Munchausen Marriage - Part VII

I never stopped to think what married life would be like with Werner Forman. I really didn’t know my partner very well, and from the beginning I could sense that things were going to grow stranger and more confusing with each day. 

THIS IS PART 7 of a TEN-PART STORY

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

One morning when I was in my late twenties I woke up with a burning desire that hadn’t been there the night before: I had to have a baby. I wasn’t a particularly maternal person. I’d always assumed I’d have a child someday, but that was in the distant future, not something I had to focus on anytime soon. But suddenly it was all I could think about, almost as if I had turned into someone else, a woman obsessed with her fertility.

The only problem was, Werner didn’t want a child and never had. He was totally stubborn and unbending about that. I began to see that there wasn’t a single thing I could say that would change his mind, not even pointing out the sad fact that, due to our age difference, I would surely outlive him, and progeny from his loins would certainly make me feel less lonely in later life. In my misguided way, I thought having a baby would save our deteriorating marriage, so I plunged ahead in my mission, not particularly concerned about the repercussions.  

To be fair to myself, I warned Werner, telling him that I intended to get pregnant no matter what. He didn’t seem particularly concerned. I had had my IUD removed several months earlier, but now I cut a hole in my diaphragm. When that didn’t produce results, I simply stopped using the diaphragm altogether.

Weirdly, Werner didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t resort to condoms either, and within three months I was pregnant. 

When I told Werner, he nearly had a nervous breakdown. He had a history of what I felt were fabricated maladies -- stomach aches, migraines, dizzy spells. It took me the first few years of our marriage to realize he was a hypochondriac and not to treat any of these ailments with too much concern. But his reaction to the pregnancy -- anger, sulking, disappointment, emotional shutdown -- was beyond anything I’d experienced with him before, and it was a relief when he announced he was leaving for a three month trip to Indonesia and the Philippines. I was just under four months pregnant and still not showing when he left. By the time he returned, I was entering my seventh month and big as a barn.

Cover Image: Ava Sol

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