siiky
2023/11/09
2023/11/09
2023/11/22
words,archive,society
Melissa Flores Anderson
15 — age at which my cousin got pregnant and I, 5 years old, did not understand how it was possible because my limited awareness of how babies arrived was that grownups who loved each other very much kissed and promised to have a baby together. I don’t know how I came to this assumption, but it would be several years before someone corrected it.
10 — age at which I got my first period at the end of 5th grade. I cried, ashamed and embarrassed that my body had betrayed me by maturing too early, not in junior high or high school like all the health classes led me to believe.
15 — age at which a boy kissed me for the first time outside my house after dark, and my mom opened the door and told me to get inside, and then yelled at me that she didn’t want me making out with some boy in the parking lot like the girl next door.
18 — age when I met a sophomore boy during freshman year of college who became my first real boyfriend.
8-12 — number of condoms taped to the RA’s door in the dorm, accessible all hours of the day and night, discreetly, without having to ask.
15 — times my boyfriend begged to skip the condom he pulled off the door.
1 — times I gave in to his pleas and made him promise to stop in time.
2 — number of morning-after pills when I panicked after that one time, taken while sitting on the curb outside the campus health clinic. My boyfriend speculated about how a baby with our mix of DNA might look, a girl with dark, curly ringlets and dark eyes, his button nose, my smile. Part Hispanic, part white, part Black, with my intelligence, and perhaps, his sadness. My boyfriend said if I didn’t want to take the pill and if I did end up pregnant, he would drop out of school to support us. But even then, I knew he was not the one.
4 — number of classes said boyfriend failed at the end of the second semester we were together, for which he blamed me/number of months until he broke up with me after I took those pills.
4,838 — number of birth control pills taken over the course of a lifetime.
6 — number of times my best friend lectured me over instant messenger about the evils of birth control and its poisonous chemicals while touting the rhythm method.
7:02 — a.m. time when said best friend texted me that she needed to talk. When I called her on a break from work, she told me she was pregnant, maybe six weeks and she couldn’t be pregnant.
277 — miles away she lived when I offered to go with her to a clinic. She said she didn’t need me; she had a friend who would go. I never knew if it was the man who had impregnated her or someone else who drove her.
1 — number of times in graduate school a male professor warned me not to have sex in South Africa because of HIV/AIDS before I left for a summer internship there. He did not give that same warning to the men in my class.
25 — age at which my ob-gyn told me to start taking folic acid “just in case” even though I was single at the time with no intention of getting pregnant.
50 — the percentage of pregnancies my ob-gyn said were unplanned, even amongst married couples.
435 — dollars, the cost of a full STD panel with my company health insurance after a fling with a guy who said he was clean, but whom I later discovered had a girlfriend when we’d hooked up so I couldn’t really trust him.
0 — number of positive results from said panel.
400 — dollars, amount my sister and I loaned to a cousin for an abortion when she got pregnant at 38 just after losing a job and breaking up with a guy. She never paid us back.
30 — age at which my biological clock kicked into high gear and I desperately wanted a baby.
35 — age by which I vowed to adopt a baby alone if I were still single.
2 — blind dates I agreed to go on the year I turned 30 because of aforementioned clock.
31 — age at which I connected to an old crush on Facebook.
32 — age at which said crush DM’ed me and we made plans to hang out.
2 — number of dates before I told crush that I wasn’t interested in a short-term thing because I needed to have a baby by the age of 35.
60 — second pause before crush responded back that he was also looking for something serious.
4 — months before crush said he loved me.
II — cervical dysplasia level diagnosed by a colposcopy after an abnormal pap smear result, followed by a biopsy, followed by a loop electrosurgical excision procedure (which sounds as awful as it is).
6 — months before follow up pap smear determined all dysplasia was gone and months of extreme fear over my health, future fertility and cost of treatment subsided.
3 — doses of HPV vaccine that could have prevented it all if it had been available when I was a teen.
14 — months of dating before crush proposed.
15 — months of engagement before our wedding date.
4 — average number of children families had that were featured in a rhythm method video we had to watch to get married in the Catholic Church.
-3 — months before the wedding when aunts pressured me to go off the pill and start trying to get pregnant because I wasn’t getting any younger and I wouldn’t be showing at the wedding if I was still early in the pregnancy. I did not oblige.
6 — pregnancy tests in the first half year of marriage as we tried to get pregnant.
1 — diagnosis of chronic illness with recommendation to go back on the pill before getting pregnant.
16 — nights in Ireland to stave off disappointment about putting off a pregnancy.
32 — age at which an acquaintance who worked as a human rights advocate, a fellow USC grad (a lawyer in the making, who campaigned for President Obama) was diagnosed with Stage IV cervical cancer. She did not survive the year.
1 — onesie purchased for my sister’s baby-to-be upon her receiving a positive pregnancy test.
4 — nights my sister spent in the hospital due to an ectopic pregnancy after the medicine given to end the pregnancy failed and she ended up with a burst fallopian tube that required emergency surgery.
0 — times my sister tried to get pregnant again.
4 — number of family members and close friends who suffered miscarriages and stillbirths while my husband and I waited for the green light to try to get pregnant.
1 — appointments with a perinatologist to discuss getting pregnant at a geriatric age with preexisting conditions.
5 — dollars, cost of perinatology appointment with new, better employer health insurance.
5 — ovulation test kits purchased when my husband and I decided we were ready to try again.
3 — months of trying with negative pregnancy tests.
3 — number of times I cried.
2 — sunflowers a coworker left on my desk after the last negative test.
1 — trip to Germany for a summer conference during which I purchased a tiny wooden cradle Christmas tree ornament as a good luck charm.
1 — lunch with my husband in which we discussed the limits of which we were willing to go to have a child. No IUI, no IVF, no adoption.
6 — months we gave ourselves to try to get pregnant before we agreed to accept it wasn’t in the cards for us.
98.9 — basal body temperature on the first day I started tracking.
5 — number of wineries visited for my sister-in-law’s bachelorette party at which I offered to be designated driver because we were in the waiting window to test again.
19 — number of times I had to pee that day.
7:30 — p.m., time I went to bed at a hotel in Lodi because I was exhausted.
4 — days I waited to take a pregnancy test after the trip.
2 — minutes it took for the pregnancy test to register a positive result.
38 — age at conception.
2-3 — weeks the digital pregnancy test estimated for how far along I was.
6 — stress tests to monitor baby’s heart rate in the last weeks of pregnancy.
4 — methods of induction used — misopropol, pitocin, a Foley balloon and manual breaking of the water.
58 — hours of labor in the hospital from induction to a resident suggesting a c-section.
5 — cm dilated at which labor stopped progressing.
20 — minutes, length of c-section surgery.
5 — number of days in the hospital after delivery due to baby’s jaundice and my elevated blood pressure.
10 — bonus days with baby before due date.
0 — cost of eight days in the hospital, c-section delivery and treatment of baby in bililights crib with exceptional employer health insurance.
39 — age at which an ob-gyn first recommended an IUD, after I had my first child, allowing me to stop thinking about birth control daily.
— the opportunities I had to get an education and build a career, by having a child on my own timeline with the partner of my choice.
∞ — the cost to my niece, who is eleven months old, because she has been born into a world where conservative politicians and judges, who have all the power and privilege, will do everything they can to erode women’s rights.