A Lost Infinity

I had my annual earlier this week. Not only is my OBGYN amazeballs for the number of ultrasounds we get while pregnant, we also get them at our annuals. You know, to check out things on the inside. Make sure it's all looking good and whatnot.

My uterus--perfect. And with a beautiful, thick lining, meaning I'm about to ovulate and it's preparing itself for a nice little nutritional bed for the fertilized egg to nestle down into. (That's right. Ovulating. I'm one of the super lucky ones who gets her monthly cycle despite the fact that I'm breast feeding. Yay!)

Right ovary--perfect.

Left ovary--with one big 22mm follicle. It looked like a big, black ball on the u/s screen. The doctor said that's what it looks like right before rupturing. Right before releasing the egg.

I look at that screen, that follicle, that about-to-be-released egg, and I feel a pang of sadness. In that egg is an infinity of future. Who would that egg have become? A person who will never be. And that person's actions will never be. The people who would have known that person will never be impacted by him or her. There are more babies (my grandbabies) who will never exist. And their children. And so on. On and on and on.

A lost infinity.

I look at my two beautiful children, and I know what potential that egg has. What potential for beauty and miracles.

And I almost feel like apologizing to it. I'm sorry you'll never become what you have the potential to become.

And I suddenly get a glimpse of what it must be like to be one of those women who just keeps having baby after baby after baby. To be able to continue to give the gift of life, to continue to enable these infinities inside me to come into being, to exist. What a thing that is.

There will be no baby 9 months from now. This egg won't catch fire. But still I think of it inside me, knowing it's there, ready, waiting. And I love it for its potential, for the only window it will ever have with me.

And I'm suddenly glad I got to see it. And glad that I won't see any more for at least a year. I don't want to be reminded every month of what could be, but isn't.