One of the main reasons I keep a journal is because I believe that narrative helps give our lives meaning. By writing things out, I find I better understand how I think and feel.

While in the hospital, I occupied myself by composing the journal entry that would tell of my adventures. It evolved day by day, as I gained greater understanding and perspective on what had happened. When I wrote the first draft, I didn't really register all that I'd been through. I made jokes about not having intended to pull a Keith Richards, and I was actually a bit aggressive in my assertions that my being unable to have more children was no big deal, that I was thrilled with Hunter and, if we wanted any other kids, we could always adopt. I stated quite emphatically that my loss of uterus didn't change who I was as a person any more than my brother stopped being my brother when he was diagnosed with diabetes. And yet....

And yet....

I had so very much been looking forward to the time a few years hence when I would try to explain to Hunter that my burgeoning belly meant he was going to be a big brother.

I used to think that people who spent thousands of dollars on fertility treatments were caught up in their own egos when there are so many children who need homes. But now I look at Hunter and I see a miraculous manifestation of the love that Shawn and I have for each other, a life created from our joining and making us more than we two, alone, had been, and I can no longer be so judgmental.

A couple of nights after the surgery, I was wracked with intense, vicious nightmares where I actually dreamed that I woke up in the hospital, screaming. There were all these people around, and they wouldn't let me call Shawn because all the phones were in use. One of the people was a friend who had recently had a baby. She was wearing a top that looking like a hospital gown, and she was complaining about someone who'd annoyed her.

Suddenly, as though she were made of thin papier maché, her chest and stomach started falling away, leaving... nothing.


I will never again be able to create that miracle of love inside me. I will never again be able to bear my husband a child.

God, it hurts.

And even while holding this beautiful baby in my arms and my heart, I still deeply mourn the loss.