filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic comes from a reader and is ripe for a rant and perhaps some ideas.
She writes:
“I still haven’t figured out how to make friends with people my own age (40s) who have children. I often feel disposable, or okay to invite to things when it suits them. I’m a thoughtful, caring person who deserves better.”
What do you think about this? It’s Whiny Wednesday, so let it all out.
One of the big changes I’ve seen since starting this site almost ten years ago is that the topics of infertility and childlessness are being brought out from behind closed doors and are being discussed in more public forums.
Whereas once I felt as if I was the only person talking openly about this, I’ve since found an incredible network of fellow bloggers and authors writing very intimately about their stories. I’ve also received several requests to complete surveys from researchers who are exploring the effects and issues of unplanned childlessness.
Women in the public eye are finally being open about miscarriage and infertility. It feels like a huge step forward to have such visible public figure speaks openly about a subject which has been so taboo.
In your corner of the world, you may still be feeling that NO ONE is talking about this, that no one understands what you’re going through, and even your closest confidants don’t want to talk about it. Sadly, I think this is still true for most of us. But the tide is turning, and the more we talk about this topic and the more we venture out and start these conversations, the less taboo it will become.
Even if you’re not ready (or feel as if you will never be ready) to start your own campaign for understanding, you’re already part of this quiet revolution. You’re here, you’re talking about your experience with others, you’re sharing comfort and encouraging other readers. Even if you’re doing all of this anonymously and even if you’re coming here in secret to contribute to these conversations, you are part of the change that’s coming.
This issue is never going to go away, in fact I believe that our segment of the population will only continue to grow (but that’s another post for another day), but perhaps in the future, our sisters who need help will be able to pick up a leaflet from their doctors or walk into a local support group or sit down with a friend over coffee and feel comfortable talking openly about what it feels to not to have the children you wanted.
This topic came up on the community forums a while ago and I thought it was a great topic to explore here on Whiny Wednesday.
Not being treated like a “real” adult because you’re not a parent.
I’ve certainly experienced this myself and talked to friends who say they’re still treated like a kid because they don’t have children of their own.
How about you?
With Thanksgiving just around the corner here in the U.S., and seasonal goods already moving off the shelves, the holiday season is well underway. I’ve been hearing holiday music in stores for weeks, and know of people who’ve had their Christmas trees up since the beginning of November!
For many of you, the festive season might not be such a fun time. Traditionally, whichever holidays you celebrate, they include family gatherings, which might mean facing insensitive relatives and prying questions about children. It can be one of the most difficult times of the year, with social gatherings, kid-oriented activities, and constant reminders of the many ways we don’t get to celebrate the holidays.
I love that this community includes new readers and seasoned pros, so let’s help one another out this year by sharing ideas on getting through the season with our hearts intact.
What are some of the issues you know you’ll face this holiday season? What events are you dreading? What’s going to be hardest for you?
And perhaps most important of all, how to do plan to get through the season with minimum emotional damage?
If you’re looking for some guidance from those who’ve walked this path before you, make sure to add yourself to your gift shopping list this year. Here are some books written by members of our community. Please consider supporting their work, so that they can continue supporting all of us.
Jessica Hepburn has two books on offer. Her first, The Pursuit of Motherhood tells her own heartbreaking story of her quest to become a mother. In 21 Miles: Swimming in Search of the Meaning of Motherhood, Jessica tells the “next chapter” of her story, her quest to find meaning in her own life and shares inspiring conversations about motherhood with some female powerhouses.
And I’d be remiss if I din’t include my own books on this list: Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen, and Life Without Baby Holiday Companion, a compilation of stories and advice to get you through the holidays, written together with Kathleen Guthrie Woods.
Before I was even pregnant, I imagined my children vividly. I laid out a smorgasbord of family traits and handpicked the best of them.
My son, Valentino, would be named for my husband’s favorite uncle, and he’d be a chip off the old block. He’d have his daddy’s good looks—the profile of an Aztec Prince—paired with Grandma Tilly’s curiosity and great-grandpa Aureliano’s piercing green eyes. I pictured my Valentino to be charismatic and creative; he’d love music and art, and of course, he’d adore his mother.
My daughter, naturally, would take after my side of the family. Sophia would be named for my dad’s mother and would inherit her spirit of survival and her generosity, and she’d get my straight hair, so I’d know how to deal with it. I could picture Sophia easily, and I’m sure you’ll understand when I tell you that I knew she would be beautiful.
