Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

What Do You Wish You’d Known About Life Without Children?

By Lisa Manterfield

I try not to drag regrets around with me. It doesn’t help to dwell on how things might have turned out differently when it’s too late to do anything about it. But sometimes, there are things I wish I’d known before I’d hung my heart on the idea of having children.

I wish I’d know how common fertility issues are.

I wish I’d known what questions to ask at the very start of our journey.

I wish I’d known where to find real support.

I wish I’d known how valuable that support, once I found it, would be.

I wish I’d had a wise mentor to help me see logic when my poor emotionally-addled brain couldn’t make sense of anything.

I wish we had talked more about how long we’d try, how far we’d go, and what we would do if it didn’t happen for us.

And I wish I’d known that we would be okay as a family of two.

What do you wish you’d known before the start of your journey?

Comments

  1. I wish I had known how much society idolizes children and what a death trap that is when i had difficulty conceiving – AND how many people are writing their own happy endings, finding purpose and value in other ways and living authentic happy childfree lives. I wish I had personally known far more of those brave souls.

  2. I also wish my husband and I had a real conversation about how far we were willing to go, but at the same time, when you get started, you think it’s just going to happen eventually. When I tried to bring up the “what if” question, he would get upset, so we never had the big picture discussion.

    I wish I would have turned into a nag and been more assertive about initiating during the fertile window. I just kept hanging back because I didn’t want to take it in that direction, but that basically turned into months and months of not trying at all back in the beginning.

    My husband even has a regret – he tells me how he should have proposed a year before he did (meaning, we would have started trying to conceive a year earlier). I think that is his way of blaming himself for our infertility…that maybe that extra year would have made the difference.

  3. Lisa, I am using your words:

    I wish I’d had a wise mentor to help me see logic when my poor emotionally-addled brain couldn’t make sense of anything.

    And I am adding mine…

    I wish I’d had more compassionate friends who could listen and not lecture me.

    Always praying for all of us !!

  4. I wish I knew how my childlessness would become a great gift that I would enjoy and grow to love. I love the freedom it has allowed me most of all. Freedom to travel, freedom to pursue my career, freedom to explore my passions, freedom to help others. I think half of my unhappiness around it came from not living up to societal expectations rather than whether I actually had a child. Once I realised that and stopped caring about what others thought, life opened up for me and I was at peace with my childlessness.

    • Well said margaret – probably the biggest problem childless women face is other people, even if you have come to terms with it, there are some people that probably never will and will make that clear to you whenever possible. I don t consider myself to be a suitable target of other people’s pity and moreover I wish others would think more carefully about having kids and why they want it before jumping in, so many problems we face today are because youngsters didn’t get the proper care they needed while growing up. I resent the inference that is made that because I’m not a mother I dont love kids or care about them and that I’m supremely selfish, I adore children and try to be a responsible person which is partly why I don’t have any myself. We don’t often hear about selfish irresponsible parents do we?

      • Thanks Lou. 400000 kids in the U.S. in care and over 70000 in care in the UK. This indicates a lot of people are becoming parents who perhaps shouldn’t. The cultural brainwashing that being a parent means you are a success in some ways is dangerous and the depression it causes people who don’t then become a parent is very wrong. We are all as equally valuable as humans whether we have children or not. I know that fully in myself now but it took a lot of deprogramming to get there!

    • That’s amazing and You are so 100% right about most of our burden is societal pressure and what people think of us (otherwise I’d be doing just fine without kids) Just eats me alive caring about what people think of me or what assumptions they are making up in their head because I don’t have a baby by now 🙁 I am working on not paying attentions to what they say and follow my inner voice that everything will be just fine.

  5. I wish I wouldn’t share so much information with people who aren’t struggling with infertility because they just won’t understand.

    I wish I would stop caring so much about what people think (they are literally robbing me of my own happiness questioning me about my childlessness)

  6. Also, I truly wish that I would’ve known how many people are so insensitive, judgemental and blame you regarding your infertility. It’s best not even to discuss it with theml (for me at least)

  7. I wish I knew how deep the stigma of infertility is! Nobody told me I would be bullied for not being able to conceive.

    I wish I knew who my real friends were from the beginning. Why do you only find out when tragic stuff happens?

    • So true, I never thought in a million years that I would get bullied for something that is out of my control ..

  8. I wish I knew to go straight to IVF before all those other treatments (although it still may have not worked).
    I wished I had had a support system
    I wish I had known that getting older doesn’t help the pain
    I wish I had frozen some eggs when I was younger
    And I just wish I knew why I ended up with no children.

  9. I wish I had known how happy I could truely be wthout children. Its Ok to miss hving them, but Happiness is a choice and one I chose each & every day

    I wish I had known how short life truely is and that how you need to enjoy every minute you can

  10. It’s a terrifying prospect but as my Dad used to say -there are no guarantees in life. I know many elderly people who have been virtually abandoned by their children.The best anyone can do is prepare for the worst and hope and pray for the best. And be kind to those around us. There are many wonderful, caring people in the world, and that is a very encouraging thought.

  11. I wish I’d know all the down sides of life without children, how horrible it would feel when you reached the point when only a biblical miracle could give you a child, how sad it would feel when it no longer was a possible option to have a child, how much existential thoughts this would awake, how much painful regrets would torment you when you started looking back, searching for all those points in life when you could have acted differently, maybe not let yourself be affected by statistics and professionals telling you that pregnancy after 40 is “impossible” when at that point it still was possible. I wish I had believed more in myself and my secret dreams. I wish I had not been ashamed of wanting to be a mother one day, that I had not had this feeling that I am not worthy of something so normal, that it was unachievable for me. I wish I had been stronger and that I had had people around me that encouraged me. I wish I had known that a childless life is hardly a life for someone with a natural need for human contact. And that I should have made everything possible, in due time, to start my family. I wish I had known that childless life is ok, if you are a strong woman of carrier and or with a strong economy and or with strong interests, but not so ok for someone with no other place and meaning in life. I wish someone had warned me. Instead of saying stupid things like a lonely life can be wonderful, that a strong woman neither needs a man nor children. It took becoming 50 to realize that the life I indirectly choosed, a lonely life without family, was the worst choice I could have made. I wish I had known that I wasnt going to be the free spirit I was in my twenties my whole life and that even I was going to appreciate “boring” things like a normal family life when I matured. I wish someone wise, like the person I at last have become, would have told me all these things when I still was young enough.

  12. I wish I knew that all the years for heart ache, bad decisions, infertility treatments, losing friends and having no one to talk too would lead me to where I am now and loving my life and my family of two. Like Nita says, life is so short and goes by in a blink of an eye (especially as I approach 50 years old) ….I wouldn’t change anything I had done but I wish I had enjoyed my life along the way a bit more.

  13. i wish i hadn’t waited and waited and waited to be “ready” or for it to be the “right” time to start trying.