Last night, my fiance had a dream in which we had children. He woke up thinking he had to tend to them.
And then he remembered that we don't have any.
All day today, he was making little comments and jokes about how we should start having kids ASAP.
Now, this is a topic that he and I have talked about quite a bit. Before I met him, I never even considered having children. But pretty much as soon as I met him I started picturing what an amazing father he would be, and it became more of a possibility.
After we got engaged, my parents dropped a bomb. I knew that both of my grandmothers had died when my parents were young. What I didn't realize is that the cause of my paternal grandmother's death was genetic.
It turns out, that there's a 50/50 chance that I have the a mutated BRCA gene that is very commonly found in Ashkenazi jews like my grandmother. It's a gene that greatly increases the chances of getting breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
In addition to being scared to death of raising a child in general, the idea that I might have to leave a child behind when the kid is as young as my parents were when they lost their mothers...
It breaks my heart.
I'll get the genetic test before I decide on whether or not I want children. I may go for it either way, because my fiance really should be a father. But I want the decision to be an informed one.
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