“I gave birth four times. My babies gave me love and joy and purpose and a bad back and hemorrhoids.
I was not mad about the bad back because I loved every epidural that made my birth story a love story. I was not mad about the hemorrhoids. Ok that’s a lie… I’m sort of mad about the hemorrhoids.
I was also not mad about the hair loss, the diastasis recti that pulled apart my fledgling abdominal muscles and put an end to my dream of six-pack abs.
I was not mad about the bleeding nipples, or that first tarry baby poop that came out of nowhere, the sleepless nights. I was only mad that my husband would not get a vasectomy when we were done having babies. And so I left him.
We were 28 years old when I delivered my fourth baby. I was happy with that number of children, so happy that I was terrified that I might get pregnant again. I took at-home pregnancy tests all the time, almost straight after I got home from the hospital.
My fourth baby was my fifth gestation, the nurses continuously reminded me, because I had gone through a miscarriage between my second and third sons. I didn’t know I was pregnant that time thanks to the IUD inside my body, but not even that IUD could keep out my husband’s sperm.
We shared the babies together, except this too was a lie. I thought it was his turn to get a vasectomy, and he thought it was still my turn to deal with things because it was never not my turn to deal with things. We were not together on this.
I really needed him to get a vasectomy. I didn’t want to get pregnant again. I was done being pregnant for good. These pregnancies that always felt like they were just mine and never his had become my whole life.
I will tell you that I thought he owed me a vasectomy. I felt like giving birth four times had earned me a little credit. That his vasectomy would be easier than my tubal ligation. That our youngest baby was just 2 months old, and I was still so tender, still so bruised and tired and needed by my babies that I could not possibly stop it all for surgery.
He did not agree. He refused. I cried but I knew better than to beg. I had been well-trained to watch for the signs from him by that point. I booked my tubal ligation. He went away for a work weekend in New Orleans. He left his phone behind and sent his mother to watch over me. She said, over and over, “You have to understand” about all of the things I was slowly starting to decide I did not want to understand.
The vasectomy woke me up. I saw him then. I saw me, too, which was worse. I saw that I made myself small for him. That his eyes slid past me always. That I was a prop in a life he talked about at the pub but never wanted to live in. That he did not think he owed me a thing. Not a ride to work, not a word of kindness, and most certainly not a vasectomy.
I did not leave my husband for two full years, not technically. My body stayed in the house, and I told everyone we were happy, so happy. My babies started to sleep through the night; my nipples healed. My hair grew back. I found my way.
When we left, the boys and I left together. We built a different life together. His decision not to have a vasectomy freed me. No more pregnancy tests. No more changing the channel on the life I thought I was planning. Just this life we were picking for ourselves.”
