When you’re deep in your grief—and even when you feel like you’re finally in a good place—there’s one place that continues to be a trigger:
The Baby Aisle
Has it caught you unprepared? Did the sight of binkies, diapers, onesies, and teething toys bring on an epic meltdown?
Here’s your chance to vent.
It has been 18 years since my failed IV attempts and I still can’t get over the fact that I was unable to have children. I dread seeing pregnant women or babies. I am still so angry at my idiot of a doctor and the fates that left me childless. Everything is so geared toward mothers and children it is hard to escape it. At work I listen to my co-workers speak about their older children and how much trouble they are always in and I try to feel blessed but it does not ring true. I wonder what it is exactly that I did that made the gods angry with me. I feel incomplete and will until the day I die.
Cindy; I know how you feel. I am 53 years young and still try to make amends with myself for not having kids.
There is nothing, nothing that you have done that made God angry…nothing.
You are worthy and complete the way you are. You are a glorious creation! You have a brilliant future ahead of you…
You are in my prayers!!!
Yes, the baby aisle is full of triggers to avoid like the plague for me. If I’m having a good day, then I may forge ahead down it if I’m in a hurry and take note of the cute items and smile at them because they are cute. If I’m having a bad day, well, of course I walk the extra steps to take a different aisle.
The baby aisle does not trigger me anymore. It’s the occasion the most. I had meltdowns again since the last week of March to early April because of graduation season here in the Philippines. I saw one parent that does not have a lot of posts in here Facebook, and her only posts I have seen in years are these graduation photos with her son. It really hurt like hell. I know I should have not opened my facebook!
it’s always tought passing the baby aisle even from the corner of my eye .. especially for me the little girls department seeing a dream that is not a reality .. even passing mothers with children or etc .. all i can do is wish to live on a tropical island without seeing all this
I have come a very, very long way in my journey. I’ve embraced infertility and accepted my childless not by choice life. But the baby aisle… I cannot go back to the baby aisle.
Like Brandi I too have come a very long way in my journey, And have accepted my childless life. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m free of pain or the craving to have a child.
But these aisle used to kill me inside, I mean I couldn’t even see them in a distance without crying.
But dince I got my reborn baby I can face them, I even get excited about it. However, When I see parents with their young children, I immediately leave.
The clothes, bottles, bibs, pacifiers etc are ok. But anything breast feeding related still kills me, and makes me wanna scream. I cringe thinking about it. I cannot face any of that. I swear seeing a breast pump, can literally send me to the ER.
I have this weird countdown I do when I’m in the grocery store – each aisle I need never go down again, one by one, as I don’t need them any more – first it was the chips and pop aisle. I stopped buying junk food because it’s so unhealthy and I just didn’t have the money to waste… then I stopped going down the cleaning products aisle, because I use water, vinegar, baking soda, elbow grease! and I won’t buy commercial cleansers anymore. Then I realized I’d better avoid the baby aisle because the universe kept trying to kill me whenever I even thought about having a baby (magical thinking, I get therapy for this, but too little too late because) next it was the feminine hygiene aisle (uh, thanks early menopause…), so that’s whole swaths of the grocery store I never ever visit now – and I’ll keep ticking aisles off my shopping list until I’m down to just one, I think to myself, as I walk past the unneeded places, and then I shall die… Yeah I’m being ridiculous here! But it’s this weird morbid countdown that goes thru my head every time I walk past those aisles – not this one any more, not that one any more… goodness only knows what my final aisle, when I’m down to only needing one, will be! Prolly the TEA aisle! ;o)
You made me laugh out loud, Robin. Thank you! See you in the tea aisle!
I just mostly avoid it. Why torture myself, right?
I do remember, when I was pregnant, being excited that a Baby Gap store would be opening soon close to where I worked. After my daughter was stillborn, I returned from leave — & there it was, already open. It was like a punch to the gut. It was several years before I could make myself go in there to shop (for a present).