Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Finally Being Heard

220px-JenniferAnistonFeb09I was so pleased to read this article by Anne Kingston in Maclean’s.

Anne contacted me last week to say she was writing an article about stereotypes surrounding single women without children, but after interviewing some of the women featured in her article, she decided to reframe the piece. What resulted is a powerful conversation about how women without children are no longer accepting being a silent minority.

Some of my favorite women are featured in this piece and what struck me most is the calmness and intelligence with which they speak. These are certainly not women being brushed into a corner and pitied.

I know that all have us have felt silenced and dismissed at some point because we don’t have children, but I really do believe this is beginning to shift, and with more conversation will come more understanding. We just have to keep insisting on being heard.

You can read the full article here.

Our Stories: Tanja

 As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Our StoriesTanja and her husband worked hard to be financially stable and to create an environment that would support children. She always wanted a family and dreamed of the daughter she would have, the little girl she could dress in cute outfits and play Barbie with; she and her husband had picked out names. But infertility has taken a toll on her dreams, and now 34, she describes the current stage of her journey as “angry, frustrated, out of plans, and crawling toward acceptance.” Here’s more of her story. 

 

LWB: What was the turning point for you?

Tanja: After four failed IVF attempts, I have to acknowledge that these procedures are not working for us. We cannot continue living our lives in limbo, living from one IVF cycle to the next and thereby putting our lives on hold. The fact that we have pursued every medical avenue that was available to us—multiple times—and they have not worked gives me some comfort. We tried our best, and now we need to find a way to move past this nightmare.

 

LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?

Tanja: There are many hardest parts for me. Here are a few: (1) I feel like an outsider, no longer a part of normal society. My friends and family who chose children all have them, whereas I do not. (2) I cannot contribute to conversations that my friends have, as all they seem to talk about is their offspring. I fully understand that children are a major part of their lives. I do, however, try to swing the conversation in another direction in order to chat about something that we can all contribute to, but it always goes back to the kids. We do not have this aspect of our lives in common, and I often feel like the odd one out when we get together. (3) When my friends eventually tell me that they are pregnant again, they tell me and then add that they feel so sorry for me. I really find it difficult to listen to them talk about their pregnancy fears. (4) I remember generally having a wonderful childhood with my family and was so looking forward to encountering similar experiences with a child of my own. (5) I feel like I have let my husband and our parents down. (6) I am an only child and, as such, my parents will never be grandparents. I see how my mother looks at other people’s babies, and this makes it even harder for me.

 

LWB: How do you answer “Do you have kids?”

Tanja: Generally, I just answer “No.” If people continue questioning, I sometimes add that it’s not by choice. This normally stops the conversation.

 

LWB: What is the best advice you’d offer someone else like you?

Tanja: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” It may not be how you always envisaged your future, but it will be alright.

Won’t you share your story with us? Go to the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.

 

 

 

 

 

Whiny Wednesday

Whiny_WednesdayMy whine today is that, yesterday in the middle of the day, I realized I had completely forgotten to do a Whiny Wednesday post!

I quickly dashed one out and was about to post it when I realized: It’s only Tuesday.

I seriously think it’s time to take a long look at my commitments and say farewell to a couple of things (not this site, of course.) Think I’ll start with housework. 😉

So, despite my total confusion, today IS Whiny Wednesday. (It’s also my 10-year wedding anniversary, which I did NOT forget, thank goodness.)

What’s your whine today?

Happy 4th Anniversary to Us!

This week marks the 4th anniversary of Life Without Baby. Happy birthday to us!

Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve been tapping away for four years. Time really does fly. And as this birthday ticks around, it’s good to stop and take a moment to look around at where I am now and how far I’ve come.

Those of you who’ve been reading for some time will undoubtedly have noticed the change in the tone of my posts over the years. I’m not so angry any more, I’m bemoaning less the injustices, and I’m finding far more to cherish and enjoy in a life without children. Yes, it’s taken four years (plus some time before I started blogging) but my “life without baby” is all right.

