At 40, I'm facing a hysterectomy which isn't urgent but is warranted in the forseeable future to manage some ongoing issues that could eventually lead to cancer. I am booked in for next week but after I booked and got home from the Drs I have had this nagging sense that I'm not done with kids.
Everything on paper says it's not a good idea to have more babies - my age, difficult previous pregnancies (pre-eclampsia and gestation diabetes for both), both kids taken from me at birth for special care (and one in ICU) as they both came more than a month early, husband is not keen for more and older than me, another would involve more time and money and pause any career development, my husband would have to come of medication for months before we could begin trying and so it goes on. So, all rational reasoning says - I'm done!
It's more than five years since my last pregnancy, so my body and eggs are older, yet in the face of this decision I suddenly feel like I'm not ready to let go of new motherhood - perhaps partly because I never had the girl I imagined. Yet, given a pregnancy is at reduced odds, and the chances of having another boy are increased, am I just experiencing loss at the end of ever being new mother again, and grieving a fantasy that will never come to fruition, or should I heed my gut feeling and delay the surgery just in case I live to regret it? Anyone been in this situation?
4 Replies
If I was you, I would do the hysterectomy. You will grieve this loss of the baby that could have been. But you do move on, you love those kids you already have just that little bit more. And know you have made the right decision for your health and Family.
I think it’s just that you know that door is closing so you are grieving that stage in life.
I felt the same even though I knew that having another baby was a terrible idea. It wasn’t the same situation as yours but I still needed to put a full stop at the end of having more children (I have one child, and my genes are totally crapola!).
If you can get in to see a counsellor quickly I’d do that. But honestly it sounds like your husband is done wether you are or aren’t, and putting his health at risk for you to have another baby at this time sounds highly unlikely.
We dont all get the number of children we dreamt of or the sex we dreamt of for lots of reasons (i joke that if we had a spare room I’d decorate it like a like a little girls room 😂). We grieve that and move on.
Id get that hysterectomy! Your kids need a healthy mummy, and your partner sounds done anyway.
I had 1 boy and one girl. 40 seems to have crept up on me. And while I’d have loved more! I am also blissfully content with the two I have! I have a heart condition whereby pregnancy isn’t impossible however at a small risk of complications. That’s too great for me. I wouldn’t risk creating more to risk missing out on being a mum to the two I already have!
I’m not sure if I’d feel the same if I had 2 of the same sex.
But I do know I can give these two experiences and opportunities that may not be as possible if I had 3 or 4.
I had a hysterectomy, 10 months ago at the age of 32. My husband and I have three children who were all born by c-section and I was suffering debilitating pain from adenomyosis and endometriosis.
Despite knowing I was done with children, and knowing it would be unsafe to have any more and hoping that the surgery would bring relief (it has but that wasn't certain) I had many of the same feelings you are describing. I believe for me it was part of the grieving process, it's entirely permanent but mentally there is a big jump between, I don't want any more to I cannot have any more.