Babies

At 28 I'm immersed in the time of the baby. My husband and I have been to 11 weddings in the 4 years we've been together. Apparently it's graduation time. This year has no weddings on the horizon, but I have a neice or nephew on the way, one long-ordered from the stork, and a few friends and more distant family with infants under one.

I was thinking about how much this really effects for me and other CF'ers. Its much more than meets the eye. It even toys with how confident we are in our ability to 'beat the odds', because lets face it, we all deep-down believe at least once a day that we will be in the minority and live a long time.

When you get thinking about children seriously, you have to think of it from the child's perspective. You have to think 'worst case scenario'. If I follow the terrible odds, can I live with the pain I practically knowingly gave my child, when I die? This is the only area of life that people let you think this negatively. In fact, they throw it at you when it comes to this and can be unbelievably judgemental. However, tell that same person you , say, don't want to invest in R.R.S.P's because you won't live that long, and they'll say "oh you never know".

But public thought aside, because I truly don't believe that matters.. It's the internal struggle that bothers me. I feel like I know of every type of CF'er parent. Those that never dreamt of kids because of their disease, those that made it happen very close to transplant, and even one that made no plans but discovered she was pregnant while in hospital. I've spoken to all these people and the biggest universal truth that comes out of it is that as a parent it is unbelievably hard to watch your child suffer. And yes, all children suffer and life is hard. And what if things go okay? I've heard stories of CF'ers that thought they would never live past high school so they didn't make career plans or whatnot and regretted it when they outlived their own expectations.

This decision can't be made via blogging about the struggle. It's very personal and, in my opinion, a choice that has no "right and wrong". It just makes me realize that at 28, when you are in a fairly small window of opportunity (especially with CF and its progression compounding the age factor), the constant mental battle can show. Constantly trying to figure out "will I live/be healthy long enough to do this? Am I okay with doing this if something goes wrong?" is enough to be a sickening reminder of how hard it is to beat the odds. I say this because sometimes I feel like in the past few years I've become less hopeful both internally and in my conversations with people. I talk as if transplant isn't far off, or as if being elderly is some fantasy world. I have long-blamed this on a combination of my worsening symptoms and being exposed to the hospital and CF patients so much more. Perhaps its more than just this, however, and it is also a testament to how much I love my dream-child. How hard I'm trying to reason out whether the love would outweigh the pain.

There's a fine line between realistic and annoyingly negative and it may just lean a little closer to the latter while I work on navigating the difficult age of baby decisions.