For the past year, my husband and I have been trying to get pregnant. Like really trying. Like, not the “see what happens” kind of trying, but trying.
This would be a fourth baby for us. It’s a baby we very much want, yearn for, dream and talk about all the time.
And I’m older; 37. So, not like Janet Jackson having a baby old, although, go Janet! But I’m not 27. So of course, I wonder if a year of trying without success means a fourth child isn’t in the cards for us. When I start to think that way, it’s painful.
Crying silently at night painful.
Lump in the throat, tears almost spilling over when it crosses my mind while I wait with my daughter at the bus stop so I have to pretend I’m getting over being sick so the other moms won’t think I’m crazy, painful.
Yes, I know I have three beautiful, perfect children, and I thank God for them every, single day.
But someone is missing. My husband and I both feel it. So do our daughters, who tell me they want another little brother, or sister all the time. They tell me about how they’ll help with the baby; my 7-year-old has even volunteered to take one if it’s twins. My toddler plans to sleep with the baby in her crib at night.
I don’t have the heart to tell them those things would never happen.
I’m smiling as I write this, meanwhile, because although trying to get pregnant hasn’t been successful up until this point, and that has been extremely hard to accept, and I’ve been upset, and sad, and felt dejected and hopeless at times, the idea of having another baby is mostly wonderful. It’s happy! Exciting! It’s toes curling, heart skipping a beat exhilarating imagining bringing another life into this world.
Until recently, when it became terrifying.
And all because of a mosquito, and its potential to ruin lives with an exotic-sounding illness called Zika.
The tales of infected women conceiving babies with serious birth defects like microcephaly, a smaller than average brain and head, were from far away at first. And I hate to admit this, but I could still tuck those stories away in a drawer full of scary things that would never happen to me.
But then there were more stories; a lot more, and they were moving closer. More countries were reporting near-epidemic numbers of pregnant women contracting Zika, and giving birth to babies with microcephaly.
Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently told Time we could see clusters of local Zika transmission in the United States this summer, especially in areas with hot and humid climates. And although she contracted the infection abroad, a woman with Zika gave birth to a baby with microcephaly at a hospital less than an hour from my house in New Jersey yesterday.
So it’s here. How widespread it will become is yet to be seen.
Therefore, it was after many conversations, much anguish, and a lot of tears that my husband and I decided to shelf our baby making plans for now. At least through the summer, until we see how things play out, and how serious the threat of contracting Zika really is.
Because I’d hate to just roll the dice at this point in my life, with three kids, and with a situation experts still don’t fully understand. I mean, right now the CDC is telling us it’s okay to get pregnant eight weeks after a woman contracts Zika, and six months after a man has it. That’s a long time if you’re my age, or older. And even if you’ve been exposed to Zika, or traveled to an area with a current outbreak, you should wait. Will that change? Could Zika stay in your system longer? Again, experts aren’t sure.
We hope to resume our efforts to get pregnant this fall. After the serious threat of contracting the potentially life-changing infection dims; that is if either of us don’t get it. If we do, who knows how that might impact our plans.
What I do know is that my timeline for having a baby isn’t as long as I wish it was already. So having to table our plans to get pregnant right now is crushing.
I worry that putting our heads down, and simply pushing through the unknown, could end up being even more so.
Has the Zika threat changed your plans for a pregnancy?
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