“For as long as I can remember, the center of my life has focused on my health. It’s oscillated between me being focused religiously on keeping up healthy habits (eating right, working out) to feeling sorry for myself that my body doesn’t perform the way I want it to, the way I perceive everyone else’s does. 

When my friends started having babies, when I started watching their bodies shapeshift and create life, next to being incredibly excited, my thought first was, “My body cannot handle that.” I just felt it in my gut.

This gut feeling was confirmed by several medical and mental health professionals, most of whom wouldn’t directly tell me not to try to get pregnant but instead would say things like, “If you were my daughter, I’d look into other options.” Or, “We could do this, but you’ll have to be at the cardiologist weekly.” The idea that the doctor thought HE (of course, he) was “doing” anything in and of itself baffled me. This was my underperforming body we were talking about. There’s no “we” there.”