I Thought Having a Baby Would Help Me Put Down the Bottle

Not long ago a friend of mine, while getting into my car, caught the tail end of a phone conversation I was having with a young woman, newly sober. The young woman was sobbing, something to do with emotions surfacing, things she’d been numbing with drugs and alcohol probably since middle school. At a break in the sobbing I shared that I’d gone through the same thing when I stopped drinking, that it felt as though I’d never stop crying, but that eventually I did, and life got better. After I hung up my friend remarked that from the patient way I spoke to the caller, I’d have made a good mother. I told my friend that had I become a mother, I would have been a drunk one, and I’d be helping no one, least of all newly sober young women.

My drinking didn’t start out problematic; it rarely does. In my twenties drinking was sometimes messy, but mostly fun. I had a good job, great friends, and had written a bestselling novel wherein the drinking depicted was sometimes messy, but mostly fun. This wasn’t alcoholism. Not yet. I once heard a man in a recovery group say non-alcoholics change their behavior to meet their goals, but alcoholics change their goals to meet their behavior. In my thirties that started to happen. When it got harder and harder to write hungover, I simply stopped writing and my drinking took off. It was never daily; I never drank in the morning. But I drank when I didn’t want to and when I said I wouldn’t. When I started drinking I didn’t want to stop, until eventually, I couldn’t.

Meanwhile my friends had begun to pair off and have kids. I started to feel left behind on the playground, like I was sitting in one of those big toy fire trucks, using my whole body for momentum and getting nowhere. I noticed another thing: a strange new phenomenon wherein these same friends with whom I used to drink suddenly stopped after two drinks and headed home. In my burgeoning alcoholic mind it was a kid that curbed the drinking. That’s what I needed. A kid would give my life purpose, meaning and structure. More importantly, I’d be able to finish my second novel. It had sold on a few chapters and an outline after the first one came out, but I had already missed several deadlines. In my increasingly sick mind this kid that didn’t exist yet was already fixing so many of my life’s problems.

A partner could wait. I did the awful math: the finding, securing, and solidifying of a new relationship would require at least two years, putting me terrifyingly close to forty and overshooting the viability of whatever eggs remained unbroken in the dented Styrofoam carton that was my aging ovaries. If I wanted to give birth to a child, I would have to be proactive. I poured myself a drink and made an appointment with a fertility specialist whom my friends had consulted a year earlier. They’d had a baby on their first try. Flipping through the catalogue, I settled on Dutch sperm, its issuer in possession of a good education and a basic man body. His face was a WASPy tabula rasa upon which I might write my own swarthy Italian/Roma genes. The specialist performed tests that included an ultrasound of my eggs, blowing ink into my fallopian tubes to test their circumference, and zero questions about my drinking.

I called my sister to tell her the great news.

“I think this is a really terrible idea,” she said. “You drink too much to be a mother. You should quit drinking first.”

Wow. Count her out, I remember thinking. Luckily, I had other things going for me: a job with excellent benefits and maternity leave, a decent two-bedroom apartment (albeit above a store in a bar-clogged part of town), and the support of at least two friends who weren’t fully aware of the extent of my drinking. I looked forward to sliding my baby in with theirs and joining them at the adult table. There, I too would stop at two, three, four drinks max, and only on the weekends, or perhaps the odd Thursday night, if Friday was a light work day. Then I got the call from the fertility specialist. My egg count was good, fallopian tubes hearty. He was confident I’d get pregnant, but recommended I have the benign cyst they discovered in one of my ovaries removed, which meant delaying insemination for a few months.

After the procedure, I was aware I needed to clean up my act, so I booked a trip to a fancy spiritual retreat in Costa Rica. No drinking, drugs or cigarettes allowed, featuring a session with a “world-renowned” spiritual advisor. The mountains were beautiful, my ‘tentalow’ cool, the yoga refreshing—though I skipped morning classes, having met a cute guy who smuggled in some cigarettes and bourbon. By the time I met the spiritualist, who was in her twenties and probably from Wisconsin, I was hungover. As her silver-ringed hands moved around my body, I could feel something akin to a school of fish swimming just below the surface of my skin, leaving me with a powerful urge to cry. Sensing this, she stopped. I told her about my plan to have a baby on my own. I asked if this was a good idea, expressing doubt for the first time.

