Thanks to those of you who suggested Whiny Wednesday topics. If there’s something we haven’t covered yet, feel free to drop me a line.
This week’s whiny topic is:
“This happened because I am not worthy of being a mother .”
I think this falls into the same category as “I must have done something to deserve this” and “God/the Universe/fate must have other plans for me.”
Have you had these thoughts? Did you believe them?
As always, other whines are welcome. It is Whiny Wednesday after all.
Oh yes, I have had these thoughts and unfortunately still have them pretty regularly. Infertility, at least for me, has just magnified every area in my life in which I fall short, every failure to be perfect and every way that I am lacking and thrse things all pile together in my mind to equal the reason I am not a mom. It varies for me… some days I think “God doesn’t think I would be a good mother so that’s why…”. Other days it’s “God just doesn’t love me, he’s punishing me by witholding the thing I have prayed for for so many years”. On and on it goes. I just saw a pregnant girl in my office this morning and thought “She must be a better person than I am.. stronger, happier, kinder, better.”
I’ve been through some therapy and I’ve read all the positive motivational stuff, but still these thoughts linger. I am afraid they will never go away and that life will always be like this. It sucks.
I felt this way a lot. And as the years pass I’ve changed my thinking to this meme I’ve seen:
Infertility is a medical issue – like diabetes or cancer. But surely your advice to relax will solve the problem. Much like it immediately cures those other diseases.
And when I start going down the self pity road again; I try to remember this.
Well put!
I don’t think anyone is undeserving of Motherhood but I do believe God does have other plans sometimes…
I believe sometimes He protects us from such things as death in childbirth, children we cannot control & other unforseen things we could not have handled
After TTC we traveled then became caregivers for both parents & aunt all at once all in different facilities.
Could we have done that all while raising a family? Maybe not
Then after parents God answered our prayers by allowing us to become host parents for a year to a foreign exchange student.
We as childless as it as a bed of roses…we found out it’s not always so. Parenthood is hard and has it’s own set of problems.
Now that my husband is gone I still question Why…Why am I alone?
I find I am deserving as anyone else is but sometimes our Whys will never be answered
The “whys” are always left unanswered.
I battle this mostly everyday .. when i was younger and a teen .. me being a teen said “i would never have kids/want kids when im older.” I have regretted that statement so much especially when i got married as an adult .. that statement haunts me and follows me around. I didn’t mean it, i was young, naive, didn’t know much. now as i am an adult .. i think “be careful what you wish for” I feel like maybe ai jinxed myself .. another statement that haunts me from time to time and is in the back of my mind is .. i remember when my cousin visiting me in my first year of marriage (when i wasn’t thinking about kids yet) we are around the same age, she was single at the time and since i got married first i dont know why i had a slight guilt .. when we discussed her future wedding she said “you better not have a baby before i get married!” and me (so naively and foolishly) said “of course not, believe me i am not having kids till after your married.” fast forward 5 years later .. and that is exactly what is happening :(. Her wedding is in october and i have not gotten pregnant even once/no babies here .. from time to time i pray to reverse whatever curse i put on myself .. cant believe how things played out .. i always wonder , was it cause of my words? even though it may not be true .. i just feel so guilty for saying those things and now i am the opposite .. would do anything for even just one child of my own .. sigh*
In my grieving process I have come up with several reasons why I wasn’t “meant” to be a mother. Some physical (chronic back pain), some emotional (history of anxiety & depression), but they are things that probably wouldn’t really prevent me from being a good mother. Now that I’m apparently not going to be a mother, I have rationalized that because of these identified reasons I guess I’m “better off” not being a mother (i.e. childbirth would have made my back pain worse, maybe I would have bad postpartum depression, etc.). It’s all just things that I try to tell myself to make it easier to cope.
On another, more self-punishing note, I sometimes think I did this to myself by living a life in early adulthood of putting myself in debt and choosing unhealthy relationships, therefor postponing when I was “ready enough” to have a kid, which put me in the “TTC too late in life” category.
Wow, Jenn, I could have written your post! I too rationalize why I’m better off not being a Mom when in truth I know I’d be an amazing parent. It’s salt in the wounds that infertility treatments as well as private adoption are only truly available to those of a certain economic class. Actually only our friends who are well off had bio kids. These days it takes a certain economic standing to pay for daycare and then college and then their weddings. I rationalize that it’s good we do not have those expenses ahead of us but in reality I feel like I’m missing out on a lifelong dream.
All the time. Sometimes I can fight the irrationality of it but more often I stew in the thoughts. It’s not helped by the fact that you hear things like, “not all women were meant to be moms” all the time. Like Almira, I think worse is stewing in the things I’ve said because I feel like I created my own peril. When we first started on this rollercoaster, I remember I had 2 friends who struggled (for one it’s funny to me now that I even thought of it that way – it took her 6 months to get pg and now has 2 and in light of how things turned out for us, that hardly seems like a struggle). The other ended up adopting because her husband was willing to do so. At the time I was handling it much better than either of them (mostly because I still thought I had options – like the tons of IVF we would do, unfortunately without success). I remember I would pray that if we couldn’t all have a baby that they would get theirs because I would be able to handle it better. I still don’t think they would have handled it any better but I was wrong in thinking I’d actually be able to cope with it at all. Funny, this comes up because I was just talking about this in therapy yesterday. When I’m thinking irrationally (which is at least 50% of the time), I tell myself there was a limited number of babies available and I somehow “gave mine up” (as if I ceded my seat on the bus or let some cut in front of me in the buffet line and all the dinner rolls were gone when I finally to the counter). In my rational head I know that my prayer had no impact on anything except to make me feel like I was selfless, which probably, subconsciously, was really just some twisted Solomon’s judgment moment.
