I got pregnant with my one and only son after five months of trying. That seemed long to me — an extremely impatient person by nature — but I knew I was fortunate. After a bumpy early pregnancy, everything smoothed out and my son was born healthy.
At my six weeks postpartum visit with my OB-GYN, I said, “This is probably going to sound dumb because I literally just gave birth, but when can I start trying for a second baby?”
She laughed a little, and then said, “A year. Your incision needs time to heal.”
We started trying again shortly after my first period came, when my son was 10 months old. I was still breastfeeding, but my cycle seemed to have returned. It was time to get things moving. We figured it would take a couple months anyway, so I wouldn’t be pregnant too soon for my C-section incision’s convenience.
I purchased an ovulation testing kit and used it religiously after that first period. On the days it appeared that I was about to ovulate, my husband and I got busy.
Two weeks later, I felt sick.
“I think I’m pregnant,” I told my husband, once again thrilled that it’d been this easy, this simple, to control when I got pregnant. I bought a test and peed on it and … it was negative.
Honestly, I was shocked. I felt so pregnant — tired and constantly carsick even when I wasn’t in the car. I figured the test was a fluke and peed on another stick.
Negative again.
I missed my period the next month, but I wasn’t pregnant. I had a period two months later and started the whole ovulation tracking thing again, with nothing to show for it.
My son grew older and older. So old, in fact, that strangers and acquaintances and even family members began to say things like, “When are you going to give that child a sister or brother?” and “Is Baby No. 2 still in the plan one day?”
(My baby, by the way, was all of 1 year old.)
A couple weeks before he turned 2, I brought up my irregular periods with my doctor. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m betting you’ll be pregnant within three months.”
Yeah. That didn’t happen.
My son turned 2. A couple days later, a friend who’d had her baby just two days before mine texted me with her thrilling news.
“I’m pregnant!!!” she texted.
“Oh, that’s such good news!” I said, but all day long I moped around the house. I knew I was lucky, so lucky, to have gotten pregnant with even one child.
But maybe, I thought, he’d be the only child I ever had. Maybe my body was so screwed up that getting pregnant with him had been a statistical miracle, a one-in-a-million chance that would never come again.
My son turned 2 1/2. I tried to come to terms with potentially having an only child, which my husband accepted more readily than I did.
“We can travel together, the three of us,” he said. “He’s enough.”
“I know he’s enough,” I said. “But I want one more. Just one more.”
It felt like a plea. Not to my husband, but to the universe. Please, there’s one more baby who’s supposed to be here with us. Send her down, now. Or him. We’re waiting, we’re ready.
But nothing happened.
My son weaned from breastfeeding, and still, my period didn’t become regular. My family stopped asking me about a second child. My parents had my sister and me a year and a half apart, and I felt like a failure. Like I should’ve been able to accomplish that, too.
But my wasteland of a body just couldn’t.
Now my son’s almost 3. If I ever get pregnant again, there will be an age gap — which I’m now convinced might be kind of magical.
Or, my one and only son will stay my one and only child.
Maybe it’s penance for me: Once, when I was trying to get pregnant, I stumbled across a blog post about a woman who was trying and trying for a second baby.
Why does she need another? I thought. She already has one.
This is what no one tells you about secondary infertility: No matter how many children you already have, if your heart wants another, nothing can ease that desire. And you’ll feel guilty, oh so guilty, for craving another child when you already have one.
My heart aches for the women who want just one child so badly that they will do anything they can to bring that life into the world.
My heart also aches for the women who have one and want one more. For the women who have two, or three, or four, or more, but still want just one more.
As for the rest of you: Stop asking us when we’re going to have another baby, OK? We’ll get there when we get there, or maybe we won’t.
Either way, the question is deeply personal and carries with it more pain than you may know.
