Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Happy Two-Year Blogiversary

On Friday I celebrated my two-year blogiversary here at Life Without Baby. I kid you not. It’s been two whole years since I first posted a mission statement and set about talking about the unexpected situation of being without children.

So much has happened in these past two years, not least of which is that I’ve largely, although not totally, made peace with the hand I’ve been dealt. Not that it doesn’t give me an occasional wallop and not that I don’t get mad at the universe once in a while for screwing me out of motherhood, but on a day-to-day basis, I think I’m getting the hang of it.

For a long time I found myself blogging into the ether, rambling on and wondering if there was anyone at all out there like me. My good friend Kathleen would come to visit the blog and post a comment, so that I knew at least one person was out there. In the first month the blog had 84 visits and I was so pleased! Since then (and this number blows my mind) there have been almost 150,000 visits from 95 countries!! Ladies, we are officially an international community and I want to thank you all for that. You and your support have a lot to do with me being to write that I am largely at peace with not having children. Knowing I’m not alone and that there are other women who have made their way through this minefield has been such a huge help to me, and hope that knowledge will help those of you still struggling.

So, now for the really exciting news! I am extremely pleased to have been nominated for a Kreativ blog award. I want to send a big shout-out to Peaches, who was so kind to make the nomination. Please check out her very fun blog, Peaches – a sad comedy.

So, the rules of the award are that I have to share 7 interesting things about myself and share 7 of my favorite blogs. So here goes:

  1. I was born and raised in the north of England (Sheffield, once famous for making steel, now famous for being the hometown of Def Leppard and The Full Monty) but have lived in California since 1993.
  2. I have two engineering degrees (hey, wake up, this is supposed to be interesting) and now I’m a writer (and much happier for it.)
  3. I can recite the alphabet backwards.
  4. I’m trying to learn to play the bagpipes and relearn the trombone, neither of which is impressing my neighbors.
  5. I’ve run three marathons but can barely run to the end of the block these days.
  6. I once worked as a stand-in and foot-double for a famous actress.
  7. My two favorite movies are Some Like It Hot and Young Frankenstein.

And now for a few of my favorite bloggie people:

  1. Silent Sorority – Pamela’s blog is one of the first I found and she’s kind of who I want to be when I grow up.
  2. A Woman Without Children – Vicki is a wonderfully thoughtful blogger who writes about living a fertile life
  3. No Kidding in NZ – Mali always has something insightful to say
  4. Gateway Women – Jody is taking the UK by storm speaking up loud and clear for childfree women
  5. Maybe Baby, Maybe Not – I discovered Liz recently and I love her humor.
  6. Writing Time – Barbara’s blog is where I turn when I need creative writing inspiration.
  7. Creative (Un)block – Robi is my go-to gal for all things crafty

Thanks again for all your support over these past two years, and here’s to more great years ahead.

~ Lisa

Your Next 15,000 Days

I was recently introduced to Klara, a blogger in Slovenia, and her new blog The Next 15,000 Days. Her title caught my attention immediately, and I had to know what it meant. Here’s what she writes about her choice of title:

“Just a few days before Christmas we will celebrate 3,000 days since our wedding day. Our first 3,000 days were mainly sad. Of course, there were also lots of great things. The greatest was that I realized I married the love of my life; all the pain brought us even closer together. If we are lucky, another 15,000 days are waiting for us. So, we decided to start living a new, happy life. We lost, already, enough days being sad. We just don’t want to lose another day.”

I love this attitude. It’s the same notion Mr. Fab and I had when we decided to start figuring out how to be a family of two. We drew a line in the sand and said, “This is where we start living our lives again. But it’s not always easy to do.

You can’t just decide to not be sad anymore. Sadness and grief are much more complicated and sneaky than that. They tend to hide in unexpected places and leap out on you when you think you’re safe. Family gatherings, pregnancy announcements, and closets where you kept baby clothes you planned to use are all places to be on the look out for a grief ambush.

But you can decide, as Klara says, to “start living a new happy life.” It takes work, and it might not always go as planned, but deciding is half the battle.

