Untitled S&R Chapter Ten
Untitled S to all the other patrons, she was just your average woman, walking into a café, notebook under her arm.
R chooses a round table in the corner and opens her notebook. She splits the page in half and adds two headers: Pros and Cons.
She lists everything she can think of, alternating bites of an Eton Mess muffin, a hazelnut praline cupcake, and a lemon-filled doughnut.
Her tongue cannot figure out where the cream comes from or what the curd belongs to, but it feels good to stuff her face, to keep her mouth busy, and to focus on the food making its stodgy way down her throat to sit at the bottom of her belly.
Under Cons, R writes: mental stability. Is she mentally secure enough to be a mother? Gathered evidence would argue she was not. When her friends had moved on with their lives, she’d had a breakdown that culminated in risking pneumonia and getting pregnant.
Caveat: R is also of the belief that a person can never reach mental perfection anyway.
Con: single. Isaac had ghosted her. R still remembered that morning vividly.
She’d slept through the night and in the morning discovered he’d gone, but he’d left behind a scrap of paper with his number on it; she’d forgotten that they’d communicated solely through the dating app’s chat function.
R got out of bed, waited until the afternoon, then crafted what she hoped was a perfect message, one that perched delicately between eagerness and nonchalance.
I lean away from my laptop and consider pulling out my phone and searching my notes app to see if it’s still there. I give in to the temptation and find it—the message I’d drafted to send Ishir before discovering he’d unmatched us.
I delete it from my phone, but not before typing it up for R to send to Isaac.
Hey, Isaac. I’m glad we got a chance to meet last night. Let me know if you’re free this weekend and we can catch that exhibition at the Tate you mentioned. R x
R pressed send.
Message undelivered
She frowned and checked her internet connection. Full bars. She tried sending the message again.
Message undelivered
She called and an automated voice told her she’d dialed an incorrect number. R took the hint. So as it stood, R would be a single mother.
Another Con: uncertainty. Not of the future (even though there was plenty of that to go around), but of whether R would regret her decision.
R wonders if she’s only considering having this baby due to her societal conditioning.
There is a part of R that thinks because she is a woman with a functioning uterus, she should have children.
She’s dealing with decades of subliminal messaging about what it means to be a woman, and its supposed requirements, and having a child seems intrinsically linked to that.
Is a small part of R’s brain acting based on all the ideals and beliefs she has forcibly carried for decades, controlling that decision, or is there a genuine desire to have this child? And how best to tell between the two?
The fact is, if R didn’t think about it too hard, it is doable.
She could have this baby and raise it successfully, so long as we all agree that “success” is relative.
If R is confident about anything, it’s her ability to love those she holds dear.
She is sure she’d do her best, but her life would never be the same again.
Not in the way of sleep, solitude, or financial freedom.
R knows that as a mother she would have to give all of herself to this child—she wouldn’t allow herself to do any less—but that fact currently feels like more of a threat than a romantic declaration.
R tries to imagine what giving all of herself would look like.
She would have the crappy drawings on the fridge, she’d read all the gentle-parenting books, and she’d excavate endless reserves of patience.
She’d make all their food from scratch and feel like a failure on days she served something ready-made.
Then, after they’d gone to bed and she was finally alone, she’d alternate between screaming into a pillow and crying on the bathroom floor.
Under Pros, R looks at the two points she’s made.
The first: insurance policy. It was a cold way to answer the question: Who will look after you when you’re old?
Apparently, children were society’s designated safety nets.
Of course, you can’t guarantee that your children will take care of you—but the consensus is hopeful.
The second point: might not get a second chance.
When you’re young, you never think you won’t be able to have children.
R was only twenty-seven when she offered to tag along for moral support after M decided to take a fertility test. Naively, there wasn’t a single moment R thought bad news would be forthcoming.
M received the all clear and it was only when R heard the relief in M’s voice that R remembered she hadn’t received her test results yet.
Then she got a call instructing her to book an in-person appointment.
“I’m sure it’s nothing serious,” R told M over the phone. “After all, if it was, there would have been signs. Right?”
M was silent for a while. Then she said, “I’m coming with you.”
I pause my typing again, remembering that call.
Even after I’d hung up, I still hadn’t thought anything serious would come from it.
How could it? I felt fine, and if there is something seriously wrong with one part of your body, the other parts tend to let you know.
Yellow eyes might be telling you something about your liver.
Swollen ankles could point to your kidneys.
Yet, with me, nothing visible was out of the ordinary.
It turned out that my body had been showing signs for years, but they were the signs I, being a woman, had been taught to ignore.
They found out that R had primary ovarian insufficiency, usually caused by a premature loss of eggs from the ovary.
It wouldn’t be impossible to get pregnant naturally, but it would be very difficult.
R had been at a loss for words. How was it possible that she was almost thirty, and didn’t know this about her own body?
The doctor explained that the symptoms of primary ovarian insufficiency included heavy menstrual flow, short cycles, and late or absent periods.
R had been experiencing these symptoms for as long as she could remember, but it had been explained away whenever she’d gone to the GP about it.
She’d been told factors such as stress and a bad diet could lead to absent periods.
Have you considered some lifestyle changes?
So many women got their periods late or inconsistently due to hormone imbalances.
Have you considered taking the pill? Unfortunately, some women just suffer from heavier flows. Have you considered period underwear?
Unless R was in crippling pain, she had nothing to worry about.
During the car ride home, M asked her friend what she was thinking.
R was a slow processor of news; it often took a while for things to sink in. So she simply answered, “I don’t know.” After a while she added, “It’s not a no.”
“Exactly,” M agreed. “They didn’t say it could never happen, just that it might take longer. How does that make you feel?”
R searched for a feeling. “Stuck in time,” she said eventually. “I don’t know whether to go left or right. I wasn’t sure if I was going to have kids, but I at least thought I’d get to make the decision myself. And now…”
“It might have been made for you,” finished M. “Does that make the idea of not having children easier somehow?”
R didn’t respond to M then, and two years later, she still didn’t have the answer.
In the time since receiving the results, the pressure in R’s chest had lessened, and along the way, she had made peace with the idea of not having children.
But that was a decision she’d made in an alternate universe where she couldn’t become pregnant.
Now here she was, in another reality that provided different circumstances, in a reality where it was possible.
R had once read an article about how so many of our decisions aren’t made as freely as we initially think, and that our circumstances dictate so much without us even realizing.
So, had R once determined that she didn’t want children because of legitimate reasons—such as time, money, mental health—or because it was easier to validate those reasons alongside the test results?
Should R end the pregnancy, since she had already resigned herself to such a fate? Or should she consider having the child, simply because she could?