Over the years (and I think especially over the past year) I’ve also noticed a change in how vocal we childless/childfree/sans kid women and men are becoming. When I first started blogging, I found Pamela at Silent Sorority and Tracey at La Belette Rouge. Like me, they were telling their personal stories of coming-to-terms and recovery, quietly and for a small audience of readers who wanted to hear it. We were cautiously stepping into the public eye and speaking about our stories, but (for me, at least) on the personal front, I still carried a lot of shame surrounding my infertility. I hedged when people asked me if I had children, and when I talked about my work, I rarely mentioned this community or my book. I didn’t want the people I met to know about that very personal side of me.

That’s changed for me over the past four years as those feelings of insecurity have fallen away. It’s not been an easy journey, but I’m no longer ashamed that I cannot and did not have children. It’s just another facet of the whole human being I’ve become.

I’m seeing a change in the infertility world too. Where once the option of childfree living was taboo, I see more and more people considering it along with their other family-building options, and finding resources and community to help them.

Last year I spoke on a panel at the Fertility Planit show here in Los Angeles. The panel on “letting go of having genetic offspring” including the childfree option alongside donor eggs and adoption. I’m speaking at the show again next month, but this time the panel title gets right to the point: “Living Childfree with No Regrets.” I’m truly encouraged that this option is now being given serious consideration and that others coming to the end of their fertility journeys won’t be shunted out into the cold to figure out alone how to come to terms with their unexpected lives.

Hearing other people’s stories and discovering I’m not alone has been one of the most important steps in my healing process.  Talking to other women who “get me” has been an enormous source of comfort, and I hope it has been for you, too.

As the site goes into its 5th year, you’ll see a new regular feature, the “Our Stories” series. I hope this series will give those of you who want to be heard the opportunity to speak out in a safe place and share your stories with others. It’s incredible how having a voice can help your own healing and encourage others.

On this birthday, I want to send a huge shout-out and thank you to Kathleen for her incredible support. You’ll have seen her column “It Got Me Thinking…” every Friday, but behind the scenes, she’s been a constant source of ideas and encouragement as I figure out what’s next for this site. She’s also the brains and the editor behind “Our Stories.” Without her help, I’m not sure I’d have maintained the stamina to keep writing for four years!

I also want to thank you. I don’t often chime in on the comments these days, but I always read them, and I’m continually inspired and touched to see your willingness to support one another on your journeys. Thank you for your support of this site.

And so, who knows what the coming year will hold? I hope you’ll stick around to find out.

~Lisa xx

Our Stories: Lisa

As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Our StoriesOne of the most touching aspects of our Life Without Baby community is our willingness to openly, candidly share our stories. Together we’ve learned, grown, sympathized, encouraged, accepted, and celebrated. What a gift!

We want to encourage more story sharing, so we are launching this new column space, and our brave and beautiful leader, Lisa Manterfield, has agreed to be our first interviewee. We’ve learned a lot about and from her as she’s shared the stages of her journey here on Life Without Baby. Read on for a few of her insights, then consider sharing your story through the link on our Our Stories page.

Lisa always wanted and expected to have children, but knew it had to be with the right person. She was 34 when she married “Mr. Fab” and believed she still had plenty of time. Initially she thought his vasectomy reversal might put a wrinkle in her plans, but it turned out her own infertility was the real issue. Now 43 ¾ years old, she has fully accepted that she won’t have children, and she can see the opportunities she has had because of it. Lisa has chosen to answer the following questions.

LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?

Lisa: If you’d asked me this three or four years ago, I might have answered feeling like a social outcast, not relating to friends, not leaving a legacy or having someone to leave my stuff to, not experiencing the joys of shaping a little human, never experiencing pregnancy…the list goes on. But I think if I went back to that list every six months or so, I’d find myself crossing things off. Most of the things that used to be so hard don’t seem so important anymore, and I’m really enjoying the advantages of not having children.

 

LWB: What’s the best advice you’ve received?