So, how do you plan to live your next 15,000 days?

Whiny Wednesday: It Could Happen to You

Dear Excited Future Mothers/Grandmothers/Aunties/Friends,

There’s no need to tiptoe around me anymore. If you want to tell me the amazing story of how you/your daughter/sister/friend was told she’d never have children, then miraculously became pregnant, it’s okay. I know these things happen, and I’m happy for you and your loved one. Just please, please, please don’t end your story with, “So, you see…it could happen to you.”

Yes, I know it could happen, but realistically, it’s probably not going to, and hanging onto this possibility will keep me from moving on with my life. And I am moving on. So please just let me move on.

Thanks.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s put a hitch in your git-along today?

Good advice about dealing with pregnancy announcements?

In the advice column of the Detroit Free Press, a woman unable to have children asked about how to deal with the endless pregnancies in her workplace. It sounds as if she’s found her own way to deal with it by putting on a happy face in public and keeping her true emotions private. I’m tending to agree that it’s about the only way to manage this situation with any grace.

I’m not so sure about the advice she’s been given though. Maybe getting involved with helping children might be a good way for this woman to have children in her life, but I don’t think it’s going to help her with the grief she is clearly still coming to terms with regarding her own loss. I might have advised this woman to seek some professional help, because she’s clearly not healing well on her own.

And while I think that the advice is coming largely from a place of compassion, I can’t help but read between the lines and wonder if she’s really told, “After 11 years, isn’t it time you got over it?”

What advice would you have given?

How are you doing?

Recently I spoke to my very good friend (let’s call her Sally) who is childfree because of a serious illness that left her unexpectedly infertile. Sally has a wonderful partner and a fulfilling career and is coming to terms with the fact that children are now out of the question for her.

I enjoyed being able to have a conversation about being childfree with someone who is a dear friend and also a kindred spirit. She understood what I’d been through and understood the importance of finding someone trustworthy to talk to.

We talked about her illness and she said something that really struck a chord with me. “No one ever asks me how I’m doing.”

Sometimes I think that people assume because a disease has been “cured” that there are no lasting repercussions or emotional scars. Or maybe that because someone doesn’t talk about personal aspects of their life (or, in the case of my friend, isn’t the type to complain) that they must be “doing okay” or that they’re “over it.” But often that isn’t the case.

I hope I’ve been the kind of friend that has checked in often with Sally and given her the opportunity to talk if she’s needed to. I certainly know that next time I speak to her, I’ll make a point a point of asking, not just how she’s doing generally, but how she’s doing specifically, with the after-effects of her illness.

And I’m also going to check in with you here. How are you doing, not just today, but in the bigger picture of your life as it stands? Let me know what’s going on with you, and maybe make a point of checking in with a friend who’s been through a traumatic experience in the past, and who might not be doing as well as he/she appears.

Childless by marriage and a man’s point-of-view

I recently stumbled upon the Childless by Marriage blog. Author, Sue Lick, married a man who already had children and didn’t want more. She understands that she made a choice and is largely happy with her decision, but is still coming to terms with being childfree, and the hole that has left.

I know that some of you fall into this category, so I thought I’d share her blog here.

Last week, she posted about childlessness from the man’s perspective and included a link to Him+17, a blog written by a man who married a woman 17 years his senior and was unable to have children. The author of that blog responded to Sue’s post and I found his comments insightful. He says:

“The struggle, I find, is understanding the various shades of my reactions to childlessness. Likely, this is an ongoing, never-ending effort. There’s the honest grief that I’d have loved to bring forth a child with my wife, watch the baby grow, and then enjoy (I would hope) a subsequent friendship with the adult who I helped make. There’s also the part of me that just feels plain left out in a societal, cultural way. At family events, with friends who have children, I’m partly the odd one out.”

Ah, yes, I’m all too familiar with those reactions, but here’s what he went on to say:

“Of course, everyone feels left out in some way: the family that only had daughters or only sons, the man or woman who never married. Perhaps people with kids sometimes look at my wife and I and think, ‘We could have had a life as free as theirs.’”

