Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

It Got Me Thinking…About What Comes Out of My Mouth

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

So here I am, a couple of years into coming to terms with my childfree status, at a point where I feel confident I’ve made my peace with this whole not-going-to-be-a-mommy scenario. It’s been a while since I’ve dreamed about babies or ached when I’ve held an infant or cried when a childfree friend has crossed over into mommy-mania. I’m good. Really. Or so I think. Because then I opened my mouth and something inexplicable came out. Here’s what happened:

After months of thinking and planning, I’ve decided to take a detour in my career path, to set aside the long-term goals I’d outlined for my business and devote time and energy to finishing a passion project. As part of this shift in priorities, I needed to let my business networking group know my intentions, as a way to hold myself accountable and to ask for their support. I stood up before my colleagues and said, “I have some big news….” And then I said, “And, no, I’m not pregnant!”

What the fruitcake?! Where did this come from? This was inappropriate on soooo many levels, and it’s so not like me. Right? I mean, I always behave professionally in professional settings, plus I blog and talk openly about being childfree and I rarely ever think about getting or being pregnant.

But apparently there’s a corner of my subconscious that is holding onto the dream. There must be a tiny part of me that still believes only announcements such as “I’m engaged!” or “I’m pregnant!” count as “big news.” I’m so disappointed in myself, appalled that sad Little Me has poked her face out from behind the mask of strong, savvy, childfree Big Me. I’m horrified that there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe this huge leap I’m taking in my career is worth sharing and celebrating.

As much as I’d like to shove Little Me back behind the mask, I can’t ignore her or the uncertainties that occasionally bubble up from my subconscious. I think these surprises are part of the process, and they must be examined and addressed. Clearly, I’m still learning how to live the life I’ve been dealt. I am in a much better place than I was a few years ago, and I believe I’ll be in a better place in years hence. Till then, I need to be gentle with myself and not too judgmental when I speak before I think.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s mostly at peace with being childfree.

My Glamorous Childfree Life

Last week, loribeth left a comment that struck a chord with me. She said:

“Sometimes I feel like my life should be more “exciting” than it is. It’s like if you’re childless, people think you should be constantly travelling to exotic places — or feeding starving children in Africa — or giving up your job to run away & live on a beach in the South Pacific — because you don’t have kids to think about or send to college. When really, I am, for the most part, perfectly happy spending a quiet Saturday night at home with dh and a good book or my laptop.”

When I first realized I wasn’t going to have children, I did a lot of soul-searching about what I was going to do with my life now I wasn’t going to be a mother. Eventually, the answer came to me: I’d be doing pretty much the same as I was before. The upside now is that I still have the time to pursue things I love and I’ll most likely still enjoy that freedom ten years from now when my children would have been hitting their teen years and I would have been seriously considering running away to live on a beach in the South Pacific.

Mr. Fab and I are heading off on vacation this week—for a whole week! We’re going to the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, where we plan to spend the week doing not very much. We’ll take our backgammon and dominoes, some good books, and our hiking boots for some long walks. I’ll pack my binoculars for whale watching and bird spotting, my waterproof jacket in case I decide to brave the water in a kayak, and my Pajama Jeans (and, by the way, believe the hype. I wear mine every day) for lounging around and relaxing.

In other words, we won’t be perpetuating the stereotype of the jet-setting childfree couple, galloping around to the most exotic corners of the world, but we will be doing something important; we’ll be making the most of what’s turning out to be a very pleasant, if not especially glamorous, life.

Life Without Baby Live Update

Thanks for all your great questions and suggestions for the Life Without Baby Live event.

Plans are coming together and my dream interviewees are all saying, “Yes.” Hurray!

Mark your calendars for Saturday, April 28 at noon Pacific Standard Time (that’s GMT -8).  I’ll be broadcasting live, but don’t worry if you can’t make it. A recording will be available here for you to see at your leisure.

I’ll be posting more information soon, but in the meantime, keep posting questions and topics you’d like to see discussed.