Lisa: It wasn’t so much advice as a passing comment that stuck. A friend hinted that she and her husband had had fertility issues, didn’t have children, and now she realized they were okay as a family of two. Her comment struck me on two levels. Firstly, it caused me to rethink my definition of family and I realized that, yes, I too already had a real family, just a small one. I’d always thought of us as a couple who wouldn’t be a real family until we had children, but that wasn’t true. I also saw in her my first infertility survivor, and I knew that if she could say she was okay, I would too. It was a big shift for me.

 

LWB: What have you learned about yourself?

Lisa: I’ve learned that I’m incredibly resilient. I now know from experience that I can go through whatever life might throw at me and come out the other side in one piece, and perhaps even stronger than I was before. I’ve learned to be less judgmental of others, because you never know what personal hell someone is going through at any time. My experience has made me more compassionate towards others who are hurting too. I’m much more likely to stop and take the time to reach out to a friend in need.

 

LWB: What is the best advice you’d offer someone else like you?

Lisa: Everyone’s journey is so different that it’s almost impossible to give advice. How do you tell someone it’s time to give up on a dream? That stopping point is different for everyone. I might advise someone like me to decide ahead of time which options she’s prepared to try and how far she’s willing to go and for how long, but in reality, you do what you do, you get caught up in hope and a growing desire for success, and the last thing you’d want to hear is someone telling you to stop and accept that it’s not working. So, I’d just offer support instead. It’s much more valuable than advice.

 

LWB: What is your hope for yourself this coming year?

Lisa: I’ve been working hard for a long time now on another big dream—to be a fiction author—and this year, I feel as if something good is going to happen to me. That resilience I talked about earlier has come in very handy, as I seem to have a habit of picking dreams that I can’t fully control. It’s been interesting to see how much of my experience of dealing with loss has come through in my latest novel, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with infertility. So maybe this will prove to be the silver lining of my experience. I hope so.

You can read more of Lisa’s story in her award-winning memoir, I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home, and find out what she’s currently working on at LisaManterfield.com.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.

My Perfect Imperfect Life

Courtesy Hasbro Games

Courtesy Hasbro Games

I’ve been taking a fantastic creative writing class at UCLA Extension. Each week, we start off with a writing exercise from a choice of prompts, and last week, one of the prompts was, “I’m tired of pretending my life isn’t perfect.” I almost took the prompt.

It’s not hard to write about the part of my life that is so obviously imperfect: the fact that I wasn’t able to have children. I could (and do) write about that broken bit. But if I took my life apart, I’d find lots of areas that aren’t perfect. Isn’t every life like that? Everyone has challenges, and life would probably be dull without them. But part of the thrill of living is overcoming life’s challenges. Without the obstacles there’s no glory of victory.

My life is flawed in many ways, as all lives are, but it’s also a good and happy life, and on the whole it’s pretty close to perfect. And it’s hard work to keep clinging to the idea that it isn’t. It’s tiring to keep feeling bad about the parts of my life that didn’t work out as planned.

I didn’t get to have children, and it’s true that, for a long period of time, it made my life feel empty and deeply flawed. But that changed over time. I worked to overcome that flaw, to seek and take advantage of the silver linings, to work through my sadness—by writing, in my case—by gathering this community and sharing our stories. My marriage made it through infertility. That’s a victory in itself. And while there are still many challenges in my life, few of them are related to my childlessness anymore.

So, yes, I am a flawed human, with challenges to face, but I no longer wish to pretend my life isn’t perfect, just as it is, warts and all.

(And by the way, I didn’t take the prompt because there was another that sparked an idea. I’m glad I took that one instead, because that exercise turned into short story instead.)

Our Stories

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

j0178801Over the past few years, as I’ve told strangers about how I ended up childfree, I’ve found that my openness has served as an invitation for other women to open up and candidly share their stories. I’ve heard from women who are overwhelmed by the demands of motherhood, who desperately wanted children and were unable to, who never wanted children, and who fall into every category in between.

