But we DO have a child because ten days after my grandma, my nana, the woman who was by all definition my mama, died, I was pregnant. I'm not god fearing (or believing or worshiping) nor do I live my life by superstition and the stars. But on that flight from Seattle to JFK as I sat, cried, and wished with all my childhood might for one more snuggle in the beige rocker; a whisper broke through the fog and the bluest sky I had ever seen stunned me with the assurance that she was still with me.

While she was dying, I didn't know how I was going to go on walking around, riding the subway, helping sixth graders try to understand why we were going to war. I was broken in so many ways. I have never loved anyone the way I loved her until my daughter was born. I actually couldn't speak. The phone rang and I watched it ring. Days and silence went by until the moment that little blue line appeared on the EPT test, and in some strange way, I was cured. This is how I became a mama. This is how we became parents. After six years of life and sex together, a death brought us a new life. My partner didn't want her. I wasn't on steady ground to say the least but I had to have her. Somehow she was all that was holding my perpetually quakey life together.

So, in all reality I shouldn't have been surprised when two years later, I walked in my front door, sticky from the heat and teaching all day and packing my sleeping eighteen-month old up the stairs, to find my, now husband, with a brand-spanking-new vasectomy. I can't even remember how it came out of his mouth but somehow, "I had a vasectomy…I had a vasectomy…I had a vasectomy" was put forth into the air and without further adieu, I lost my fucking mind. His next few sentences are forever stenciled in my brain, "This was my decision. You decided to have the baby and I decided this. I never wanted children. I love her but I don't want any more." I just stood for a second and then started to howl. It didn't matter what he said.

I felt completely naked. I still had baby boobs and baby hips and milk spilled on my shoulder and womb aches and baby smells and even if I did HATE him at that moment and felt utterly stifled by our marriage, I only wanted his baby, my baby, my first baby's baby sister or brother. I felt like I was shattering, crumbling, coming loose. All my love was spilling out onto the linoleum. I couldn't breathe and for the first time in weeks, he tried to embrace me and I just screamed, "NO, HOW COULD YOU? NO, NO, NO" and then "I don't want to be with you anymore." He quickly backed away from me as my statement hung in the air and I left crying and shrieking and howling like a mama who's lost all possibility.

We have never quite settled into this new role of "parents," and we can't seem to find each other again. Love the child; hate the "parenting" kind of thing—the icky, sticky political place it puts us "fuck off" types in. I love being a mama but having children wasn't necessarily in our plans. It just wasn't an issue. We were too busy living our lives. We were too into each other. But here I am writing this a full year later with a pain throbbing in my gut so violently my laptop is bobbing up and down.

Something switched over inside of me when our daughter was born. The world swiveled and a point of view that never existed opened up. Now I think about how our actions will affect her. What will her life be like with two parents who are harboring so much resentment for each other? What will her life be like without a sibling? What will my life be like without the possibility of having this gut-wrenching bond with another person? Sometimes I feel like there's another being waiting somewhere inside of me to get out, to lay in bed with me, drinking my milk and torturing my very soul with heart-breaking, out-of-control love. I just wanted to have the option hanging in the air, the possibility of another life altering mishap.

I think about how it would be if it were me that had done this. What if I had my tubes tied or aborted our daughter without a word to him? Would it be my right as a woman in a relationship and if so is this act of his, his right as a man? I'd have to say, "YES!" No one could have stopped me from having my daughter. Sometimes I can see this. This is how we used to think. Our selfish, stubborn, no-one-can-tell-us, authority-hater ways of the past.

The hardest part for me isn't so much the fact that he had a vasectomy without even saying, "Hey, I'm going to have a vasectomy this morning," or that we won't be having anymore children together. It's the fact that a large part of me just wants our daughter to have both of her parents in the same house, and frankly I don't want to be one of those women who sticks it out and stays for the sake of the child. In fact in makes me nauseous. I'm just not made for it. It feels like I'm faking it, and I just can't fake it. It feels like I'm playing victim, and I can't volunteer for that position ever again. It feels like I just walked out of the 1950s and said, "Oh, okay, you make all the decisions and I'll do what you say with a big giant smile on my rosy round face." I could just hurl. Staying together makes me feel like I've given in and not just to him but also to society in general and to the expectations of mamahood. But in retrospect, I can see his point. If that were how I felt, I probably would have done the same thing. Our like-mindedness—it's why we've been together for so long.

But instead of making any decisions, as per usual, I went out. I went out often. Searching, tasting, smelling all the semen-filled testosterone pheromones I could find. I was mad. I was hurt. I was trying to find what I felt I had lost. Before baby, I never longed to be pregnant, and we would never have intentionally gotten pregnant again. But there I was in all my animal gluttony, strutting my wares in bars, in cars, with anyone who would grab my hips and dance to bad Seattle bands. I would meet old friends and feel my hormones surge through my hair, my fingertips; my very pores reeked of "impregnate me now!" I think I even actually said it a few times. I couldn't even look at my husband, especially below the waist, but everyone else was fair game. But in all reality this entire situation was not a fair game for anyone and this just wasn't me.

In the end, does it matter? In the end, what is most important? What example do I want to set? I feel like my most important example as a mama is to stand up for myself and not take crap form anyone, especially my spouse. I'm wracked with guilt over sending her back and forth from one house to another. I'm also just not very functional as a single parent. And even though I demand fair share, mamas get most of the load. I want her to have both of us, full time, especially since neither of us had both our parents growing up. Regardless of our mixed-up feelings on having children, we love her—desperately. We've begun to mend. We had to. And as much as I want to love him like I did before, I just can't let this thing between us go. It's partially pain and partially principle. It's just like with kids, you have to choose your battles, but this one has me stumped.