Although I know that thought offers little comfort, this does go back to a comment loribeth made on this blog a while ago. She said, “Everyone has holes in their lives; mine just happens to be child-shaped.” I think about that comment often.

Him+17 goes on to say:

“I’m missing something; I’m not sure exactly what. I’ve tried to fill that gap by spending time with young people, by being a mentor through teaching and as a volunteer with Big Brothers. It helps, but truly, I’ll never understand on the most fundamental level what it means to love one’s own child. As I age, as I learn to live with the reality, this reality remains a grief, sometimes sharper, sometimes less so. I suspect it will never fade and never become something to which I grow accustomed.”

Sadly, I think he’s right. From my own perspective, I have come-to-terms with the fact that I’ll never have children; I can even write a short list of reasons why my life is better without children, but I don’t think that hole in my gut will ever close up. It’s a part of who I am now, like the scar on my knee that I don’t think about most of the time, but is always there and makes one knee different from the other. My experience has changed me and, no matter how well I move on with my life, I’ll always be a little bit sadder and my sense of humor will always be a little less sharp because of it.

Destiny’s plans for a childfree life

One of the many things I love about the internet is the ability to take a peek at happenings all over the world, hear different points of view, and experience the sensibility of different cultures. Take this article, Leading a good life without kids, for example, that appeared recently in Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror.

As I began reading the story of Lathika, I wondered if I was reading a fairy tale.

“Lathika played with her doll, Fiona.  She loved “Playing House” and dreamed of growing up, getting married and having a family of her own one day” felt like a tame way of expressing the desire for motherhood.

When I read, “The years went by and Lathika did not mind the pain and discomfort of regular tests for her fertility for she was now desperate to have a child,” I scratched my head and started wondering what was wrong with Lathika. I have never spoken to anyone who “didn’t mind” the pain and discomfort of fertility treatments. I wondered if Lathika was some kind of Zen master (mistress?) who calmly took whatever life dealt her, or if the author of the piece was just clueless about the emotional frustration of infertility. I also wondered if perhaps Sri Lankan culture forced Lathika to put on a brave face and keep her real feelings to herself. That I could understand.

I read on about Lathika’s attempts to fill the void in her life with creative pursuits and volunteer work, and the calmness of the writing began to wash over me. I nodded my head at the quote, “Your children are not your own,” because I’ve always had that thought about the role of parents in the lives of the human beings in their care (more about this in another post, I think.)

By the end of the piece, I was touched by the message. Although I still wasn’t convinced that “we leave Lathika happy and fulfilled” in her new childfree life, I found myself catching my breath at the idea that “destiny had planned a different life path for her.”

We have an idea about what life is supposed to be like for us. We grow up, fall in love, have children, create a life for ourselves, and live to see our grandchildren become adults and create their own lives. But we all know that life isn’t as clean cut as that.

Maybe destiny has planned a different life path for us, too. Perhaps we can’t see what that path is yet, but like Lathika, I feel strangely comforted by the idea that a different, maybe even better life could be ahead for me because I don’t have children.

Who Are You?

It’s interesting to look back on my journey and see all the people I’ve been over the past seven or so years.

I’ve been a woman who expected to be a mother and wanted a baby with the man I loved; then I became a crazed mama-wannabe, desperately trying to solve the mystery of my infertility and looking for a way to get what I wanted.

I’ve been through a phase of realizing that children weren’t going to be a part of my future, but not being able to quite let go of that dream. After that, I entered a phase of acceptance, where I knew I had to get through this and move on, but I didn’t know how.

There was a period of wondering what I was going to do and who I was going to be if I wasn’t going to be a mom, and finally, I came to the phase I’m in now. I am a childfree woman, accepting and even embracing this new life, not apologizing for my infertility or my choices, and moving on to enjoy a life I couldn’t have had if I’d had children to care for.

I never imagined I would get to this place, mainly because I never expected I’d need to, but here I am, and do you know what? It’s not bad here. In fact, I think this childfree life is growing on me.

