Authors: Maci Bookout
I started to get stressed out thinking about all of the things Ryan was entitled to as a biological father that he took for granted, that he didn’t deserve. As hard and as heartbreaking as it was for me, I couldn’t imagine what it was or would be like for Bentley.
But I was getting so tired of running the same old trails in my head.
In the last season of
Teen Mom
, in the very last scene of the show, I’m sitting at the kitchen table talking to my mom about Ryan and the fact that I’d spent so much time fighting something I couldn’t change. And my mom says to me, “You’re going to be around him for the rest of your life. You just have to let it go.” That day I finally started working to accept that I couldn’t fix him. I couldn’t change him. It wasn’t my job or my responsibility. All I could do was keep the door open, just in case he was ever ready to show up and try. I had to do the best I could on my side without letting it consume me the way it had been consuming me for almost seven years.
I tried. I really did try.
CHAPTER 22:
CHANGE OF HEART
one of those memories
i’d be smitten by reliving
i’m being followed by cupid
and he’s not too forgiving
flashbacks of summertime
i’ve been living on those
so maybe cupid’s trail
is where my heart goes
in a southern city
i’ve never called home
that’s what you felt like
before you were gone
irresponsible actions
falling for a stranger
there was just no time
to worry about danger
i wish i knew that night
what consumed my being
warmth i’d forgotten to feel
parts of life i hadn’t been seeing
fear i’d been running from
caught up to my heart
i never had a choice
from the very start
my heart i’d been neglecting
damaged, closed, and put away
but you can’t help who you love
I’m still scared you’re here to stay
i am in love with you
even so, I’m not dumb
you’re just like the rest
so my mind will stay numb
i’ve never been here before
i’ll never do this again
but my control was gone
before you walked in
maybe i should shut up
maybe you should stay
maybe i’m who’s running
and maybe we will be okay
CHAPTER 23:
THE TIME IS NOW TO LEARN AND LIVE
Taylor and I were settled in. Marriage was almost a given, and we’d both said we wanted kids. Bentley was happy, I was happy, and we were nothing but excited when we talked about the future. It was time for me to look into something that might have an impact on what that future would look like.
Back when Bentley was about two years old and I was around twenty, I was out at a concert with my brother and a couple of friends when all of a sudden I got a terrible pain in my stomach. It was so severe and so sudden that it felt like a contraction. I thought, “What the hell is going on?” I went into the bathroom and started throwing up. It was the most painful thing I’d ever felt. It was worse than labor. I didn’t even know what to do. I was practically paralyzed by it. And then it just subsided. I had no other symptoms, no fever, nothing. But when it was over, I was actually sore. The next day I told my mom what had happened and she told me to head to the walk-in clinic and tell them what was going on.
I followed her advice, as usual. The doctors took my blood and gave me an exam, and then they said nothing was wrong with me. I took their word for it and wrote it off as a fluke, and I never thought about it again until a month later, when it happened again. I was lying in bed with Bentley when the pain hit me just like it had the first time. Only this time it lasted longer. It lasted all night long. I ended up in the emergency room, where they did an X-Ray and took my blood and all kinds of different things. But they didn’t find anything, and the pain went away eventually. Once again, I was left with no answers. It was at the emergency room where a doctor suggested that I go to an OB/GYN and have an ultrasound.
I had never had a normal period in my life, ever. By that I mean I barely even had one at all. I would get my period every four to six months, if that. It had always been that way. The ultrasound told me why: I had a bunch of cysts on my ovaries. Everyone gets them, but in a healthy menstrual cycle, they dissolve without causing any trouble. But I wasn’t ovulating, so the cysts were just staying on my ovaries and multiplying. When one ruptured, that was when I felt the pain.
It turned out I had polycystic ovary syndrome. To treat it, they put me on Depo Provera birth control injections, which helps treat ovarian cysts. I was glad to figure out the problem and start treating it. When those things rupture, all the fluid stays inside and creates the risk of issues like pelvic inflammatory disease and other problems. So I was down for the Depo.
After a year or two had gone by, I went in for my OB/GYN check-up. The doctor asked me about my PCOS and checked in on things. “Are you wanting to stay on birth control?” she asked as she did the ultrasound.
“I want to stay on it,” I said. “I’m not trying to have kids.”
“Okay,” she said, and didn’t say more about it.
But after that, I did some more research into PCOS and learned that it’s one of the leading causes of infertility. Not everyone with PCOS has a hard time getting pregnant. But in seventy-five percent of infertility cases where women aren’t ovulating enough to conceive, PCOS is the cause. So the next time I talked to my OB, I asked, “Is this going to cause me any difficulty having kids down the line?”
“Well,” she said, “Right now I wouldn’t worry about it. Not everyone has that issue, and you’re still young. Plus, you got pregnant before. Let’s just cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Fast forward a few years, and Taylor and I were starting to bounce around our hopes and dreams for the future. I was always upfront with him about my health issues. I wouldn’t have wanted him to uproot his life and move to Chattanooga without knowing there was a chance that I might not ever be able to have another child of my own. I really wanted him to make a decision on his own behalf about whether or not he would be okay with that. If he wasn’t, I wasn’t going to hold it against him if he chose not to pursue our relationship any further.
“Nope,” he said. Over and over, in his warm, laid-back way, he told me, “I would love to have a child on my own, and we can try. But that’s not a deal breaker for me.”
There had to be something wrong with Taylor. There had to be something I was missing, some catch. I kept waiting for the “uh-oh” moment, looking for the red flags, expecting to glimpse his dark side. But each day he just kept proving that he was exactly who he was. His warmth, wit, and calm just kept making my life better. It wasn’t just that the way he treated me and Bentley was up to my standards. It was that he lived by his own standards. I didn’t have to convince him to be caring, or helpful, or responsible. He was already like that when I found him, because that was the kind of person he was working to be.
