Recovering from Surgery - Reality of Being a Childless Mother

I've been absent for the last week or so due to an oophorectomy and cystorectomy.  For those interested in medical details, I went in to drain a cyst on my left ovary that had bloated the organ to a size larger than a baseball.  There was concern that they would have to remove it entirely, which was avoided.  However, the right ovary, which was expected to be fine, was discovered to be so badly scarred from endometriosis that it was removed.

As such, childbearing is still technically possible with the left ovary, but it's probably a fairly small window of opportunity.  Well, at least we now know why previous attempts at pregnancy haven't been working.


Growing up, I've always wanted kids, but I've always had the nagging suspicion that it wouldn't happen.  My body is just too...off, let's say.  The fibromyalgia probably would complicate things.  And as my menstrual cycle fell into more and more discord these last several months, I read the writing on the wall.

I'm strangely OK with that.  That might be the depression talking, although I'm actually doing fairly well on that front, between meds, life, and, perhaps, surgery.  Right now, kids sounds more like a chore than fun.  That's probably life talking: meeting some new friends and finding new things to do.  So I guess maybe this is a also a wakeup call of how routine my life was getting.

Adoption or foster care is certainly on the table.  My husband and I have discussed it several times.  He  preferred a biological child, but he also greatly prefers me not to risk my health on a dodgy pregnancy.

I've always seen the "Mother" phase of life as having to do with more creativity than just biological child raising, and with the lift of depression, not to mention the confinement of post-op recovery, I've been much more creative lately.  I've been encouraged to get artwork done, and I created the first new costume in ages for a steampunk ball, which will be covered in other posts.