My son is not a hugger. He's almost 2 years old, and I can count on one hand the times he's squeezed his chubby arms around my neck (they all involve my husband running the vacuum). I'm okay with this because on the rare occasion when I do get a hug, I get very emotional. I imagine most moms experience these my-heart-might-burst moments when a seconds-long embrace makes them feel like the luckiest person in the world. But for me, it's a little different. A little sweeter. And I am a lot luckier. See, I wasn't supposed to have a baby. I'm a cancer patient. Seven years ago I was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), a slow-moving form of blood cancer. I'm in remission, thanks to a medication I take every day that states right smack on the bottle: Do not get pregnant while taking this drug. But I did. Then I stopped my lifesaving medication and endured nine long months of what-ifs: What if the brief exposure to the drug affects the baby? What if my cancer comes back? What if I leave my child motherless? I took a big risk, but it paid off even bigger. Now I want to do it again.

Getting pregnant with Alex was technically done the old-fashioned way, but really there was nothing old-fashioned about it. I had a team of doctors -- oncologists, obstetricians, fertility specialists -- and we had a strategy, a plan A, B, and C. Because of the risk of miscarriage and birth defects, I couldn't take Gleevec -- the drug that put me in remission -- during the pregnancy. But my oncologist didn't want me to stop it while I was trying to conceive in case it took a while. The less time off Gleevec the better, since it was pretty much a given that without it, the cancer would eventually come back. So the plan was to shelve the pills the second I knew I was pregnant (the half-life of Gleevec is short, so it would likely be out of my system before an embryo even attached to my uterine wall). Then hope the cancer stayed at bay.  

Voluntarily skipping Gleevec felt like looking a gift horse in the mouth. I was diagnosed with cancer just six months after the "miracle" drug was approved by the FDA. Before Gleevec, many CML patients didn't survive more than five years. You may not think of cancer patients as being lucky, but I was incredibly so. Taking Gleevec meant I didn't have to endure chemotherapy or hospitalization or even lose my hair. I didn't have to get sick just to get well, which is the unfortunate paradigm of most cancer treatments. My leukemia was whittled away by a little orange pill while I was working, playing, living. Yes, being diagnosed was terrifying for me and my family and I have angst-ridden and annoying tests every three months and will always have a great big question mark on my health, but my life with cancer has not been much different from my life without it. Because of this, I found it hard to grasp why I shouldn't want to start a family.