Relics and ruins and the smell of vanilla cream
I swing my legs as they dangle over the edge of the exam table between the stirrups. I’m always moving. The last few days have left my throat raw. I don’t want to be here. Picking at what’s left of my cuticles, I stare down at the polka-dotted gown draped over me. It’s cold in here, and I’m holding my eyelids open, so the tears don’t fall again. I think about how stupid it is that I folded my clothes so neatly and that I tucked my panties discretely into my shoe – so the person who will be elbow deep in my vagina to insert an IUD doesn’t accidentally stumble upon them. An aimless gesture.
For a minute, I feel such aching guilt. Here I am – a wife and mother of two healthy children – lamenting, when so many women I’m close to have had such tougher motherhood journeys, harvesting eggs for a time in the indefinite future when they might find a partner, being told their latest IVF attempts failed, losing their pregnancies after reaching 12 weeks and after telling everyone.
What a fucking ingrate I am.
From the next room, I can hear a heartbeat monitor. I close my eyes and allow myself the indulgence of pretending I’m here for another reason entirely.
I thought about what we’d call her. Would she have blue eyes like his or green like mine? I thought about how she might smell… like waffles or vanilla cream. We’d call her Collette Louise, after my mother Colleen, and her middle name for my husband’s maternal grandmother with a nod to my grandfather Louis. She would be spunky and precocious. She’d be loud and free and smart. Emotional like me but logical like her dad. Maybe she’d have a special brain, too. A little neurodivergent powerhouse.
I thought about how we would get it right this time. My husband could get up to do some nighttime feedings with a bottle. I could let him. I have a job now with paid maternity leave, so maybe we could afford childcare for the others. I could afford to sleep and take care of my unique brain chemistry. I thought about how we know now why I was having panic attacks while breastfeeding. How I’ve learned to talk myself out of fears like the house burning down while we’re sleeping or a ceiling fan blade flying off and decapitating our newborn.
The list of reasons to have another baby is long. More joy for our family, newborn cuddles, newborn giggles, all the newborn yumminess. Getting to do it all over again. A chance to fix our mistakes. Redemption. I’m keenly aware that – while quite high on my version of the list – ‘being lonely’ is not one of the more legitimate ones. I know from experience that for a period of three years or so, this feeling of loneliness is likely to get insurmountably worse.
In many ways, I’ve been lonely my entire life.
The reasons to forgo another baby are not mine. They’ve been written for me by the doctors that misdiagnosed me for years with anxiety. A prescription I didn’t want. But they were written long before that. In policy and societal expectations and the way we perform medical research.
The remnants of these relics are what cause my grief. That I could go thirty-five years, eking past doctors, psychologists, teachers, even my own parents and – because I was born with female genitalia and adopted feminine norms – none of them knew I had undiagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
That was a disruptive little boy’s condition. My answers came too late.
It’s 2024, and the DSM-51, which contains the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, still does not contain emotional dysregulation or executive dysfunction, two of the most prevalent symptoms in females – pretty much the extent of my experience with ADHD. Women and girls are still being denied diagnoses because they “score too high” on tests or are “too polite” to be noticed. If only the measure of one’s wellbeing weren’t simply their productivity or to what extent they inconvenience others. And while knowledge has grown about the impacts of female hormones on ADHD severity, gynecologists are still not educated about it, and psychiatrists do not study gender differences in the condition2.
We still have so far to go. Maybe I should be rejoicing that Collette won’t ever have to experience this pain.
I wonder if there’s any hope for the daughter I already have.
I hear a knock. They’re coming now to put an end to my monthly ‘should we or shouldn’t we’, a recurring heartbreak in and of itself. This IUD will “work” for up to a decade, long outlasting my remaining childbearing years.
A vessel of my urine waits inside a box on the wall. It isn’t the only thing I’m leaving here. Today, I say goodbye to a part of me I’ll never get back.
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1Barkley, Russell. “How the DSM-5 Fails People with ADHD – and a Better Way to Diagnose.” ADDitude, 13 Dec. 2023, www.additudemag.com/dsm-5-adhd-diagnosis-criteria-problems/.
2Nadeau, Kathleen. “The Fate of Females with ADHD Is Improving Too Slowly.” ADDitude, 18 Apr. 2024, www.additudemag.com/adhd-in-adult-women-gender-bias-underdiagnosis/.
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About the Author
Liz Fiorino is a writer, wife and mother of two from Columbus, Ohio. Her 15-year career in strategic communications includes writing for the highest levels of leadership for several major global brands and nonprofits. In 2022, after the stressors of early motherhood and the global COVID pandemic forced her to reexamine her mental health, Liz was diagnosed with ADHD – an answer that not only framed her entire life experience but also propelled her on a mission to share that experience with the world. You can find her work on Instagram at @lizzy_got_a_brain (8K+ followers), @lizfwrites, and on her semi-monthly Substack blog Attention, Everyone!, where she tells her story of self-discovery to help other late-diagnosed neurodivergent mothers feel less alone.