I know that some of you are at or near this place, but others are still struggling to come to terms with not having the children you always dreamed of. So, I’m curious to know: Who are you?

Are you a newbie, trying to reconcile the idea that you won’t have children and maybe not even sure you’ll ever come to terms? Maybe news of a new treatment, or a friend’s new baby triggers all the old desires and keeps that “what if?” hope alive.

Are you coming-to terms? Have you accepted the idea of being childfree, but just need to figure out how to be okay with that decision? Are you making progress some days, and taking several steps back others? Are you still struggling with other people’s babies and finding your place in your family and community?

Are you moving on? Have you reconciled your loss, accepted your lot in life, and are ready to start a new chapter of your life? Maybe you don’t know what that is yet, but you know (at least most days) that you’re going to be okay not having children?

Please take a second to tell me who you are in the poll below. Let me know in the comments if you think these categories are accurate or if you fit into an entirely different category all together. My goal in doing this is to make sure I post information that covers all the categories, so that this blog is useful, whoever you are.

[polldaddy poll=5210879]

It Got Me Thinking…About Lies

Guest post by Kathleen Guthrie

After years of living with cracked tiles, a door that popped open at awkward moments, faucets that never completely turned off, and circa-1970 nonslip floor stickers, we finally remodeled our decrepit shower. The gentleman who did the work did an excellent job. His sales rep, hmmm, not so much: “It will be easy! It will be clean! We can do it all in a day!” I’m still finding dust and debris in odd places, and “Joe” (I’m not using his real name, ’cuz that’s not cool) was here for an exhausting 10.5 hours the first day, then returned for another 2.5 hours the next morning.

About three hours into it, Joe said to me in exasperation, “I don’t know why they tell customers we can do it in a day. These things always take at least a day and a half or two.”

Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier if the sales rep has just been honest? We could have planned ahead for two days of showering at the gym. Instead of having to cancel at the last minute, I could have scheduled meetings on different days. It certainly would have been easier on Joe, who had to bump other service calls and muck up other people’s busy lives.

And that got me thinking about other big lies I’ve heard in my life. A whopper came when I was a teenager and was experiencing debilitating menstrual cramps. My doctor, a very sweet man, said to me, “This is good. It will prepare you for childbirth so that labor pains will be a breeze.” I held onto his promise for the next 30 years while waiting to have my baby and experience the miracle of pain-free birthing. It’s not his fault that I didn’t get to have children. But I look back and wish someone had been straight with me, saying something like: “Don’t plan your dreams around the possibility of being a mom, because it might not happen. And these agonizing cramps? Yeah, they suck and life isn’t fair. Fill this prescription for pain killers and get over yourself.”

I know many of you have heard “I can make you pregnant!” “This procedure will work!” “It’s the miracle cure that will give you the baby you want!” But I wonder this: Would it have been any easier if someone had told us the truth upfront? Would we have listened and really heard it?

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s mostly at peace with her decision to be childfree.

Marking the End

Unless you’re one of those people who always knew they didn’t want children, you probably wrestled with your decision, or whatever circumstances were forcing your hand, for a long time.

As it was becoming more and more apparent to me that children were not going to be in my future – at least not in the way I’d anticipated – I started trying to get to grips with the idea that I would never be a mother. Some days I knew that I had to get off the infertility crazy train and start regaining my sanity, but then something would happen and I’d change my mind and try to figure out how to give it one more shot. I flip-flopped back and forth like a suffocating fish for many months, but finally I reached the end of the line.

There were several things that happened that pushed me closer to that decision, but there was one day that I will always consider to be “The End.” While tracking down gravesites for some of my husband’s more distant relatives, we discovered the unmarked grave of a baby cousin who had been given the same name we had chosen for our child. For me, that grave will always be my place of commemoration for the children I never had. I’ve never been back since then, but I always know that place is there if I need it.

I think it’s important to mark the end of things that are lost, and giving up on motherhood is an enormous loss. How did you know you’d reached The End or the Big Decision? How did you mark that point? If you haven’t marked that point, do you think it would help to have some kind of memorial, even if it was something only you knew about?