I was sitting in the doctor's office waiting to hear the results of a biopsy. My stomach turned and my palms were sweaty as I looked around at all the drawings of the uterus on the walls that surrounded me. A week before I had had a pap smear and my doctor called and told me that my test was abnormal. So I needed to go to the OBGYN to get some tests done. I immediately freaked out and thought that I had cervical cancer. I'm one of those people that panics and then does research online and thinks that I have every symptom of every disease that I read about and think that I am going to die. I eventually calmed down. But I was especially worried because a nurse called me a few hours later and told me that the doctor wanted to get me in sooner. I was so bummed that I failed my pap test!

I soon became concerned that I wouldn't be able to have kids. And I have always thought that someday I would be a mother. Then the doctor came in. The results were in--"severe dysplasia". I needed to have LEEP surgery, a produre in which the doctor cuts away abnormal cervical tissue. I was scared but I was also a little relieved because I wasn't told that I may die. But then I was totally caught off guard when the doctor then asked me, "Do you have any kids?"

I said,"No."

Then he asked, "Do you want kids?"

"Yes...someday," I replied.

Jamie & I had only been together about 5 months (although we did end up getting married a month or 2 after this!) The doctor the actually told me that I should have kids as soon as possible because I may not be able to have kids if my condition progressed and I needed another surgery later. He went into the details of the surgery and told me what would happen and what to expect as he pointed at the "female reproductive system" poster. I just stared at it blankly and nodded, pretending that I understood what he was telling me. But my mind was somewhere else as the words," You should have kids as soon as possible." echoed in my head.

This made me incredibly anxious.And I cried my eyes out when I told Jamie about it later that night even though we had never really discussed having children. We had been best friends for many years and I remembered him saying that he did not want kids. And I had also gone through a phase where the thought of breeding totally flipped me out and I wanted nothing to do with it. But it was different now. Jamie and I were a couple. I finally found my other half. I wanted to have babies with him someday. And he assured me that he might also want to have kids with me sometime in the future. I reminded him of what he said about not wanting kids just a few years ago. To which he responded, "Things change. You're the only persn I can see myself doing that with." And that made me happy until that doctor took it all away....I may not be able to have kids and that broke my heart.That was 3 years ago....In 2 months I will be 30 years old and the reality that I may never be a mom gets more and more real everyday as I get closer to my 30s. So anytime my husband and I make reference to having kids in the future we always say "if we have kids." As oppsed to "WHEN we have kids." The older I get the less likely it seems. And to have that doctor tell me that I had to have that surgery but may be unable to have kids unless I had them right away (when I was far from ready) was totally devastating.

As far back as I can remember, I have wanted to be a mom. I was a typical 8-year-old girl with lots of dolls,playing house, and pretending to have a family. And as I got older I daydreamed more about motherhood than I did about marriage. I knew that a husband and getting married came into play sometime but the cute little babies we would have was all that I thought about! I never really fantasized about a wedding. I was too busy thinkng up baby names.

When I was a kid I always loved babies. Whenever I was around babies I was happy. I wanted to hold them and play with them and take care of them and I just thought they were so cute. When I was 11 or 12 I used to watch these shows on PBS,I don't rememeber much about them, except that they were about kids and parenthood and one was hosted by Leeza Gibbons. I loved watching those shows every Sunday morning. I loved watching kids and getting tips on parenting that I would be able to use when I had kids someday. Which is funny because I cannot remember a damn thing from those TV shows now!

When I was 13 I got my first boyfriend. And even though we were together for over a year we weren't very sexually actice. We never "went all the way"! But in my young teenage mind, I was going to be with this guy forever. We wold get married,have babies, and be together for the rest of our lives. So in my mind this was the first step to my goal of motherhood. Find a man,get married,have babies,...I thought that was what was supposed to happen and that is what my life was going to be...seems silly now. I even picked out baby names. I checked out a book called "Baby Names" from the local library and my grandma warned me, "That's how rumors get started!"