Before they were born—in fact, before they were even conceived—I imagined my children to life, and they were absolutely perfect. And why wouldn’t they be? Does any mother really imagine her future offspring any other way?
But here’s the thing. My children are perfect. Sophia and Valentino could never be anything but perfect, because they never got the chance to exist anywhere but in my imagination.
I was 38 years old, and four years into trying to conceive my children when my doctor pulled out a notepad and drew a lopsided oval. “Imagine this is your ovary,” he said.
“You have one producing follicle.”
It just takes one, I thought, but the doctor looked at the wall just past my eyes and I could tell this news wasn’t going to be good.
He explained what was going on in perfectly logical, unsentimental, doctor speak—I assume—but what I heard was:
“A normal ovary should have 6-10 good follicles, but you have mumbo-jumbo-icky-sticky-messed-up-insidy-bits-itis, so you have a snowflake’s chance in hell of having a baby.”
The actual math worked out like this:
Mr. Fab (my hubby) plus Lisa (that’s me) to the power of love, equals big fat nothing, no baby to infinity.
Mr. Fab plus Lisa times IVF times unknown X equals approximately 25 percent chance of conception.
Mr. Fab plus egg donor minus Lisa minus love, all to the power of voodoo times big bucks squared equals a 50-50 shot, maybe baby, maybe not.
I can’t move on from this particular part of the story without mentioning that up until this point, IVF had been sold to us as the silver bullet, the sure thing, with glossy brochures showing healthy bouncing babies and glowing parents. There was no mention of the outrageous expense, the painful injections, or the emotional toll of the slippery slope of hope, expectation, and disappointment. The odds quoted covered the vast spectrum of all women, all ages, all scenarios and were not calculated for one Lisa, one set of dud ovaries, one desperate attempt. Instead we were simply told, “It will all be worth it when you get your baby.”
I’m sure the doctor expected us to say, “Where do I sign?” But his glossy offer wasn’t nearly good enough for me to bet my money, my body, and, most of all, my heart on, so we said, “No thank you,” and left.
There’s a lot more to this story of course, enough to fill two books and more than 1,500 blog posts. Suffice to say, my husband and I, armed with information from every possible source, explored all the avenues available, but ultimately our children, a pregnancy, even a near-miss, eluded us. We made the hardest decision of our lives and started trying to figure out how to build a life that didn’t include Valentino or Sophia.
It’s been a long road of acceptance, filled with a lot of tears, much stomping around being furious at the world, and yes, I’ll admit it, a fair bit of glaring at mothers who don’t fully appreciate the children they’ve been given, and griping about the unfairness of how life’s blessings are sometimes doled out (see any Whiny Wednesday post for details.) But I’m doing pretty well at this childless thing now.
That said, my wounds have scabbed, rather than healed, and I have yet to put myself through the torture of accepting a baby shower invitation. The last one I went to was for a baby boy who’s now in middle school. I’ve sent gifts and visited every friend’s newborn, but I just couldn’t face all that comparing pregnant bellies and passing around impossibly tiny onesies, or the smiling faces saying, “You’re next!” I knew I’d just end up hyperventilating in the guest bathroom again.
But if a well-meaning, but stressed-out mom tells me, “You wouldn’t understand; you’re not a mother,” I can now simply grit my teeth and try to put myself in her shoes. I’ll suggest that maybe because I’m not entrenched in the child-rearing wars, I could offer a different perspective, and that perhaps my four decades of preparing for my own children, might give me some grounds for an opinion.
And when this mom tells me how perfect her children are, I’ll just smile and nod, because I know that mine are perfect, too. My daughter, Sophia, is whip smart and beautiful, and has never slammed a door or yelled that she hates me. And my son, my Valentino? He’s just so handsome, with those gorgeous green eyes, and oh, how he loves his mother.
I know every mother thinks her children are perfect, but in my memories and in my heart, mine really are—and they always will be.
Tomorrow is Halloween, which for many of us means streams of cute children knocking on our front doors.
Love it or hate it; it’s hard to avoid it. So the discussion topic for this week is:
How do you handle this difficult holiday?
As it’s Whiny Wednesday, there’s room for your gripes here, too.
In the very early stages of our relationship. Mr. Fab and I discovered all sorts of odd things we had in common, one of which is that we both played the trombone as teenagers. We talked about learning to play again, and we finally found a used instrument in good condition.
