(Photo credit to Cynthia Graham Photography)
The piece of paper sat on the kitchen counter for days before I even noticed. It was a permission slip. With three school-age children, our house sees many permission slips, but I didn’t happen to notice this one because it did not come out of one of the boys’ backpacks. This permission slip was not for a field trip to Sea World or the zoo. It came from a urologist’s office, and it asked for my permission to perform a procedure on my husband — a procedure that will mark a significant change in our lives.
My husband and I have decided that we will not be having any more children. Neither of us expected to have four children, but we did. We have been inordinately blessed over the past ten years with fertility and healthy, beautiful babies, but now we are both closing in on forty. We are worried about paying for braces, not to mention college. It’s time to call the game. (We won.) (I think.)
And yet… and yet. When I picked up the pen to sign my name and give my permission to my husband’s urologist for a vasectomy, I found myself pausing. I hesitated not because there was even a smidge of doubt in my mind that it was the right thing for our family, but because when standing at a fork in the road, it’s probably necessary and even smart to take a minute, look around, and breathe before proceeding further down one path.
In this moment, I feel myself standing in a sacred place. I’m caught between the age of fertility — of nausea, butterfly-wing kicks that can take my breath away, swollen breasts, and baby blankets — and the afterward, when I’ll no longer needs the OB part of my OB-GYN practice, and baby things are temporary, and my body will once again be mine alone. I have spent the past year counting up my lasts, filing away my memories: my last pregnancy, my last childbirth, my last newborn. I find myself slowly adjusting, turning my face and my mind fully forward toward my children, realizing that from now on, I will know exactly how big of a kitchen table we will need and exactly how many chairs will be around it. We have bought the last Christmas stocking we need to fill our crowded mantle. I’ll never need a bigger car than I have now. For the past ten years, an ellipsis has hovered over my head and my heart while I wondered if another face would come to our family. Now, the ellipsis has faded away. Our family is here, and it is complete.
I find myself mourning the end of this era in my life. These years have been full of possibility, wonder, and adventure. I have watched my body do amazing things. I have discovered the depths of my own strength and the potential of my determination. Never again will I dart furtively down an aisle in a drugstore toward the pregnancy tests, never again will I carry the thrilling secret that a new baby is coming, never again will I usher a new life into the world, hear my newborns’ strident cries, or rub their tiny backs. Now, I will watch my baby learn to walk, my five-year-old learn to read, my eight-year-old learn to perform long division. I will watch my oldest graduate from elementary school and enter adolescence. I will move forward with them, no longer a vessel for new life or the source of nourishment and security for babies, but instead a steward of little citizens of the world.
This new chapter will possess its own wonderful and fulfilling moments — I am already beginning to experience them — but they will not be the same. I will not be the same. I’m essentially retiring from the most important job I have ever had thus far: producing human beings. I know how to have babies; I am good at having babies. Now I have to work full-time on the second half of motherhood, the part where I produce adults. It’s a much scarier task and one I’m not sure I am as good at executing. But I am up to the challenge.
The decision that we are done bearing children has not been a hard one to reach, but I am a little wistful nonetheless. My husband is decidedly not sad. He gleefully made his appointment for the day after his birthday, and he has reminded me with almost a giddy excitement several times that he will need solitude for the entire weekend while he heals and watches some important football. Though I’m not clicking my heels with the enthusiasm he is yet, I’m ready to learn who I will be in this next phase of my life. In this moment before I do, though, I am looking back once more and honoring what we have been through and what we have done. I am remembering with love and awe all the little moments of each pregnancy, birth, and babyhood that led us here. It has been a wild ride… one that I will never stop missing, even as I willingly and with certainty give my permission for it to end.
Well captured.
Ps- the recovery is minimal; the bruise to the “I’m-old-enough-to-need-a-vasectomy?!” ego needed more TLC.
I am so there with you. A few years back in age perhaps (as class years note), but almost exactly the same issues. My husband is having a much harder time with this surprise 4th baby (he looks all around and sees signs that we “were done,” though clearly in some way we weren’t) and has asked more than once to go schedule his own urology appointment, though I stubbornly refuse to grant permission until this baby at least takes a breath of air. Yesterday, we were told definitively that our oldest, who barely turned 7 in October, needs to start with orthodontia NOW. Life is swirling all around. Most of my closest friends, stopped having babies years ago after two who are the same ages as my oldest and second child, and now their babies are either in or will be entering kindergarten in the fall. They tell their children when asked when their family will have a baby, “The problem with babies is that they grow into kids and we already have enough of those.” And while I don’t doubt that we will end up with enough kids at the end of this current pregnancy (#4 was still being considered, though we were sure that now was NOT the right time to make that leap, then found ourselves looking, like Wylie Coyote, down into the abyss when we thought solid ground was still under our feet), I can’t possibly consider having my tubes tied as I keep thinking, “What if.” So, I’m glad that my husband, certain in his paternity, is willing and able and abundantly ready to take that step for us, though it hard. Just like having your first was exciting and changed all you knew about yourself as you discovered this role of mother, so to does the ending of this era signify change in how you ultimately see yourself as a mother and the plans you envision for your family as a whole. And that change gives us pause.
