Chronic illness? No kids for you.

I know every inch of my gastroenterologist's office by heart. The cheesy wellness magazines, the smell of cleaner, latex gloves and the palpable fear of a new prednisone prescription.

I've come to tolerate weekly shots of intense medicine in my stomach each week, become so inured to the pain I just keep on talking about my day while I watch my fiance reluctantly push the button, wincing when he sees my face quickly tense up and my toes momentarily curl under.

I know where every single bathroom is located in every single place I've spent more than ten minutes--down to The Village Voice offices in New York City to countless Middle Tennessee Walgreens (and I know the security codes to boot). I can tell you which ones are the most frequented, which ones the most private.

I tried not to laugh in my fiance's face yesterday when he said he'd used the bathroom almost ten times that day (he has the stomach flu). Ten times is nothing. Try twenty. Thirty. Even forty when things have gotten really bad.

I've been through a lot because of Crohn's Disease. But does it mean I wish I'd never been born? Hardly.

In fact, I'm grateful. Grateful for the trials, the necessary strength, and the perspective it's given me.

Back before I got pregnant, when the idea was a fleeting thought in my mind--an undefined "one day in the future"--I stumbled across an article in The New York Times about Crohn's and procreating.

"Risking Illness for Pregnancy," written by a Colitis sufferer (something I also, joyfully, have).

The column is hopeful enough. Worried that her cliched clock is ticking, she begins to question if she can get pregnant with a chronic illness, and if she even should.

"My doctor assures me that I don’t have to choose between health and motherhood," she writes, "that the odds are in my favor. But once your body has betrayed you, as mine did when my immune system began shredding my colon like cat claws on a sofa arm, I quit trusting the value of statistics to inform my decisions."

Exactly my (former) thoughts. I always assumed I probably couldn't get pregnant. I'd already come to grips with it, and, accordingly, convinced myself I didn't want kids anyway.

After more than a decade of being told I'm sick, sick, sick, of new diagnoses and health fears, it's not easy to convince yourself that something just might go right inside your body.

But the writer's struggle deciding whether or not to conceive wasn't what caught my attention. It was the comments. The insensitive, infuriating, self-centered comments.

Dozens took time out of their day to tell this woman--someone who's suffered enough--that her husband should just keep it in his pants. People who are sick shouldn't conceive, some wrote. Their poor children don't deserve the *tiny* risk that the disease could be passed on.

One comment:
"Adopt. There are thousands of ready made children out there. Parenting is just that — no guarantee that your own child is going to be special or wonderful and ps your condition may well be hereditary — I know Krohn’s is…"

I didn't change the spelling of Crohn's to exaggerate any ignorance there. They did that all on their own.

The author's point wasn't solely the fear of passing on the illness--it was also about the societal push for her to have children, and her own struggle with whether or not she actually wanted to. And, yes, adoption is a wonderful option for some. It was what I always assumed I would do one day, because of the aforementioned fear that my body would continually betray me.

But here I am, pregnant. Against all the odds. Despite precautions taken to prevent it.

The risk of passing it on is small--about 13 percent. But would I give it up because of that number? Hell no. Would I give it up because I honestly thought I couldn't give a child--Crohn's or not--a life worth living? Well, that's another story.

But I wouldn't take back a single part of the DNA my parents gave me. Crohn's included.

Every mother is facing a huge risk. There are infinite things that could be wrong with your child. There's not a whole lot you can do but prepare yourself for what's to come.

And if worse comes to worse, my mini-me will just have to deal with a mommy who uses the bathroom more often. And if--God forbid--I did pass it on, they would never have a better advocate, a better person to show them that it's not the be-all, end-all of life and wellbeing.

Do I wish my parents had forgone creating me, just because my aunt has Colitis, because my grandfather has Crohn's, because of the risk that it could have been worse, or that it could have been just what it is--a life full of stomach problems?

Not in a heartbeat.