their hands. I have wiggled many first loose teeth. I have tenderly held many young people as they cried. Sometimes they cried over a minor punishment and the tears went away quickly with a pat on the back and a firm hug, but sometimes they cried over more permanent issues, like the pain of divorce and travelling between households or feeling alienated by life or circumstance or even their own parent. Once, I watched two of the children I’ve loved the most cry over the death of their father, and I cried too. Experiencing my own loss at a young age has made me enormously empathetic to the emotional needs of the children I have had a hand in raising. And I have children spread out from New York to California. I have changed their diapers, held them steady with my hands under their armpits as they attempted their first steps, doled out discipline with firm discussions of privileges and consequences, given many of them The Talk, bought them their first bras, nursed them through heartbreaks, and raised a cocktail with them when they turned 21. They are my friends on Facebook. They are the holiday cards in my scrapbooks and the school pictures in my wallet. They are the audience to my storytelling, little rapt faces in nightclothes perched in a pile at the end of the bed. They are an ever growing lot of lovely little beings that I have lolled to sleep with the same Paul Simon song over the years, “St. Judy’s Comet”, changing the gender of the child in the song to suit my current listeners.
Sierra sent me a text message this May that read, “You raised me too. Happy Mother’s Day.” Reni once left me a voicemail that told me, “Thank you for being here for me. I know I can always count on you.” Natalie and Mary and Annie and Johnny, are my long distance Skype buddies. Moriea is the suddenly stunningly beautiful co-ed who comes home for the weekend and wants to meet me for brunch. Roan told me, “You understand me so much it’s like you have a PhD in children.” He and his little brother Caleb are the cute little voices who currently get buckled into the backseat of my Honda every weekday afternoon and ask for Tom Petty on my iPod and chewing gum and orange tic-tacks and call me Betta. For almost five years I have worked with their amazing family as their Nanny (and CEO they like to say) and I have been so fortunate to be with people who are so loving and generous that it often feels as if they are sharing their children with me. I have an especially close relationship with Caleb, their 3 and a half -year-old son. About six months ago, I was getting him ready for his nap and he asked me, rather seriously,
“Are you a Mommy?”
“I am a Betta.” I said.
“I will make you a Mommy,” he told me, very earnestly, and had me sit on the floor while he waved his magic wand over my head. He then gathered up all of his favorite toys – his trains, his soft monkeys, and his much loved books – and dumped them all in my lap.
“Now?” I asked?
“Not yet,” he said, and then he raised the wand high – and smacked me square in the head with it.
“Now!” He squealed. “Now you a Mommy!”
It made sense. I was covered in crap and suddenly had a searing headache and I felt a little dizzy – not unlike sleep deprivation. Very parent like. But I also could help thinking of the story of the Velveteen rabbit, and how it became real because one boy believed in it. I believe too – and if I ever grow insecure in that faith, I will just remember how this beautiful little boy will lay himself in my lap and look at me with pure love as he whispers, “I am your childrens.”
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Rebecca Nelson Lubin is a writer and Nanny who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. You may read more of her articles at http://www.abandofwives.ning.com/
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