Why I'm Glad I Didn't Get My Tubes Tied

Brittany Shoot, age 27, laid out the reasons why she had her tubes tied in an essay for Salon—and Jowita Bydlowska totally gets them. In her own Salon piece, Bydlowska takes us down the same path, with a different ending: She made no bones about her lack of desire for kids: She told all her serious boyfriends about it, did plenty of research on getting her tubes tied, and visited doctors, only to be told "no one was going to do anything for me for a long time." She crossed into her 30s, was dating a man who also thought kids were a deal-breaker, and started revisiting her options—when she got pregnant.

And so she had her son, and the first three months were golden. "And then it—they—caught up with us: our true child-free selves. It suddenly seemed very cruel to have to give up huge chunks of who we were in order to cater to this … blob who was now undeniably 100% human." And so she started to drink, something she and her partner made it through, thanks, in part, to counseling, "where every week we work on reconciling our old selves with the new ones." But the fact remains, "I love being a mother. I know now that, as far as experiences go, this is the one that you absolutely must have before you can know for sure what you want. Of course, by then—it's too late to change your mind." Click to read the entire piece.
(More pregnancy stories.)