Bittersweet Thoughts

If you follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook, you already know I had surgery last week.  After many years of suffering with "female" problems, things this summer got to be unbearable.  Following an exceptionally tough week in July, Dave encouraged me to seek a second opinion from an OB/GYN specialist.  I did, and we scheduled the hysterectomy for the first week of September.
Everything went well with the surgery, and my recovery has gone well since then.  Sure, I'm sore, yes, I'm tired of being told lovingly over and over from my husband, "Sit down.  Let me do that."  So I really can't complain too much.
But things are different.
Dave and I were both over 40 when we got married, so we both knew the chances of us ever having children of our own were small.  But there was a chance.  This weekend, as we were talking about my recovery, we were talking about the finality of this surgery.  Even though we had that small chance of conceiving before the surgery, it's gone.
Never will we get to see that little plus sign on the pregnancy test.
Never will we get to decide what color to paint the room for our baby.
Never will we get to debate names.
Never will we get to do the black and white family pictures I love.
Never will we have an excuse to vacation at Disney World.
Never will we be able to do a million other things that other people take for granted.
It's sad, when I let myself think about it.
Yet, it's a little bit of a relief at the same time.
We won't have the sleepless nights worrying about if everything is ok with them.
We won't have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for prom or homecoming.
We won't have to decide whether to do soccer or dance.
We won't have to worry about how to pay for college.
So while we won't have our own child, our nieces and nephews become that much more precious to us.  My kids at school take over a new part of my heart.
Dave and I have no doubt this was absolutely the best course of action for my health.  Finding out after surgery that there were fibroids taking over one of my ovaries and creating their own tendons attaching to internal organs, and discovering my abdomen and uterus was scarred from endometriosis, we definitely know this surgery was the best thing to do.
But it's still a bittersweet recovery right now.