I guess it must be the time of year, lots of piccies of cutie kids and babies on Facebook and on TV that is making me think about having my own family. I guess it is a two sided thing, I also see so many terrible things on TV and in the papers about children being abused and abandoned by the very people that had then in the first place - its things like that that really make me despair about the human condition. Then on the other hand I see my friends and family who are amazing parents and it restores my faith.
There is a quote that I always think of when it comes to parenting from the movie 'Parenthood' but I think it applies to mothers as well as fathers:
"You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father."
It always makes me think because there are no laws no rules about who can become a parent when it is the most important thing you will ever do.
I guess I'm thinking about all this because of my situation now and how it is going to affect this issue in the future - for me to have a child it will be a conscious decision and a lot of effort. I was never what you would call maternal when I was younger - on my list of things to do having a child would have been somewhere near the bottom of the list. The first time I think I ever considered it would have been when I met my husband, he was the person I would have liked to have a child with, mainly because of the man he was - kind, funny, generous a good person - traits which I see in his grown children now which makes me happy to witness.
Thinking about all of this now I feel a little lost because I don't know if it will ever happen for me - for one I have no chap in my life and that would kind of be a useful start! But there are other issues that are on the table. Because of my Cancer and having Chemotherapy there is a good chance that the Chemo could have knackered my baby plumbing for good but I won't know that until I try for a baby. When was diagnosed I was offered the opportunity to have eggs harvested because this was a possibility, and at the time I said yes definitely! All I could think was I needed to make sure I had the opportunity in the future to have my own child. However after discussion with the fertility doc and my oncologist things changed. My type of Cancer is actually made worse by Oestrogen, so basically the hormone my own body produces as a woman was feeding my Cancer, on a scale of 1-8 I'm a 7 so its pretty high. To harvest eggs they would have had to inject me with massive amounts of hormones so I was faced with a dilemma - do I throw petrol on a fire & just hope it makes it no worse? In the end the answer was no, I decided I needed to make my life a simple as possible and decided to leave this up to fate. If it's meant to be it will happen.
Of course I then have to wait, they like you to wait at least 2 years after your completing of treatment to try for children, but for me because I will be on hormone treatment for 5 years they don't like you to have babies at all while you are on that! So come my 40th Birthday I should be there or there abouts!!
I know there are other options for someone like me and to be fair given the right circumstances I would adopt. But there is that part of me that wishes I could experience having a child grow inside me, and who knows, maybe one day in the future I will.