Uncovering Grief: Sharing Wisdom

By Shannon Calder

When we are forced to live in the midst of grief we find ways of coping that defy the everyday. Robert Romanyshyn (1999), psychology professor and author of The Soul in Grief writes, “Loss is a season of the soul – its winter – and, like the winter of the world, a moment whose time must have its place. I could neither hurry nor avoid these rhythms of soul any more than I could hurry or ignore those of the world” (p. 5).  Slowing down and feeling the rhythm of pain and loss forces us to sit in it like a small child in a bathtub whose water has gone cold but who cannot get out alone. Telling the story of your grief can assist you in getting through the utter devastation you feel. In this forum it has the added benefit of communing with people who understand. Romanyshyn further points out, “In this landscape there really are no maps, no markers to plot the course of grief. Here I was forced to find my own way” (p. 6).

As you may or may not know, but I am here to tell you, there is only one way to go through your grief. Your way is the way. I am here to start discussion and educate you and hopefully steer you in a few directions you may not have thought to take. Do not mistake that for your own wisdom. What fuels your healing is you. So lets focus for a second on what helps you grieve? Tell us what has worked for you. You have wisdom to help your friends, share it.

Be Well,

Shannon

Contact me at: Shannon [at] lifewithoutbaby [dot] com.

Resource: The Soul in Grief :Love, Death and transformation. by Robert Romanyshyn, writer, teacher and author.

Shannon Calder is a writer, psychotherapist, and survivor of grief. She has an MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently in a doctoral program in Clinical Psychology. She works in private practice treating people suffering from a wide spectrum of symptoms. 

Whiny Wednesday: People Who Ought to Say Nothing

Kathleen’s post about mistakes and well-intentioned people got me thinking about people who really ought to just mind their own business.

A few years ago, when I my glorious plans for motherhood were just beginning to come crashing down around my ears, Mr. Fab and I went wine tasting. As a rich, fruity cabernet was hitting my bloodstream and making my crappy world feel better, a woman (whose world was feeling a little too good) leaned over and said, “Should you be drinking?”

I was confused for a moment, until I realized she was peering at my belly. Admittedly, I’d put on a few stress pounds over the previous year, but I was beyond mortified that she’d mistaken my bloat for a pregnancy, especially considering that was the one thing I was truly aiming for.

I’d like to tell you that she realized her mistake immediately, but alas, she had to ask me twice – the second time for everyone around us to hear.

So, while I agree that most people are well-intentioned when they make a faux pas, in some cases, people just ought to keep their traps shut and mind their own damn business.

It’s Whiny Wednesday, ladies. Let ‘em fly.

Life Without Baby Goes Live!

In honor of National Infertility Week later this month, Life Without Baby is going live.

I’ll be doing a live online broadcast and interviewing some amazing women about coming to terms with being childfree, whether by choice, chance, or circumstance. We have all arrived here by different paths, but we also share so many similar issues, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while. I’m hoping this will be a great opportunity to really talk openly (and not just write and edit in private) about this very important issue.

So, I’d like to know: What do you want to talk about? If you could sit down with someone who’s walked the path and made peace with not having children, what would you ask her? It could be a specific question or a general topic of conversation, whatever you’d like to know.

You can post topics and questions in the comments, or if you’d prefer, you can email me directly at: editor [at] lifewithoutbaby [dot] com.

I’ll post more details about the event soon. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing from you.

~Lisa

What Are You Struggling With?

Last week, while out on a walk, I watched a little frog make her (I assume) way across a pond. She was a feisty little thing, swimming like crazy as hard as she could, then pausing a while at a clump of pond weed or a log to catch her breath and regroup before swimming off again.

It struck me that her efforts were a good analogy for my own journey with coming-to-terms with not having children. I would battle through one set of emotions, then stop to rest and settle with the new mind-set for a while, only to discover some other trigger or unresolved issue, and off I’d go again to figure that out. Unlike my little froggy friend, my journey wasn’t a straight line across the pond and I often found I’d swum in a circle and needed to revisit an issue I thought I had under control.

Right now, today, I am well into the acceptance stage of my journey. I can be around small children and babies, and I’m not flooded with grief every time I get a pregnancy announcement (although I’m not yet to the point of being thrilled either.) I’m mostly at peace with the idea that motherhood won’t be a chapter in my personal history and I wrestle with some of my thoughts about the future and where I’ll end up.

