I have polycystic ovary syndrome. The lady doctor diagnosed it in 2013 or so. It’s where a bunch of little cysts form around your ovaries to prevent them from working right. Basically, a normal ovary is like this:
And here's what mine look like:
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| LOOK AT THE CYSTS. ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. |
For me, polycystic ovary syndrome meant that the first time I got my period, I called my mom to come pick me up from school because I thought I had appendicitis. It meant that I didn’t tell anyone when my periods didn’t come every month because I was so glad to be spared the nightmare that they were. I thought everyone needed a jumbo combo pack of ibuprofen and maxi pads to get through their periods and I marveled at the girls who could just handle it. It meant that I lived with the shamefully loud plastic peel of the wrapper on an overnight pad echoing around the school bathroom every three hours and still managed to bleed all over every pair of jeans I ever owned in high school. It meant that I embraced fun phrases like "shark week" and "moon time" so that I could explain why I bailed on social activities and commitments without grossing out the boys around me. It meant that I spent a chunk of the last football game of my college band career curled up in the fetal position in my hotel room, praying that I could pull it together in time for the game. I rattled as I marched with a bottle of pain pills hidden in my uniform.
When I went to the gynecologist on my state employee insurance after college, they tried to confirm the diagnosis by giving me an interior ultrasound, but the picture wasn’t really clear. A medical test which left me sobbing on the examination table in pain couldn’t actually confirm that PCOS was the reason that my period, when I did have it, lasted for a week and a half and came with migraines and cramps that leave me bedridden. The ultrasound wasn’t covered under my insurance. I paid hundreds of dollars so that I could cry in front of a stranger and be told nothing new.
When I went back to the gynecologist to get the results (mostly, you know, to be sure that I didn’t have cancer of the ladyparts), I was so relieved I wasn’t dying that I must not have been really listening when the doctor told me how hard it would be for me to have kids. I was single. I’ve always been single. Motherhood is a bridge to be crossed when you come to it and at 24 or 25, I didn’t see any need to speed toward it. I was so flustered when she asked if there was someone special in my life that I missed the part where she said, “Well, when the time comes, it’ll be a little more difficult” and “you’ll need to consider hormone treatment” and “you might need to try for a couple of years.” I just signed up for birth control to try to regulate my periods a little and went on with my life.
Later, after seeing a friend’s Facebook post on PCOS, which is the most common cause of infertility in women and affects up to 10% of women, I went into an internet spiral. “Infertility” caught my eye everywhere. Other than the pages that described the symptoms, which were spot on for how my body behaves, the pages I read most were about how you deal with this if you want to get pregnant. There are hormones you can take. There’s a surgery, which is a bit of a last resort. If you’re loaded, there’s IVF. Every body is different but as far as I understand what my doctors have said, it will be a long and difficult process for me in particular to get pregnant and even if that does happen, the pregnancy will likely be difficult.
When I read this, all I could visualize was night after night of my imaginary future husband holding me while I sob through period cramps. Night after night of fuming at my body because the pregnancy test was negative again. Long night after long night at the hospital as I recover from yet another miscarriage. He’d get worry lines that should be saved for when our sixteen-year-old son is learning how to drive a stick shift. His heart would endure stress that should only be caused by the batter standing between our nineteen-year-old daughter and pitching a no-hitter. There would be a herculean effort that would put a strain on our jobs and our marriage, all because I was born with a downstairs that wasn’t able to bring life into the world on its own.
I want four kids. I want a house full of life with two dogs to clean up the mess that my infant daughter makes with her cheerios and a cat for my three-year-old son to chase and adore. I want to sit through oboe lessons and violin lessons and the endless screeching hours of practice. I want to sing my son to sleep with an alto version of Summertime from Porgy and Bess. I want to bundle up my kids and make my husband carry a thermos of hot chocolate so I can teach them how to find planets in the sky and show them every constellation I know. I want to read The Hobbit to my whole family. I want to watch Star Wars with my daughters and help them make lightsabers and do their hair like Princess Leia. I want to fall asleep beside my baby's cradle. I want to fall asleep in a blanket fort with my five-year-old. I want my seventeen-year-old to fall asleep in the hammock with a book across her chest on a pleasant summer day and I want to leave a glass of water beside her for when she wakes up thirsty. I want my husband to carry our kids on his shoulders and I want us to go on road trips to see the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty and Disneyland.
But as I read these articles, my body screams that those dreams I have about parenthood are ridiculous. The cry is not entirely irrational. PCOS comes along with a whole host of symptoms, stemming from the way it messes with my hormones, that affect attraction and relationships in ways we don't even think to think about. And even if I do find someone, again, how can I put him through all that pain and disappointed expectation? Anybody I’m going to pick is going to be smart and kind and the world needs more people like that. He should have his own kids and there’s someone out there who would make him just as happy as I would with much less stress. A little piece of that wonderful human out in the world, continuing the work of making it a better place. I can always take one for the team to make that happen, bow out before he commits to walking down this complicated road with me.
Plus, like, overpopulation, right? And adoption’s always an option. A long, bureaucratically-mired, painful-in-its-own-way option, but an option nonetheless. Or being a foster parent! I’d make a great foster mom. There are so many children that need love in the world. I don’t need to bring new ones into it. Never mind that my arms ache to hold a son I’ll never have, a child I’ll never name or teach how to change a tire or explain sex to or demonstrate unselfish love for. All the lessons I’ve learned in my life, the generosity of spirit I want to cultivate in the next generation, all that can be imparted to a baby I didn’t make. I can write a book. I can travel the world and talk to people. I can travel and talk and write a book. With my husband. I can open my house to all people at any time. I can grow a garden and feed anyone who needs it. I can care for the women and children whose men didn’t deserve them and I can care for the men and children whose women deserted them. I can invest in a community and be a mother to hundreds of kids, going to football games and swim meets until the wheels on my chair will no longer carry me the places I want to go. Pregnancy’s not the only way to wear out a body.
So, as I turn twenty-eight, please don’t joke with me that the clock’s ticking. My biological clock turned off almost as soon as it turned on. Don’t base your expectations for my life, body, or purpose on Genesis alone. I have done that, and sometimes continue to do that, all on my own. I have carried the weight of my imaginary children and my imaginary husband around with me for years. I understand that God is on the side of life and makes miracles happen but I don’t know how to ask for, or even if I should ask for, the miracle that would fix this. I don’t know how to ask God to change the body he knitted within my mother’s womb.
What you can do instead, and what has been done for me, is to wrap me up in community. Be Christ for the bleeding women of today who long for healing and reunion with the community. Encourage us women who live and work and exist with PCOS, so that we can educate and help others manage their symptoms. Embrace the fact that some women will need the hormonal regulation that the pill provides or the almost-elimination of period symptoms that an IUD allows and see that that fact does not cause moral corruption. Acknowledge that family and parenthood take many shapes and forms and God doesn’t bless children differently because of how they were born and to whom they were born. It is our responsibility as much as we are able to care for every child and every adult who used to be a child with the unselfish love of God.
This is an especially profound responsibility here and now, in this world where my body is made vulnerable and vilified and deified all in one tweet, where it is elevated and weighted down with sacred expectations over the course of the same sermon. We are capable of such kindness, though we don't always act like it. As you meet people where they are, as you encounter their hurts and their strengths, find a new way to be kind in the world.