I am humbled to be the recipient of their stories. But more than that, I’ve discovered that sharing stories has been part of a larger healing progress as we learn from each other’s experiences and take opportunities to offer compassion and support.

We see it every week here at LWB, and that’s why I want to introduce more storytelling through this column space. For what intrigues and inspires me more than anything else we have here is our stories, your stories, and the beautiful responses I read to those stories in the comments and forums.

On the new Our Stories page, you’ll find a downloadable questionnaire. In a simple Q&A format, you’ll be invited to share insights, experiences, advice, and encouragement. (Know that we will keep you anonymous.) We’ll do a bit of editing to make sure we cover a range of points of view and to keep posts to readable lengths, then we’ll run them as they fit.

I believe that in sharing our stories we offer each other tremendous gifts, including acceptance, awareness, and tips for healing. I believe that even though the details of our journeys will vary, you will recognize a soul sister in each story and you will know for certain that you are not alone.

Won’t you share your story with us?

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.

Whiny Wednesday

Whiny_WednesdayYesterday, I put my mum on a plane and sent her home to the UK. After a five-week visit, it’s always a bittersweet farewell.

I have my office back and I can get back to writing without interruption. I have no one I need to worry about or entertain or feed, except myself, Mr. Fab, and my cat. But I miss her already and I don’t know when I’ll see her next, so my whine today is that I wish I hadn’t chosen to live quite so far away.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s bothering you today?

Guest Post: Who to Blame, if Not My Body

By Paula Coston

Young couple sitting on jettyAs a 59-year-old, I’m still often asked why I never had children, and still find it hard to explain to people who ask. If my reason had been purely biological issues – infertility, endometriosis, chronic health problems – I might be more able to silence the questions.

Apart from physiology, there are plenty of reasons for our childlessness, including:

  • Being single; or losing, or not meeting or having, a suitable partner.
  • Having a partner who doesn’t want children.
  • Being with an infertile partner.
  • After becoming an adoptive mother or stepmother, find out that that ‘doesn’t seem enough’.
  • Not feeling able to afford a family, or to leave a job.
  • Being gay.
  • Early term loss, miscarriage, abortion, still birth, cot death, early infant death.
  • Not realising in time how quickly our fertility reduces from the age of 35 and beyond.
  • Caring for a disabled, sick, elderly or otherwise vulnerable family member during our fertile years.
  • The influence of our own upbringing: for instance abusive parenting, or our own family’s religious, moral or class attitudes.

These factors aren’t mutually exclusive. I never consciously put off having a family for my career, but somehow it took over for a while. I was dating various people, then, within the space of a few years, I turned around and my siblings and most of my friends were having children, and time went on, and I just never found the suitable partner I longed for. I tried to adopt as a single, but after three years of trying, that didn’t work out, so for the sake of my ongoing sanity I gave up.

If any of the reasons above apply to you, they probably do in a different combination. And they in turn may have interacted with biological factors: women who suddenly see they have limited options, for example singles, may take measures such as IVF, and still arrive at no happy outcome.

Such reasons – which may shift and change over time – are delicate personal matters. Yet if you’re like me, you somehow feel that you still have to self-justify. We are often made to feel guilty for being childless, somehow wrong-footed. But it’s not as simple as making the wrong choices in life at the wrong times. It may not be our bodies’ fault, but it’s not as simple as being ours either: social influences and pressures and constraints, and the parts played by our loved ones, must also share the blame.

It would help if we had a term to answer our interrogators. The only phrases available to us so far are vague and unfamiliar and unwieldy: ‘childlessness by happenstance’ ‘social infertility’, ‘social factor childlessness’. If you have a more inspired suggestion, please do let me know.

 

Paula Coston is a 59-year-old administrator in an English university. She writes on childlessness, singledom, the older woman and more at http://boywoman.wordpress.com and for The Huffington Post. Her novel – the first in English about a modern woman childless by circumstance – comes out in April/May, entitled On the Far Side, There’s a Boy.