It never occurred to me that I would not have children. Even in my childhood dreams, kids were always part of my future picture. My first experience “mothering” was helping my mom with my youngest siblings, born one year and two weeks apart. I was nine by the time the last of our bunch came along and I was able to do everything but breastfeed them. My mom had a built-in babysitter for many, many years.
I frequently thought, “When I have kids . . . ,” and planned possible names for them (one boy and one girl) and thought about all the wonderful things I wanted to share with them, especially music. One of my greatest fears (at that time) was that I would have a tone-deaf child. I was young.
My path to finding the perfect father for my planned progeny took longer than it should have, but I finally found him (with the help of mutual friends who somehow knew we’d be perfect for each other) living in paradise, also known as Santa Barbara, California. My “Mr. Right” wanted children too, and we didn’t wait long after marriage for me to quit birth control and wait for nature to take its course.
After a couple of years of trying without results, we visited a fertility doctor who discovered a low sperm count. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with me and yet I had a nagging fear that there was something going on with me, too, because I had been married before and had not gotten pregnant. I chalked that up to the excessive stress I was under at the time—not a particularly healthy period in my life physically, emotionally, or spiritually. (However, one shining light in that bleak period was my role as stepmom to a darling boy, the product of my ex’s marriage to a former wife. I relished that experience and am glad to say that I still have a relationship with that young man.)
Friends who knew we were trying, in vain, started a prayer chain and offered much (I mean way too much) advice. We kept our sense of humor throughout and continued to wait, use ovulation kits, pray, and go on vacations. It was fun, don’t get me wrong—but it all failed to produce our boy and girl. We had named them already and referred to them in the third person on occasion. We bought the perfect family house and spent over a decade fixing it up, waiting for their arrival.
My sense of humor about the situation had faded and I was growing very agitated. I felt like a failure (as any classic perfectionist would) in what is usually the simplest human endeavor—producing heirs. That’s all I wanted. For my husband, it was the end of his family name if he had no children. I wanted a little boy who looked like my husband did in those adorable pictures his sister gave me after our wedding. And I had a panic attack one day when I realized that there was no one to take care of us when we grew old.
This sense of doom came to a head after watching a performance of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in New York—on Mother’s Day, no less. Kathleen Turner’s tragic portrayal of a bitter and barren alcoholic was too much for me to bear. (Please know that I do not hold Kathleen Turner responsible in any way for my consequent breakdown.) As we walked back to our place, through my sobs, my very dear husband told me we would see a fertility specialist when we got back home.
When we had first entertained the thought of in vitro fertilization many years earlier, we were not in a position financially to try it. Besides, we really did believe that it was just a matter of time and persistence. We were two very busy people—he with his budding law practice and me with my music. After we had fixed up the house, we looked at the prospect of IVF again.
Time is not a friend to reproductive organs, and I was now facing “advanced maternal age.” This phrase causes furrowed brows among obstetricians and fertility specialists right before they tell you about all of the potential risks for you and your unborn child, should you actually get pregnant. Coupled with the sperm count problem, our odds were so bad that the fertility specialist (with an impressive success rate) would agree to let us try once. He couldn’t allow us to mess up his numbers by continuing to try indefinitely. He didn’t say it in those words, of course, but my husband rephrased the statement and elicited a chuckled admission.
Talk about putting all of your eggs in one basket. The pressure was now on to produce follicles. I am needle phobic, so I required assistance with the multiple daily shots of hormones. On one occasion, my devoted husband met me in the dressing room before a concert I was giving 90 miles from home armed with syringes and an ice-packed cooler holding hormone-filled vials.
Juiced up and thinking positive thoughts, ultrasound visits were filled with breathless anticipation. After what seemed like an eternity playing the role of pin cushion, we had two follicles, which we hoped and prayed held at least one egg each. We were not daunted by the fact that most people get multiple follicles in a cycle. We only wanted two children. This seemed almost too good to be true: no ethical dilemma on how many to implant after fertilization or whether or not to freeze leftovers.
Modern science is amazing. So many previously impossible situations have been solved with the advancement of everything from heart surgery to prosthetic replacements to, of course, procreating. The ethical dilemmas that arise from embryo testing, number of embryos implanted, or sperm and egg donors can be very stressful on couples whose emotions are usually already pretty raw at that point. And every one of those decisions has legal ramifications, as well. The amount of paperwork we signed the day the follicles were retrieved for egg fertilization was almost as lengthy as signing escrow documents. They call this progress.
There comes a moment when you know you’ve lost. You can actually feel it, smell it, taste it. The call came from the Los Angeles fertility clinic on a Saturday morning. The one egg they were able to retrieve was not growing. There was no life, even with the advanced technological help of introducing our genes to each other in a petri dish. It was over.
We were advised to consider an egg donor. The doctor even suggested a family member, like my sister, might be willing to donate an egg. I knew myself well enough to know that it would just be too weird for me to know my daughter or son was also my niece or nephew. I’m not judging those who decide to go there, but I knew I could not. By the same token, having a child that was my husband’s but with some stranger’s egg would have been a conundrum for me of another sort. For me, the ends don’t always justify the means, especially when there’s a high risk that the means will come back to bite me.
There was always the option of adoption, not that that process is failure-free and emotionally easy, but we spent time talking about many things, that only being one of them. We knew that our blessings far outweighed our failings. We couldn’t be happier in our love for each other. We both actively pursue what we love to do. I knew I had tried, literally, everything to have our love child. This was not without considerable pain and many tears, but we had to let it go. We decided to be content.
My husband and I have lavished a lot of love over the past 13 years on our Labrador, Athena Joy. Sadly, we put her to rest this past November, but her role in my life as surrogate child helped ease the pain a bit. No pet will truly take the place of a child, but my father-in-law always used to tell us that if we were able to train and care for a dog, then we were ready for children.
I am happiest when I am singing. I realize I would die without music in my life. I stay busy with opera, musical theatre, and plays. I also serve as president of a foundation that assists young musicians in Santa Barbara. I am able to help students (who could be my children) achieve their musical goals. I’ve been blessed to be a large part of Opera Santa Barbara’s outreach in local schools for over a decade.
In my spare time I read to kids, help with children\’s music at my church once a month, and serve as a docent, teaching music appreciation to 5th graders. In the summer I work as a drama coach for an arts camp and volunteer as music director for a camp geared for foster children. I am a mentor to a foster child and meet with her a couple of times a month.
Besides having a precious niece to dote on (my baby brother’s daughter), I have several other kids who think of me as Aunt Deb. My life is filled with children and music. I’m sure I would have given motherhood its due diligence . . . but perhaps I would not have opened my life to include all the wonderful ways I can help other people’s children.
Introducing kids to great music has become my passion. Watching kids get excited about Mozart, Puccini, Monk, “Bird,” or Bartok gives me a thrill. I also feel as proud as a parent when one of the young musicians we’ve helped through the foundation has a performance, wins other awards, or completes advanced degrees. I enjoy tracking the professional progress of those who’ve grown up and moved away to pursue their musical dreams.
I have much to be thankful for. I truly believe that many people are miserable because they spend too much time focusing on what they don’t have instead of being thankful for what they do have. I do hope, however, to figure out a way to acquire surrogate grandchildren some day. All in good time
