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Not really sure how to start this. But I’ll just kick it off with the truth. I have recently found out I have a mitochondrial mutation gene. This greatly effects my chances in having a healthy child. The percentages are:
50% I have a girl. If I have a girl there’s a 80% she will be fine and a 20% chance she will have a serious mitochondrial disease.
50% I have a boy. If I have a boy there’s a 50% chance he will be seriously disabled and may not make it into adulthood.
I’ve came to my own conclusion, these are some shit odds really. Getting the news was one of the most difficult phone calls I received. I’m writing this while I’m still processing. I am gliding between emotional numbness and crying. Forgive the irony but it was like being kicked in the nuts. What do you even do with news like that?
Let me tell you what I’ve been told since finding this information out.
At least you know you can have kids
It’s not the worst thing they could have told you
You can still have your own
These have been without a doubt, unhelpful. Said by people I love the most, I’m not mad or feel devalued. Don’t get me wrong, my rational brain knows all this. My emotional brain however, has just lost everything good it thought was in store for the future.
My idea of starting a family with the man I love, of taking home pregnancy tests, guessing and hoping, having a normal birth… all gone. Replaced with a clinical, cold procedural processes. Surely I’m allowed to mourn for that.
Having to wait 4 months before an appointment to discuss starting how I’m going to have a healthy baby, I’ve decided to try and arm myself with knowledge. But all I could really find were wordy, hard to read scholar articles. Until I found this:
This is the fertility treatment I’d be having to be able to have a healthy baby. So you can imagine my dumbfoundedness when I discovered it is illegal in America because they have likened it to abortion and hitler raising a supreme race. The science that I am forced to rely on can not even be researched across the pond.
What a mixed bag of emotions. I’m lucky I have won this Postcode Lottery and live not only in this country but just miles away from the very genetic laboratory named in the above article. I’m upset that I feel I’ve lost a large element of control over something that should be so personal. And I’m happy I can still have a child which is mine and my partners.
I guess my little cult of readers will be updated on my process as it goes on because I’ll be posting. But if anyone else has been through something similar please reach out, I could do with someone helping me work out my feelings.