Infertility and loss has definitely changed my views on faith. I’ve heard a few times God must’ve not wanted you to be a parent, left someone speechless when I asked them why drug addicts and child abusers were picked by god to be parents then? I have two family members that are pastors and I no longer talk to them because of things they’ve said. After I lost and delivered my twins I needed to have a d&c because I was bleeding out and one of the placentas wouldn’t deliver and they said such terrible things about people who have that procedure. I had a really rough childhood and I always wonder what I did to deserve that and to also not be able to have children.
I have all these thoughts too, 7 years later; was it not meant to be? Is there another purpose for me? Did I jinx or curse myself? Would it have been too much for me to handle? And then I think of all the children in the world who are suffering due to lousy parenting or their lifes’ circumstances and I think it all comes down to luck. Some bodies work the way they are supposed to, and others don’t. It’s down to biology. I would have been a really loving Mom. I wasn’t passed over by God in the ‘blessings’ department for something I did or didn’t do. God still loves me. It took me a long time to say that. I’m trying to accept my circumstances now instead of trying to find out ‘why’. It’s easier to breathe when I stop asking why.
I desire to get to the place where you are, Kelly. Accepting the things I cannot change without shutting God out. I need Him, and he loves me, but right now… I’m struggling.
I’m so fucking pissed off, a friend I made on this site has just had a baby. To make it worse we did ivf at the same time, twice and on the 2nd go hers worked but mine failed as fucking usual. It’s brought back all the shitty emotions and I want to have a cigarette. I gave up smoking 12 years ago and started smoking again after my 2nd failed ivf. I gave up again and been off cigarettes about 3 months but i think to myself, i cant have a baby but I can have a cigarette. I tried to block her on here but i cant. Im so fucking angry.
I’m so so sorry Kath – I experienced anger such as this myself. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You shouldn’t need to block her – she should walk away from this site. To cope with our failures while others were successful – i had to back away (some friendships resumed years later and some never did). Do what you need to do. We are all here to support each other – thinking of you. Keep reading the posts of others here – we know exactly how it feels.
Thank you for your message Jane, I’m so glad for this place, it makes me feel so much better.
Although I know in my head I didn’t do anything wrong to warrant not being able to have children, deep in my heart I just don’t believe it. Right now, I’m trying to handle the emotions I’ve been suppressing for years. They’re bubbling up- the sadness, the yearning, the inability to accept it. Will I be stuck here forever? It’s such an irony, me, the child development expert whose dedicated her life to young children and their families doesn’t feel that she’s worthy enough for motherhood.
IF is the biggest mind F*** I’ve ever experienced
I’m where you are. I’m a teacher and I spend all day around other people’s children, then come home to an empty house. I get stuck in asking, “why?” But there are no answer.
I was just asking myself this morning. How did I get choosen for this life. I should have at least 5 children by now.
No. I have never felt any of this was my fault. I started trying for a baby in my teenage years, and was never successful. This went on through my 20s and into my 30s. What could little old me has possibly done to deserve this, as it started early.
I do however feel it is a “generational” curse, that fell on me. This curse also is in my love life. Which is just as “barren” as my reproductive system. I often hate the day, I was born. Sometimes. I wonder why I wasnt born male. Like how did God put me here and strip me from all my desires as a woman. I am constantly judged and singled out for both which were out of my control.
I feel like this sometimes affects my relationship with God. I’m still hurt and question him.
For this I truly know the meaning behind “life isnt fair” Every other woman can freely choose to start a life or end one. And Kind hearted me can’t even get a positive pregnancy test, or a man that wants more than a fling.
I would like to whine about this: when others tell you are lucky you didn’t have kids since your husband left you…
I am still speechless.
I keep on praying for all of us !
My local news posted on twitter recently. A woman in received fame from a viral post about back to school. She’s sitting in a pool with her THREE children behind dressed for school. The caption reads “happy first day of school everyone!” Is this really news? Big deal! Some lazy mother is happy to get rid of her kids and stages a cutsie photo and now got her 15 minutes of fame.
One thing I struggle with too is our society’s reality (that women are starting families later due to careers and higher ed debt) and the reality of how long our eggs are truly viable. Could there be a Whiny Wednesday topic about the myth of later in life fertility? The IVF stats using your own eggs after 35 (and especially after 40) are terrible.
so true .. sigh*
I have thought about that a lot. But I got tired of thinking about it, now I’m okay. I live my life on a daily basis, I just avoid conversations about children. I still hope to be really happy one day.
i feel untitled… (the opposite of entitled) – i’m born of “poor stock” (bad health, feeling it keenly as i watch my whole family have bad health) and I keep asking sarcastically of people with more money than me (that’s most people) “why are they better than me?” but it doesn’t feel sarcastic, it just feels literal…
In my darkest moods, I think it’s dang good I never got pregnant: my genetics aren’t worthy of continuance, I could never have given that kid a decent life; and I had magical thinking that I would have died anyway (every pet I ever tried to have baby pets of died, and every time I ever seriously thought of having my own kid, BAD things happened, incl. major car accident. I DON’T believe “the Universe is trying to tell me something”. Magical thinking like that is moot now that I’m fully infertile and no point even thinking about it any more.) I need to schedule a therapy session… sigh.