“Do you even want a baby?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I mean who’s really sure?”

“Most people who want a baby don’t need to ask a stranger this question.”

“What if I regret not having a baby?”

She looked puzzled. “So you’re saying you’re going to have a baby now in case future you wants one, even though current you doesn’t.”

“Is that bad?”

“Think of it this way: you’re making major life decisions for two people you don’t know very well, you and this baby.”

I was angry. What did this wifty trust fund guru know about me? Skipping the last yoga class, I swung by the pool to find my bratty vacation boyfriend. I drowned out the last day’s chanting with the rest of his bourbon, wondering how it is that I always seemed to find these guys.

I flew home the opposite of spiritual.

Soon after I got back, a miracle: a booze-soaked blind date that went great. We fell swiftly in love. After three weeks, we moved in together because this was not a noxious pattern. This was fate blessing me with a partner willing to commit, who—joy!—wanted a kid, too. With me! I called the fertility specialist and put single motherhood on hold, for here was someone, just in time. I don’t remember what they told me about the sperm, whether it had already been shipped in liquid nitrogen or was waiting for me to set an insemination date, but dreams of my half-Dutch baby died. Less than six months later, so, too, did my relationship. The reason, of course, was his drinking made me drink too much. Or was it the other way around?

A month later I was wandering my apartment on a Saturday morning, heartbroken, counting the hour until it was noon, when a glass of wine wouldn’t seem so bad. I found myself saying to myself, “I don’t know what to do,” and I heard a voice, which was my voice, reply, “You could get help for your drinking.”

I don’t know what to do.

You could get help for your drinking.

I had always thought spiritual awakenings had to be dramatic, occurring only after spending forty days in a desert or surviving a plane crash. Or else they were expensive, involving years of therapy, or staying in a ‘tentalow’ in the mountains of Costa Rica only to be told by a white girl in blonde dreads that you’re a fucking idiot. But this awakening was simple, a voice that was my voice telling me that I could get some help.

The next morning I dragged myself to one of those meetings I’d seen in gritty movies, where ex-cons with thick forearms and neck tattoos point and yell at each other to smarten up or you’re gonna fuckin’ die, man. And I did almost die, from the corniness of the slogans festooning the dun-colored walls: You’re Not Alone, Keep Coming Back, One Day At A Time. Had it come to this? An older lady handed me tissues. The speaker gave me her phone number. The chairperson became my sponsor. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I’ve been one of the very lucky few that hasn’t needed to drink since.

Mind clear, life stable, future bright, it would have been the perfect time to go ahead and have that baby. Except I had to finally admit I only ever wanted the things I thought a baby might give me: purpose, meaning, and structure, things I was now achieving by staying sober. Any regret I have felt about not having children mirrors the regret I’ve heard some mothers express when they imagine their own alternate, childless path. We all sometimes want what other people have. But the one thing that keeps me sober is learning to be grateful for the things I have.

I finished the second novel. Originally written from the perspective of a wacky, sexy party girl, her life was no longer funny or glamorous to me. The narrator became an overburdened mother of two who gets caught up in her sister’s alcoholic demise. The book was dedicated, naturally, to my sister.

Twelve years later I still go to those meetings, mostly to help other young women stay sober. But I don’t think of myself as their mother. I would not die for them. In fact, there is little of my own life I would sacrifice for them. That’s what a mother does. And while unconditional love is vital, it rarely helps addicts and alcoholics get clean and sober. My own sister tried to help me for years by saying things like, “I love you unconditionally. Get help for your drinking.” I couldn’t hear this from anyone but a fellow alcoholic. So no I’m not their mother. And when I tell other mothers in my recovery group why I almost became one, they say, quite ruefully, that I’m lucky my all kids are imaginary, and maybe those kids are too.