Right now, I’m struggling with grandchildren. My husband has two grandchildren and it is a daily struggle to keep my emotions in balance. On the one hand, I don’t want to deny him the joy of being a grandfather. He’s good at it for one thing, and his grandchildren are mad for him. On the other hand, I find it very hard to share that joy. On the surface, I want to embrace this new adventure, but it’s hard, and I realize that tucked way down below the surface are some strong and well anchored feelings that I haven’t worked through yet. So, off I go again, swimming for the next patch of dry land.

Do you feel this way, too? Do you feel as if you keep rehashing the same problems, disguised as something else? What are you struggling with in your own journey right now?

Pregnant Lady Compliments

By Maybe Lady Liz

At my thirty-first birthday party a couple weeks ago, one of my pregnant friends, Megan, did something truly shocking post-dinner: she actually joined us for the after-party at the bar. My surprise wasn’t due to her tossing back white Zins like Franzia was going out of business (she wasn’t, for the record). It was the fact that she made such an effort to maintain some semblance of her previously childless life when so many of my other friends have dropped off the face of the earth after becoming pregnant.

In some ways, I don’t blame them. Once you turn thirty, it becomes embarrassingly exhausting to pretend you want to rage at the bars till they turn the lights on. But trying to do it with morning-turned-all-day-sickness, back pain and swollen ankles…while SOBER?! No thanks. Needless to say, I was impressed as Megan hung in there through a mortgage payment’s worth of Bud Light for the rest of us and a few overly-emotional shufflepuck games.

Little did I know I’d come to regret including a photo of her in my Facebook album the next day. Mere moments after posting it, I was getting pinged left and right with messages that people I’d never met were commenting like mad on my album. I began to wonder if I’d unwittingly captured a wardrobe malfunction and it’d gone viral.

But no. I’d stumbled into one of my biggest pet peeves: the absolute AVALANCHE of compliments bestowed upon pregnant women when their photo appears on Facebook. Every woman Megan had ever met began leaving comments on the one photo she appears in. You know the ones I’m talking about. Your run-of-the-mill “you look beautiful!”, “you’re glowing!” and my favorite, “Look at you, pregnant lady!” Yup, she’s pregnant. You nailed it. And by the way, if you have to continually comment on how lovely she is now, what did she look like before? A cow?

And at the risk of sounding like a petulant child…it was MY birthday! Why was it hijacked by a belly? Why is the fact that someone was pregnant the most fascinating, comment-worthy part of that night? Are the rest of us that uninteresting and unphotogenic?

Well alright, I realize that I DO sound like ridiculous child. Likely because it has activated within me some simmering junior high-esque sentiment that if I don’t have a baby, no one will ever lavish that kind of attention on me. (Boy, I didn’t have to dive deep into the subconscious to retrieve that one.) I know this is just one of a million ways that society exalts pregnancy and the child-bearing process, so I’m not sure why this one’s got me so fired up. Maybe I’m just a grumpy thirty-one year-old now.

Am I the only one who’s being driven insane by this?

Maybe Lady Liz is blogging her way through the decision of whether to create her own Cheerio-encrusted ankle-biters, or remain Childfree. You can follow her through the ups and downs at www.MaybeBabyMaybeNot.com.

Whiny Wednesday: Living After Infertility

I subscribe to Resolve’s “Living After Infertility Resolution” Support Community. Or at least I used to until yesterday, when I removed myself from the mailing list.

Apparently, the only viable “resolution” for infertility is pregnancy and the “support” forums are filled with questions about the best strollers for twins and complaints about weight gain at 24 weeks. When I dug back into the archives I found exactly THREE posts from people trying to move on with a childfree life.

I avoid using profanity in a public forum, but not in the comfort of my own home, so when I tell you I said, “Forget it!” you can fill in your own blank for what I really said.

I think that Resolve does wonderful work in helping people deal with infertility, but for those of us who have run out of options or made the decision to get off the crazy train and get about the business of building a life without children, that support is non-existent. Unless a miracle baby happens, there is apparently no living after infertility.

Well, that’s not the case here, sisters. I am alive and well and swearing like a sailor to prove it. And when National Infertility Awareness Week comes around next month, you’d better believe I’m going to be out there saying, “Hey!!! What about us?”

It’s Whiny Wednesday, my wondering living friends. If you’ve got something to say, now’s the time. Just watch your language, if you don’t mind.