I have chosen to discuss my own thoughts on having children for many reasons. The biggest influence on me for having children was my own mom.

I came from a large family. My mother gave birth to eleven children, ten of us still living. The oldest child died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, (also known as Hodgkin’s disease-now considered to be one of the most curable cancers). My brother was diagnosed at age 4, and died at age 10. That was nine years before I was born.

At the time of his death, my mom was a 26 year-old mother of six, her youngest just ten months old, and she was four months pregnant with her seventh.  As you can imagine, my mom was devastated at the loss of her child. Grieving for her loss, trying to care for an infant and dealing with the symptoms of her newest pregnancy proved to be too much for her, so child number six was sent to live with my maternal grandparents for the next four years. Just six months after number seven was born, my mom became pregnant with number eight. All eight were born at home.  According to New Dimensions in Women’s Health, even with medicalization and hospitalization and the introduction of new technologies, women chose to keep their birthing environment at home, (Alexander, 2010).

It would be nearly seven years later before my mom would welcome another new baby into her life, this time in a hospital setting having taken advantage of the new modern trends of “prepared childbirth”. Baby number nine was me.  Just six months later, my mom became pregnant with my little sister, the only one born breech. Three years later, on Mother’s Day, number eleven was born, a boy. My mom was 39 years old. In the back of my mind, I often wondered if the reason three years went by after the last baby was born was because the last five babies were girls, and my mom and dad wanted to try one more time for a boy to “replace” the boy they lost.

Before I met my husband in my first year of college, I had decided to be a career woman and not have children. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my big family, but most of my brothers and sisters were older. My oldest sister gave birth to her first child, my mom’s first grandchild, two days before I was born which made me an aunt in utero; you may have to read that again to get it. I saw the toll it took on my mom physically, and emotionally. I saw what she went through when one of my older sisters got into a near-fatal car accident when she was 16.  I was seven at the time, but will never forget watching my mom collapse when she heard the news. It took years of rehabilitation and multiple surgeries before my sister was able to walk and talk again. It made an impact on my life, and was definitely a factor in why later on I had decided not to have children. My mom lost one child and nearly lost another. I did not ever want to experience that.  

After three years of college when I knew my dreams of becoming a doctor of veterinary medicine became exactly that, a dream, I got married and my thoughts of and views about having children changed.  I had previously been advised to take birth control pills to help with the severity of my monthly cycles, but because of the side effects, I stopped taking them very shortly after I was married. Not really using any form of birth control, I soon realized that I did not have my mom’s fertile abilities; it took nearly five years for me to get pregnant.

My husband’s sister had a son born with spina bifida; therefore, my pregnancy was immediately considered an at-risk pregnancy. We were advised to have amniocentesis and blood tests with subsequent counseling. We decided to do the blood tests to determine any birth defects and went through with the counseling, but opted not to do the amniocentesis. We realized that the reason they wanted us to do the amniocentesis was to make a decision to abort the pregnancy, if the test was positive. We knew that no matter what, we would not end this pregnancy, and we felt the test was too risky, even though the doctors assured us the risk of losing the baby was very small.

Throughout my pregnancy, I suffered from severe anemia, iron deficiency and dehydration. At 32 weeks, I found myself having real contractions, not Braxton Hicks. I was on 24-hour bed rest for 4 weeks. My daughter was born 27 days early weighing in at a healthy 6 pounds, with no signs of any birth defects, just some expected jaundice.

Three years later, I suffered a miscarriage at 8 weeks gestation.  Following a period of 6 months of grieving and depression, I rose above it, even more determined to try to have another baby. After a year of trying on our own, my husband and I sought the advice of an infertility specialist; and so the three years of infertility treatments began.

The treatment started with blood tests and laparoscopic surgery to determine the possible causes. The diagnosis was endometriosis. I was told by this infertility specialist after the surgery that I “was cured; go forth and have babies”. Wrong!! He then tried in-office cryosurgery, after which I was told that he could no longer help me. It was at this time that my husband and I began researching the possibility of adoption. In the meantime, we sought the advice of another infertility specialist.

                He also began with laparoscopic surgery. I emerged from surgery having had a partial hysterectomy. I was told that the first specialist did a lot of damage when he did my first surgery, and if I was ultimately unable to have children, I should sue him.

The next step was nine months of steroid treatments, then another laparoscopy. Finally, we were able to start the Clomid fertility drugs. The doctor told me that we would try this for six months and that if it didn’t work, we would try In vitro fertilization (IVF). I couldn’t believe that I was faced with the possibility that I may be unable to have any more children. It didn’t seem that long ago that I had no intentions of having children, and I now would do almost anything to have a second child. God blessed us with one natural child; maybe He wanted us to adopt our second.

