Unprepared

In the three years we've been Jacob's parents, my most feared words have always been, "You're not my real mom." I've said this before and many of you know this. I've worked on many answers for him, many conversations to have with him. I had prepared the best I could.

A month or so ago, Jeremy and I were at the park with Jacob. Jeremy was pushing our boy on the swing and I was watching from a bench on the side. Sometimes, I like to sit quietly and witness their father and son time. This park was built on donations from the community and it's built to be a castle with a stockade type fence around it. As a fundraiser during the planning/building, one could purchase the slats in the fence and have a name carved into your slat. I was watching the boys and there in the very back corner, to the right, a single slat with one little name caught my eye. I got up from the bench to get a closer look. Yep. I was seeing what I thought I saw. Kelsey. It was all alone. Plain as day. Kelsey. I looked toward Jeremy with huge tears in my eyes. Tears that only a husband to infertility can know. We had planned to name our daughter Kelsey. Kelsey Elisabeth. A daughter that isn't likely to come. At that moment it slapped me in the face that I wasn't able to give my husband a daughter. Or even another son. This is it. Just the three of us.

In what I have experienced with our infertility, what I have read, and what I have witnessed, we women, take all the responsibility. We take the failure. We feel an overwhelming guilt because we can't give our husbands the children we feel they deserve. We women, fail at the one thing a woman can do that a man can't. The one true reason we're here and we can't do it, we can't bear a child. Our husband's genetics are not passed on. We feel worse about that than anything else. I know I have tried on many occasion to convince Jeremy that he'd be better without me. He'd be better, happier with a woman who could do what I can't. A woman who can give him children.

Yesterday afternoon, Jacob and I were watching TV. Some commercial came on with a baby. Jacob looked at me "Mommy? I need a baby. From you. For me. Please?"

At that moment, I felt like the absolute, most inadequate, useless, disappointing mother - ever! How was I going to explain to him now - that I can't give him a baby either? I still can't explain it to his father, or even myself. I'd never prepared for this...

**We chose Kelsey because we liked it. We chose Elisabeth as it's a family name. My niece is Elisabeth Ann, (Ann after me) with the 'S'. Edna's mother was Elizabeth as is Edna's sister, another Elizabeth Ann - my Aunt Betty. It's also Jeremy's Grandma Harper, Wilda Elizabeth.