In my other relationships, I was always struggling to pull the situation up to the level I believed I deserved. I had been raised to know my worth and to believe in a relationship defined by warmth, affection, and mutual respect. So that was the only kind of relationship I was ever prepared to accept. And with the others, when things got bad and I’d sit there alone at night pondering the state of the union, one of the first things I’d ask myself was “Why are you still here? Why aren’t you leaving?” I was always checking in with myself to make sure I remembered that I could leave if I wanted to, and that I would find a healthier partnership with a man who came closer to meeting the minimum standard of respect and responsibility that I believed in.
I found that, and something even more profound. Or maybe I just didn’t know what it would feel like to be in the relationship I’d imagined for so long. Either way, it spun me around to realize I’d started checking myself to make sure I was meeting those standards. It was like I’d been trying to play ball with people who couldn’t throw the ball back and didn’t care to figure it out. For years I’d been on the field, throwing ball after ball, and never getting it back. No matter how ready I was to play or how easy I tried to make the game, the other players were more content to kick the dirt around the field or go sit on the bench pretending nobody ever told them the rules. So for seven years I got used to just practicing my moves and waiting for a chance to play a decent game.
Well, Taylor had arrived, and the game was on. Suddenly I had someone in the batter’s box who was excited to be there, ready to play and eager to hit it out of the park. Finally I got to pitch and catch and show off my best moves with someone who kept me on my toes. Best of all, when I looked across the field, I found him grinning at me like there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
Taylor’s calm, kind reaction to my potential fertility issues left me reassured that our future wouldn’t be threatened by that possibility. Everything was still okay. For the time being, I was on birth control. But since we were both clear on the fact that we’d love to bring another child into the picture someday if it were possible, I decided to get a better idea of what the status is. I was still young, but I wasn’t getting any younger, and my basic understanding of fertility told me that the timeframe all women have to be aware of was probably different for people with PCOS. I wanted to be sure I understood the outlook.
So I got a reference for a fertility specialist and went in to ask for a full report. “How many eggs am I creating? How good are my chances? Give me the rundown.” The specialist listened to my concerns, checked me out, and then sat me down to give it to me straight.
“You might as well go off birth control,” she said, “because you’re not creating any eggs.”
It was a little shocking to hear. Obviously, I knew my PCOS came with issues, some of which were already very apparent. PCOS is related to hormonal imbalances. My body didn’t make enough estrogen for ovulation, which was basically the root of my symptoms. But despite never having had regular periods, despite the fact that I hadn’t been ovulating properly at the time, I’d gotten pregnant so quickly at sixteen that it seemed counterintuitive to question my fertility. The doctor I’d spoken to years before had seemed to agree, which was why I hadn’t worried much about it since. When I told Taylor I might not be able to have more kids, I was more concerned with being honest and open with him about anything that could potentially affect our future. But it hadn’t seemed pressing or probable enough for me to be anxious about it.
The doctor was very matter of fact. She told me that the outlook could change in the future, depending on what my body decided to do. But for now, my body just wasn’t stocking the right ingredients for a pregnancy.
Taylor and I sat down and talked it over. We took as calm and realistic an approach as possible, and in the end, we came to two conclusions. First, there was no need for me to stay on birth control, because my body was being its own birth control. And second, if there was only a slim chance that we would ever be able to have kids together, we didn’t want to stand in the way. We knew we wanted to get married. We knew we were in it for the long haul. And we knew as well as anyone that conceiving usually gets harder with age, not easier. And while I knew that birth control doesn’t usually hurt fertility long term, I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of messing with my already challenged hormones if I didn’t have to. If we couldn’t get pregnant five years down the line, we wouldn’t want to look back and wonder if staying on birth control had anything to do with it.
So, we decided I’d stop taking birth control and see how the situation developed. In August, I went in for a normal checkup and found out that my blood work still didn’t look promising. My white count was low, and my hormone levels were still completely out of whack. The signs seemed clear. My body was a No Pregnancy Zone. It was unsettling to hear such a bleak fertility forecast, but I tried to put it out of my mind. It wasn’t like Taylor and I were desperate for a baby right at that moment. And if the outlook didn’t improve and we got to feeling like we couldn’t wait, we’d already decided we would be one hundred percent happy adopting a child. Whatever happened, it would be okay. So we just went with the flow.
One night we were hanging out, watching the Cowboys and drinking beer when I started to have these weird symptoms. My legs were getting tingly and itchy for no apparent reason, and my breasts felt tender. The tenderness in particular caught my attention. I mentioned it to Taylor and said, “Maybe I should take a pregnancy test, just in case.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. We were having another easygoing day. This barely made a ripple. When the game was over we got in the car with Bentley and swung by the store to pick up a pregnancy test, just as nonchalant as could be.
The line was faint, but the result was clear. I was pregnant.
We were completely shocked. We’d already given up on the possibility. I didn’t even believe it until we went to the doctor to confirm it. She was just as shocked as we were, considering she’d been the one to tell us it wasn’t likely to happen. Fortunately for her, we were absolutely pumped. Taylor was ready to fly around the moon, and I couldn’t stop thinking, “This is amazing.” I couldn’t believe my body had come through and pulled off this miracle when I’d just about been ready to give up on it.
Of course, it also entered my mind right away that I’d spent the last seven years trying to get people away from unplanned pregnancy. So on that front I thought, “Shit. How am I going to handle this one?” But that wasn’t nearly big enough of a problem to dampen the happiness, gratitude, and awe I felt.