Six months later, we got our answer, I was pregnant. Because of my previous history, I was again considered high-risk. I had three sonograms, a lot of blood tests, and was closely monitored the entire pregnancy. Two weeks before my son was due, I went on maternity leave. He was born only ten days early.  I was then told that if I wanted to have any more children that I would need to try again in six months. Six weeks later, I developed what they thought to be a malignant tumor on my thyroid. I had surgery two weeks later.  My chances of getting pregnant now were slim and none. I felt that now I could say that our little family was complete.

My mom’s situation and my situation differed in many ways. She was 16 when she got pregnant in 1939. It was more acceptable for a woman to grow up, leave home, get married and have a family right away. I know that birth control was neither thought of nor even considered. It was her “duty” to be a wife and mother. It was understood. She did tell me, after I became a mom for the first time, that she had wished she had finished high school and gone on to become a nurse. She definitely fulfilled the duties of nurse taking care of 11 children. I, on the other hand, felt having children and when I should have them was my choice. I finished high school, and even though I did not finish college right away, I have gone back to continue my education many times. My mother felt that she didn’t really have that choice once she started her family. Women just didn’t go to school once they started families back then. Most women didn’t go to college at all.

I know my mother losing a child at age 10 to cancer does not begin to compare to having a miscarriage early in my pregnancy, but I did experience the feelings of loss, nonetheless, (the sister that was critically injured in the car accident was never able to have children, but she went on to raise other peoples’ children for years).

 It seems nothing short of a miracle that as complicated as conception and gestation and childbirth are that there are as many babies born as there are in this world. My mom was a smoker and smoked throughout all her pregnancies, yet all of us were born healthy, most of us without medical intervention. My dad actually delivered a few of my brothers and sisters. We were two different generations of women with two different outlooks on childbearing, yet we had many of the same physical and emotional experiences.

My feeling about our country’s current state of health care is nothing less than frightening for myself and my family. Falling in the mid-range of the mid-life stage with the cards stacked against me only places additional stress on my already stressful life. My employer does not offer health insurance for his employees, and even though my husband carries me on his health insurance through his employer, there is virtually no job security, which means we both could lose the only health insurance we have, if he loses his job. Luckily, we are both in good health, but the stacked cards I was referring to earlier are our family health history. Both of us have the three leading causes of death: cancer, heart disease and stroke looming over us, compliments of our gene pool. Nearly six years ago, I was in a multi-vehicle car accident that put me in the hospital for several days and in and out of physical therapists’ and chiropractor’s offices since. I was able to get back to my favorite past time within a year, running, and even ran my first marathon just three years ago. Three months following the race, I became very ill which required hospitalization both in- and out-patient for three months. Even with both of our health insurance companies kicking in, our out-of-pocket was in the thousands. I had lost my full-time job after the accident forcing me to rely on credit cards, and to ultimately exhaust all of my 401K funds that I had planned to use for my retirement. One of the reasons I worked for that employer was the benefits. Because I have been unable to find a full-time job, and the private office in which I am currently employed has no medical benefits, I am totally dependent on my husband’s health insurance. Had we been living in Japan, we would not have had to worry about losing our insurance even if we had lost our jobs. Everyone there is covered just like in the U.K. The difference is that Japan's healthcare is not paid through tax revenue like the U.K.'s. The Japanese people pay into a social insurance fund, so had I lost my job while living there, I would have had health insurance through the community insurer. In Germany, where the premiums are based on income, and the employer pays half, if I had lost my job, I would have stayed in the same insurance system. The similarity between Japan and Germany is that Japan has a health ministry and Germany has a "sickness fund". Both negotiate with the doctors and medical providers respectively on standard/universal fees. Even though the U.K. is the world leader in preventive medicine, Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Their healthcare systems work and neither make profits. I beleive universal coverage would work in the U.S. if everyone would be willing to not make a profit simply to give everyone "the basic human right to healthcare", as is the philosophy in Switzerland. My husband has 6 more years before he is entitled to his full retirement benefit package which may or may not include health insurance. If we end up with no health insurance, we will be an uninsured couple for 5.5 years before we will be eligible for Medicare benefits. That is what scares me the most. One of the reasons I am continuing my education is to further my career that will hopefully lead to a full-time job with benefits. My husband and I take primary preventive measures by eating healthy, exercising regularly, and not smoking. We both also take secondary preventive measures by getting annual physicals, screening exams/tests, and doing whatever we can to reduce our stress, including weekly visits to a massage therapist. In 18 more years, according to New Dimensions in Women’s Health (Alexander, 2010 ), I will be among the one in four women who will be over the age of 65 living in the U.S., and if I live twenty years after that, I will be one of the 18 million women over the age of 85 projected to be living in the U.S. I just hope and pray our country’s health care system makes some serious changes long before that, because I don’t want to be a burden to my husband if he outlives me, or to my daughter if I become unable to care for myself before medicare does. I feel like all I have to look forward to is my medicare benefits. How sad is that. Question is, will there be funds in the medicare system to take care of me(or anyone)if I make it to 2030.