'Me? A mom? I was too jagged, too broken, too cold.'
The author and her daughter, Annalisa, at the Smithsonian's National Zoo.
As I sat there in the waiting room, I hoped with all of my heart that there had been some mistake. I had taken a drugstore pregnancy test ― surely those can’t be trusted, right? The fetus did not survive. I couldn’t believe what had just happened, and I took it as a sign that I was right about not being cut out to be someone’s mom. In fact, when the doctor explained that because I now had only half an ovary and one badly damaged fallopian tube, the likelihood of me ever getting pregnant again was, in his words, “nil to none,” I was relieved.
That being said, having a child is the most daunting thing I have ever done. I’m the girl who’s known as the serial houseplant killer. I worried that if I couldn’t keep a plant alive for longer than a month, how was I going to take care of a baby? To make matters more complicated, unlike plants, newborns are fleshy blobs of Jell-O that move. Simply learning to hold her was a master class for me. But eventually, it all fell into place.
Throughout my journey as a mother, I’ve learned to cherish the value of “just one more.” There was a time when everything I experienced with my daughter was her asking for just one more: one more story, one more push on the swing, just one more hug. As Annalisa grew and became an adult, the “just one mores” morphed into “no more.” I am proud of the amazing woman she’s become, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t give anything for just one more “one more.