The main difference between a trombone and other brass instruments is that you make the notes by moving a slide up and down, rather hitting a key. It makes it a lot more difficult to hit just the right note. It’s also what makes the trombone so much fun to play, because you can slide easily from note to note, up and down and back again.
The reason I’m telling you all this is that today I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole coming-to-terms process. I’ve been thinking about it in terms of school grades, with the freshman class having just made the decision to live childfree or to stop fertility treatments, and having no idea how to start getting used to the idea. They eventually graduate to acceptance and begin to find a way to get happy, and ultimately go on to live a full and happy life without children.
But it’s really not that simple. You never really do hit all the notes precisely and in order. It’s much more like playing a trombone, where you slide from one state to the next and sometimes back again. One day, you’re content and determined to make the most of your situation, then something happens to trigger all those old emotions and you find yourself sliding back down. Then you get to talk someone who understands you and you feel like you can really figure this out…until your friend announces a pregnancy and back down you go again.
So, I’m wondering, where are you on the sliding scale of coming-to-terms? Where are you right now and have you been better or been worse? Do you feel that, even though you have setbacks, you’re slowly moving towards a place of peace, or can you see no way to ever come-to-terms with your lot in life? Or have you already been up and down the scale and have finally found a place of contentment? I’d like to know.
Halloween is a holiday that others assume everyone is joyous about, but for many of us, it’s a holiday that surprises us with all kinds of triggers. Halloween delivers a steady stream of Other People’s Children—all impossibly cute—to our neighborhoods, Facebook pages, and workplaces. It’s hard to avoid it when it comes, quite literally, knocking at your own front door.
Around Halloween, it’s a good idea to steer clear of social media, the mall, and kid-related gatherings. If you live in a family-friendly neighborhood, you might also have to deal with a steady stream of adorable munchkins.
As always, it pays to have a plan so you don’t find yourself hiding behind the couch with the lights out, pretending not to be in, because the first set of trick-or-treaters reduced you to tears and now you’re trapped in your own home. And, by the way, this is a real-life story from a reader, not a humorous hypothetical scenario.
So, how will you handle it? Do you want to turn out the lights and pretend you’re not home? Do you need to make alternative plans so you don’t have be at home during trick or treat time? During those years I wasn’t ready to face it, I’ve turned off the front lights and hidden in a back room of my house with a book. I’ve also left home before dusk and gone to dinner and the movies. Other years, I’ve decked out the lawn, bought a cauldron of sweeties, and fully embraced other people’s children (although I’ll admit there was more of the former before I could muster the strength for the latter). If you feel you want to participate by handing out goodies, consider inviting friends over for dinner so you have a back-up for answering the door, and be ready with a Plan B in case you suddenly discover you’re not as ready as you thought.
The holidays are always going to be challenging, but being aware of the emotional triggers and having a plan in place can help you to get through them and maybe even have some fun.
This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic was suggested by a reader:
Fearing the quiet we will have for years.
She was concerned that not having children would leave her life and house too quiet and empty. How do you feel about this? Is it something you worry about? If not, what is on your mind this week?
There was a time when I found it difficult to be around mothers of young children. It was hard to listen to them talk about their kids when I felt I had nothing to contribute, and it was painful to know that I’d never be able to share those experiences with them. I couldn’t bear to hear their sweet or funny stories, and it made my blood boil to hear them complain. What I wouldn’t have given for the chance to be kept awake all night by a colicky baby.
As I’ve progressed on my journey and begun to heal, it’s become easier for me to spend time with mothers, to listen to their stories, to speak up when I have something to add, and even to commiserate about the hard stuff, without feeling resentful.
I’m listening to what they say about motherhood and I’m hearing a common theme: Motherhood chips away at them until they lose touch with the women they once were. They love their children, they love being mothers, but they resent how all-consuming the job is and how much of themselves they lose to their families, until they know longer know who they are.
There are always two sides to every story, pros and cons, gains and losses. When we don’t get something we want and deserve, it’s easy to focus on what’s lost—the experiences, the opportunities, and the stories we won’t get to tell. But what about what’s gained? And what about what’s not lost? What about the sacrifices we didn’t have to make and the women we now get to be?
I may not be the woman I’d once hoped to be—a mother—but I know who I am now, and a part of me is grateful for what I didn’t have to lose: myself.
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