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The Chemical Mother
Melissa
United StatesGALLERYCONVERSATION
“It doesn’t matter how many children you conceive with assistance—you’re still defective. You’re not—how shall I put this?—a real...”
But that didn’t happen. After the birth of my twins, instead of seeing the world through my new, hard-earned Mommy eyes, the world I should be seeing looked blurry and far away. My twins are currently two and a half years old and still the only thing I see clearly is my infertility.
After the children were born, it continued to follow me everywhere. “See,” infertility said when we discovered that I didn’t produce Prolactin anymore and hence couldn’t breastfeed. “It doesn’t matter how many children you conceive with assistance—you’re still defective. You’re not—how shall I put this?—a real mother.
Well-intentioned senior citizens at my local grocery store asked me if twins run in my family and the answer was, of course, no. “No,” I would mutter, throwing two more cans of formula into my cart. “But infertility does.
Recently, I went to a day-long meeting. It was hard for me to leave the house and I cried on the way to the meeting. When everyone arrived, we went around in a circle, playing an icebreaker game. One mother admitted that it had been difficult for her to leave her children that morning—weekends were the only time she really got to see them. The other mothers laughed at her and called her a “new mom.
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