During all the years I never got pregnant again I never actually knew why. I had no idea if there was actually a physical reason for it. I knew there were emotional reasons, a trauma-related shutting down of my reproductive system that I had actually felt happen.

I also found out it was not at all uncommon. I met other people over the years who had one child only to never conceive again and they never knew why or sought the reason. I guess it is easier when you have one, to let it go. They all seemed to agree that while it was perplexing and sometimes painful, they were generally okay with it like I was. I imagine it is much harder for those who have had none. This would make the quest for answers a very different sort of affair.

Through it all I never had any problems with menstruation. I had an exact 28-day cycle. And I felt my body ovulate every month right on schedule. I knew that the only reason I would not be getting pregnant was due to some disconnect.

Sometimes I wondered if it was just a quick fix. If there was some obvious and correctable solution. Like some kind of physical blockage. But I just wasn’t the type to seek medical intervention, that isn’t my way. I was happy enough to let it go.

But, soon enough, I would find out exactly what that disconnect was. Exactly why my body had physically shut down. After all the years of knowing I would never seek fertility treatments, I had no idea that one day a doctor was going to have to open my body up and look inside anyway. And she would then tell me exactly what was going on in there. And exactly why.

It all started during the winter of 2014 and into the spring of 2015. My son was fourteen years old. I had been barren for about twelve years. For at least ten of these I actually knew it. I had gained some weight, it seemed. I did not weigh myself but I knew my pants were fitting differently. At yoga class I was aware of my flexibility changing a bit around my midsection. And my belly began protruding strangely. This was a bit odd to see as I had always weighed about 120 pounds so it was noticeable. But I assumed I was just aging and my body was changing. I made several comments to friends that I felt like I was filling out a bit and it actually made me feel a bit more curvy and sexy. It made me walk slightly different.

But it was still weird.

Then in May of 2015 I was laying in the bathtub when I felt a very distinct pressure in my abdomen. It was not a new feeling. I had been feeling it a lot lately. In yoga, yes, and under the waistband of my pants, but also when I would lay on my stomach it felt strange. So here I was in the tub and I looked down and instead of being concave as it usually would be, I could literally see a perfectly round bulge in my lower abdomen about the size of a grapefruit. Exactly what I saw when I was around four or five months pregnant with Jadon.

I felt it with my hands. It was definitely a solid, round presence. Like being pregnant. But I knew, since I had been pregnant before, that in order to be feeling what I was feeling I would have had to have been pregnant for eighteen to twenty weeks. And this was not possible. I had had my period every single month without delay or change. I had had it only a couple weeks prior to this moment. It was strange, but I moved on.

But the strange symptoms continued. I had to pee all the time. Road trips were a nightmare. Every thirty minutes I had to stop to pee and my husband was about to murder me. I could no longer lay on my stomach at all without discomfort, feeling like I was laying on a ball. If I got bloated on top of it or ate a particularly large meal, I could easily look like I was pregnant. I had taken to sucking in my stomach at times like these so as not to alarm people. But sometimes I walked around in public when no one knew me and released my round stomach, breathing a sigh of relief, knowing that people would think I was pregnant, but it didn’t matter because seeing a woman pregnant was not unusual. I made plans on the off chance that someone might ask when are you due? to give some random date in September so they wouldn’t have to feel bad. And then I worried about those people seeing me again and wondering where the heck my baby was. Thank God no one ever asked.

All along I really just thought it was strange weight gain. I was approaching my mid-thirties after all. I thought that maybe as we women age, sometimes weight just goes on in different places than we are used to. I paid little mind and took to wearing loose fitting shirts.

But then, one day in August the pain started.

A sharp overwhelming pain in my right lower abdomen.

It continued all morning.

To the point where I could not move.

It was taking my full concentration to withstand it.

I called my mom, who’s a nurse. We both thought I had appendicitis. She told me to go to the ER.

And what they discovered when I got there shocked everyone.

Especially me.

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