I Spent 2020 Swiping for a Baby, Not a Man
By: Ija Mei
Tags: Relationships Love Dating, Relationships, Digital Life, Parenting, Dating

“I don’t know if I want to try again,” my then-boyfriend said about a year ago, and I understood.

We were two miscarriages deep, and I was still bleeding when he said it.

Miscarriage is awful. It hurts physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, psychically — what other “-allys” can I throw in there to help people understand? You can’t really know unless you’ve had one, and even then, you can’t know how it was for someone else.

My second miscarriage was a ruptured ectopic that required emergency surgery. I asked my surgeon if he would consider taking a nap before operating on me because he looked tired. Adequate rest is so important for good performance.

He told me that if he took a nap, I would die.

Fair enough.

As we spoke, my shoulders jolted around like a dying soldier in an old war movie. That’s a real thing, did you know that? Internal bleeding irritates a nerve that causes the shoulders to jump in painful spasms. About a quarter of the blood in my body pooled in my abdominal cavity before they cut me open and suctioned it out, taking my left tube and my eight-week-old embryo with it.

I awoke from surgery mid-monologue, staring up at my audience, a semicircle of surgical masked faces (a sign of things to come?). I’d prioritized travel and adventure, I told them, and I’d waited too long, and now I’d never have a family. I told them this as if they could change it. Hazy from anesthesia, my wires were crossed — I felt if I convinced them I knew my sins, they might put my baby back in. Despite the assurances of some Ohio politicians, reimplanting an ectopic pregnancy isn’t possible, whether the woman’s a sinner or not.

A nurse patted my hand, asked how old I was, told me she’d had two after 38.

I know my then-boyfriend was somewhere in the background while all of this was taking place, but I don’t know whether he was trying to be a good partner or not. For months, the miscarriages had enveloped me in a fog all my own, so thick I couldn’t see him.

“I don’t know if I want to try again.”

His sperm was obviously trying to kill me. I didn’t really want to try again either, except that I did. I did want to try again.

The miscarriages and my newly diagnosed endometriosis pushed us in equal and opposite directions on the baby issue. I’d been on the fence when he first suggested we try for a child. After feeling them grow inside me and losing them in literal bloodbaths, it’s like I could feel that they had wanted to be born. That’s not a commentary on when life begins or any political issue. I’m a feminist, and I want to be in charge of my own body — it’s just that my body wants to make babies. I can’t be the only woman whose eggs are screaming at her to get going, to bring them to life. At age 38, I was running out of time.

I respected my ex’s insight into his own wants and needs. I never pushed him to try again. But I felt I’d been unfairly recast. See, at first, I was the brave woman making sacrifices for something we both wanted. Now, I was the deranged fool who wants a baby even though her partner’s not sure and her body might not be able to do it.

My former boyfriend and I hung on for nine months after the ectopic and then broke up. I called it, but he should have. Why do I always have to do the hard things?