Week thirteen – endopendence
Posted on: June 13, 2011
Morning,
The time has come for me to meet my new nephew, my brother and his wife don’t live nearby and because of my illness and surgery I have been unable to drive or sit in a car for any distance.
Partly though I cannot deny this distance has been useful to me, it has meant I haven´t had to face up to the fact that my twin brother has a beautiful baby son. He was born only weeks before I had my hysterectomy. For what is probably an obvious reason, I have found it incredibly hard. The night my brother called me to say they were pregnant I fell apart! I was so very thrilled for them, but felt like I had been stabbed through the heard, yet another childless couple were stepping over in to the club , where you become a parent and consumed by your child. I was used to this happening , but I had not contemplated how it would feel if my brother became a Dad. Not just my sibling but my twin.
Our lives have mirrored each others in so many ways, yet out of the two of us , the one who was destined to have children was me, not him! he is the boy, the independent ´lad’.
Their fertility was a like a wet fish slapping me , a reminder that I am not and nor am ever gonna be a biological mother.
Two days after my hysterectomy, my brother took his new son to meet our Gran, I adore my Gran, she is to me just the best ever. Seeing the photos of them meeting for the first time really tore me apart.
So in many ways meeting my nephew for the first time was something I personally needed to do, the sooner the better really. Its like getting off a horse I guess, you have to get back on it as soon as possible !
Anyhow, he is just gorgeous, I got to feed him , bath him, change his nappies, play and more importantly I got to know him.
Emotionally it was a roller-coaster not just because it was my brothers first born, and I also got to spent a long amount of time with a young baby. It makes you realise what you are missing by not having a child of your own. Whilst I was there he rolled over for the first time and also sat on his own, seeing the joy this brought my brothers wife twisted my heart a little.
Of course the flip side is that if I had children I could not have traveled to see my brother on my own. Part of me needs to start concentrating on how rich life can be without children – rather than the gaping hole that is left by infertility.
It did feel very empowering traveling to see my brother, his wife and their young son. I used national express , and arranged for someone to handle my bags for me – how cool is that!
This is something that I could never have done even before my op – I would have been too fearful that I would have started bleeding or flood. So its not all bad – a whole world is opening up to me, one that I never knew existed.
Even packing my case was so different – I only took one pair of pants per day, two pairs of trousers (one being white …. totally unheard of) and 2 dresses. Before I would have taken at least 2 pairs of pants and far too many trousers, just in case my body malfunctioned.
Endosister Liz
x
myendojourney 
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