My grandma had my aunt when she was 15. But my grandma was also married at the time.Things were so different back then but they were also kind of the same. 15-year-old girls get pregnant now and it's a topic on the "Tyra Bandks Show". But teen pregnancy has always been an epidemic. 15 -year old girls got pregnant when I was 15, they got preganant when my mom was 15 and they got pregnant when my grandma was 15. It's nothing new. But I am very thankful that I never became a statistic. When I was 15 I wasn't even having sex. And I knew that motherhood was in the distant future. I hardly even thought about it at that time. But a year later I was in a different state of mind. Having a baby did cross my mind, a few times. I didn't have a boyfriend and I was lonely. So I did go thru a phase where I thought that having a baby would fix all that. I would have someone, someone to love and take care of and I thought that having a baby would fill the void and give my life some meaning. I was fortunate enough to get through that phase without getting pregnant. I rarely even had sex when I was 16 but when I did and I was foolish enough to have unprotected sex, I'd actually wish that I was pregnant. Lucky for me that did not happen because there is no way that I could have been able to handle that. I had a pregnancy scare a few years later when I was 18 and that was it for me! Never again! I was never so happy to get my period! I was so relieved and vowed never to put myself though that ever again!

Around that time all of my friends were having babies. And that is another thing that really opened my eyes and made me realize it was not the time for me to be a mother. Being a mom is tough and I was not ready. I was nowhere near being able to be strong and mature enough to take that on. My two best friends Amber and Brandi (who were also sisters and had kids about a year apart) were forced to grow up too soon because they had their kids at such a young age. Amber got pregnant our junior year in high school. She was only 17. When she told me I felt bad for her but later I realized it was what she wanted no matter how old she was. We had taken "Child Development" and "Parenthood" classes together in school so we both wanted to be parents someday. I just never expected Amber to want it so soon! When Amber's son Kaleb was born I was happy for her. I held him when he was 3 days old. He was so little and cute and precious and it made me really happy. A few months later Brandi told me that she was pregnant. I didn't get to see her daughter Victoria until she was a few months old. I felt abandoned by friends around that time because they were all growing up without me.

Over time my attitude towards kids completely changed. When I was 19 I didn't mind watching Kaleb or Victoria every once in awhile. When I first started babysitting for Victoria she was only 3 months old. All she did was sleep and eat. Sometimes I would have to prepare a bottle or change a diaper but it was no big deal. But the older she got, the harder it was to take care of her. She was always getting into things,constantly falling and hitting her head on the wall and getting bruised and banged up..or playing on the stairs and giving me a panic attack because I was afraid she would fall and hurt herself. AND she was moody as hell! She was no fun anymore! She was no longer cute, she was annoying.

So of course things got worse when Brandi and I decided to move to Fort Wayne and I would be Victoria's nanny. Brandi was working and going to school so Victoria was my responsibilty all day. But it didn't end there, Brandi would come home and still expect me to watch her and I couldn't take it. It drove me totally insane. This was not my kid. I shouldn't be 20-years-old,stuck in a house in a town where I don't know anyone. It was so easy when I could just hand her back over to Brandi at the end of the day and they would go home. But now it was a different story and there was no escape,it was driving me crazy. I had to get out. So I left. My whole outlook on motherhood totally changed. It was hard work and it was something i was not ready for at all. I was not ready to give up my FREEDOM.

I mean this was 10 years ago and I still kind of feel that way. I'm sure that being a mother is fulfilling and rewarding and all that, but at the same time I have all these fears about the stress and hard work, and the resposibility of holding another human's life in your hands. I don't know if i could handle that and it scares the hell out of me. After the whole nanny experience I was totally soured and turned off about motherhood. Just the sound of a child crying at the grocery store made me cringe. I no longer found there coos and babbles and endless curious questions endearing. They just got on my nerves. So all I could do was grit my teesth and ignore them because it's not their fault. I just had issues that I was dealing with...I just could not stand to be around kids anymore.

This went on for a few years and I still deal with it now. My friend Jamie Lee has 4 kids and I honestly don't know how she does it! Some days I can handle being around all of them but other days I want to run screaming for the hill just to get away from them! A few years ago I was extremely lonely. No boyfriend,no friends, (none that were around anyway) I spent every night alone watching TV. I would watch "Super Nanny" and "Nanny 911" and sometimes I would actually tear up at the thought of never having kids. Here I was watching these shows with all these out of control bratty kids and all I could think about was how lucky these people were to have a family! But yeah, "Super Nanny" made me CRY! I was so alone and so far from having my own family and it made me feel so empty. I was 26 and was no where near marriage and family and all of those things that I longed for...I was so depressed about it for so long and I really thought it was never ever going to happen for me. A lot of things changed that year. I started dating my best friend, we got married, and now here we are! We are happy, we are healthy, and our life together is great! But sometimes I do feel like something is missing because we don't have kids.We have 4 cats and that's almost like having kids because they are hard to take care of at times! But I still don't even know if I can conceive.I have never been pregnant and never tried to get pregnant so I still have no idea if we can ever start our own family. But I am happy and I am just enjoying my life with my husband right now!