I’m standing next to you in that same sacred spot, feeling the tug of what was and what will inevitably be, feeling afraid and wistful about shutting a door that I walked through without realizing it, all those years ago. There’s no way around the sense of loss I feel, or the sense of something major ending. That it happens as Grace just begins to launch into the full flower of her own is both passionately wonderful and somewhat excruciatingly bittersweet. xox
You have a wonderful, eloquent way of stating just where I am in life as well. I think you may know Katrina Kenison (my 40 year old brain can’t remember !) but if not, google her and read her books. She is a wonderful writer and has been a guide for me as I leave child birthing and focus fully on child rearing.
Sigh. This post really touched my heart this morning, Allison!
In the past several weeks I’ve had this emotional awakening about this very topic. As Tyler is now 3.5 years old, the same age Owen was when Paige was born (my biggest gap between children), I’m now at this place where it’s the longest period I’ve had without a new baby. I know my family is complete, but turning my back on that chapter of my mothering experience is more than a little heart-breaking.
Allison,
What a beautiful piece. It is such a final decision. My father was married before my mother and had four children. He and his wife thought they were done. His wife passed away. He was in India and was the arranged to marry again. When he remarried, his new wife really wanted a child – so he had the procedure reversed. In which case it wasn’t that final.
And then of course they were blessed with this awesome person. Yes that would be moi 😉
But that’s an exception and I know that most people going down this road don’t plan to reverse it. I think it’s great that you recognize it and allow the bittersweetness of it and took the chance to breathe. Far too often people leap. I am one of them. I am glad in this case, you were not.
I don’t know if I agree completely with this, I understand it but I don’t know if I see it that way: “I’m essentially retiring from the most important job I have ever had: producing human beings.” I feel that your most important job lies ahead of you. Continuing to be the best mother you can be to four children who will be constantly changing, evolving and expecting you to adapt with them. Many women conceive and give birth. It’s the job afterwards that is the hardest – which helps you influence what your child will become.
Beautiful post.
Kiran
As always, a gorgeous capturing of something that’s so hard to articulate.
Even as I now question my sanity daily, with a 2.5yo, 15 month old, and 2 wk old,
I cannot fathom another but cannot imagine ending the possibilty
permanently. This stage is so ridiculously hard – but, as note, magical
in it’s own ways. Thank you for giving a beautiful voice to my decidedly less articulate
inner musings, as usual.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll still walk down the aisle in a drugstore toward the pregnancy tests for peace of mind LOL! Great article.
Allison, I am such a big fan of your writing. You truly speak for so many of us in the same situation. I think of this all the time–and I am not quite ready to give it up. Yet, we are done having children. Life moves along past that blurry, hazy, frantic baby stage. I am anxious about what comes next I suppose. Thank you for these lovely thoughts and I wish you guys so much luck with the surgery and everything that follows!
I cannot imagine ever not wanting more babies…my oldest is 11 and youngest nearly 6. I am too old and another pregnancy is a huge huge health risk for me and yet..I can’t stop wanting it and missing it. I had no idea a permission slip is required for a vasectomy.
I signed those same papers… about ten years ago. But the feelings were the same. An end of an era – and what an amazing era it was. This era – the one where I watch them become adults and support them as they become the people they were meant to be – well, it’s pretty fantastic, too. And now, I look to the future, into a time where the cars and the kitchen table will be smaller, and I am sad, but thankful for the depth of my life.
We’re done too. And as much as I know it in my head and in my gut, my heart sometimes flutters the way yours does when I happen upon a box of outgrown, impossibly small onesies or a cloth book that no one in our house needs anymore. I love what you have to say here about beginning the work of producing adults. As much as I’d like to convince myself that it will never be harder than it was with three under four, I know that the real work is yet to begin.
This post resonated deeply with me, Allison. Thank you so much.
I 100% understand. We are also blessed with four. My husband would have one more . . . of course because he isn’t that one who is pregnant and nursing after! I know my limits through. I’m happy and settled with the idea of four, but I know what you mean about walking into a new chapter of life. It’s certainly a reminder of mortality, isn’t it? (Sorry to get so depressing!)
I love this article. This is the reason that even though my husband and I were set on two children and I was having a c-section, I didn’t opt for the convenient tube tying at the same time. I cannot imagine more than our beautiful boys (and I really can’t imagine having the energy for a baby at this point), but the permanence of it all freaks me out.
Allison, so beautifully written. We had to make this choice a few years back. Not necessarily because we knew we were done but because of health issues that make it difficult to have more children. I made the choice because it’s more important to be here for the children I have than risk my life and that of any that may have been. I’m content with the decision now.
This was simply wonderful.
Well, I’m a year late, but someone posted this on Facebook. I love you’re style of writing.
We have six lovely children. The baby is about to be two. All during her pregnancy, we wrestled with the decision to go for the big V. Shortly before her due date, my hubby had the “BIG” appointment. He called me from the car and said, “They couldn’t do it.” He’s prankster, I thought for sure he was joking. But nope, he’s part of the tiny fraction of men who have to be put under to have it done. So we went through all of that emotional anguish to have him come out of there with his fertility still in tact. ARGH! LOL! We still haven’t done anything because after that, we just can’t wrestle with those emotions again. But I can tell you, I am 100% done!