Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

It Got Me Thinking…About the Playground Ban

I love playgrounds. I love the smells of grass and sand, and that tangy scent from old metal swing chains and jungle gyms. When I take one of the many little humans in my life out for a play date, a nearby park is frequently our destination, and when I’m out on my own or with a dog, I love to sit and simply watch and listen to the sounds of joy and happiness.

Maybe that’s why I take the growing “No Adults Allowed” trend so personally.

As a childfree human, my presence near a playground is now suspect. I am no longer welcome, I am no longer allowed, and it hurts.

I understand the concerns, certainly in light of the horror stories that appear in the nightly news about child abuse and abductions. If I were a parent, I wouldn’t want to be worrying that a serial molester was shooting video of his future victims while I ignorantly let my babies twirl on the merry-go-round.

And yet…parks to me symbolize a little piece of freedom in our ever-stressed-out world. A place where we can run in circles till we fall down in dizzy giggles, or chase a butterfly or kite, or lie in the grass and look for shapes in the clouds. Parks are where we can escape all of our shoulds and should-haves and, for a briefly delicious period, let our minds wander and our imaginations expand.

As a child, I loved to create secret missions for myself that involved climbing trees, hiding behind benches, and talking into my watch as I, a super-hero spy, brought down the bad guys (Nancy Drew and Charlie’s Angels were my peers in my fantasy world). When I was a young-ish adult, I loved following my nephews down the slides and pushing my nieces in the swings as they squealed, “Higher, Aunt Kath, higher!” These days I’m content to sit on the sidelines, enjoying the cacophony of shouts and laughter as other children create their own adventures. For a few moments, I can soak up a bit of their free-spiritedness, and even allow myself to drift in a big girl fantasy in which one of those sweet voices belongs to a child of mine.

Alas, it’s no longer allowed.

Kathleen’s favorite places on earth include New York’s Central Park, Rome’s Borghese Gardens, South Pasadena’s Garfield Park, and Stow Lake in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

The Mommy Snub: It’s Not About You

 

I’ve been dating. Friend dating that is. As you can imagine, it’s been a challenge.

A few months ago, Mr. Fab and I moved to a new city at the opposite end of the state. As part of the move, I prepared myself for “friend dating” getting myself out into social situations where I could meet new people and hopefully make good friends.

Friend dating is hard enough, but I think it’s doubly so, when children won’t be common ground on which you can build a friendship. Irrespective of this handicap, I’ve been making an effort to meet new people. I joined a gym and have been challenging myself to strike up a conversation with someone new every time I go.

Last week, while I was waiting for my class to start, I smiled at a friendly-looking woman and initiated a conversation. It was general ice-breaking chit-chat, a comment about how the class seemed lighter today and that the traffic had been heavier on my drive over because the Junior College was back in session.

“Oh right,” she said. “I wondered about that. I drop off my daughter at the school and then drive my little one to pre-school and it took me ages this morning.”

Before I ping-pong a comment back or ask her a getting-to-know-you question, another woman stepped into the conversation and said, “Oh, you have a preschooler? I have a preschooler, where does yours go?”

And then she quite literally stepped into the conversation. She all but put her body between me and my potential new friend, as if I wasn’t even there.

In the past, I would have been devastated. You know the feeling when your heart sinks, your stomach sinks lower, and your entire body follows along. I would have felt dejected, rejected, ashamed, and worthless. I would have slinked away to my little childless corner and stayed there feeling worthless.

But I didn’t. I laughed. Out loud.

Because it finally dawned on me, it’s not about me, it’s not about my childlessness. It’s not even about moms elbowing us out of their important conversations.

It’s about one self-centered and pretty bad mannered individual on a mission to find her tribe, to fulfill her wants and needs, in this case to find a sympathetic ear to listen to her woes about moving her kid to a new school in the fall. She definitely wasn’t going to find that in me.

And the truth is, I was doing a similar thing. I was putting out feelers, looking for common ground, trying to fill my own needs and find my tribe. And these women, the second one especially, weren’t going to fulfill those needs.

The whole ludicrous situation made me realize just how far I’ve come. This year will mark nine years since I got off the baby crazy train. It’s a long time, but I’m happy to report that the Mom Snub bounced off me in a way I never could have imagined nine years ago.

Still, this puts me back in the friend dating game again.  But it helped me realize that moms aren’t the enemy, it’s just that I need to find woman—childless or otherwise—for whom motherhood isn’t the sole focus of their existence at this time in their lives.

Maybe in 15 years or so, once she’s packed her kid off to college, her priorities will change. Maybe then we can become friends then.

If I’m not too busy with all my other new friends.

I Got Me Thinking…About Breaking Out of Isolation

It’s so easy to lose myself in my grief. It starts so small as I avoid the family-focused church events and the company family picnic. At cocktail parties, when the discussions turn to grandbabies or graduations, I slip away, pretending to be invisible as I cozy up to the food table. I politely decline invitations to showers, then weddings, then milestone birthday parties. I tell myself I’d rather spend a quiet weekend at home than hang out with family or friends who might inadvertently sprinkle salt onto my wounds.

While I strongly believe in the importance of taking myself to a quiet place to work through my grief over my losses, lately I’ve been more aware of how I’ve isolated myself. And I’m starting to feel that it’s no longer healthy.

Maybe it’s time I rejoin society.

Maybe you’re starting to think about it too.

Wow. Just writing that is a little scary, but also a little exciting.

“You have a lot of life left!” I tell myself. Years, maybe decades, if I’m lucky. There are things I want to do, adventures I want to experience. There are classes I want to take, and foods I want to taste. I also have a wellspring of love to give, and it’s starting to brim over.

I think maybe I can do this.

This week I’m going to think about who I might see and what I might do. I could call up that gal in book club who I think is funny and invite her to meet me for coffee. She should be “safe”, because we’re likely to spend the whole time talking about books we love. Or I could invite one of my work colleagues, who I know also doesn’t have kids, to join me for lunch out, to talk about work stuff. Or I could call an old friend I haven’t seen for a while and see if she wants to meet up for a movie (meaning we’d barely have to talk at all).

The point is I’d be getting myself up, dressed, and out the door. It will probably take some time for me to feel fully myself again, but I’m ready to try, to ease in, to take those first small steps.

Are you ready to break out of isolation? If so, take my hand, take a deep breath, and let’s do this.

 

Brandi Lytle on the Unexpected Joys of Being a Host Mom

This week I’m talking to Brandi Lytle of Not So Mommy about her work, her infertility journey, and the unexpected joy she found in being a host mom to a foreign exchange student.

You can learn more about Brandi at NotSoMommy and find her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

 

It Got Me Thinking…About Beloved Books

There’s one shelf in my office where I keep my most favorite books, the ones that touched my heart and sparked my imagination, the ones I’d saved because I knew I’d want to read them again some day.

In January I pulled them all out, thinking this would be a good year to revisit them. While I eagerly anticipated re-reading brilliant novels, genre-challenging classics, and inspiring biographies, there was one category that pinched an especially sensitive nerve: the beloved books from my childhood.

Charlotte’s Web, the Little House in the Prairie series, the adventures of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, all the Harry Potter books. I had saved those books, moved them from apartment to apartment, with the intention—and the hopes—of one day reading them to and with my own children. Alas….

Offers of some to nieces and nephews were declined, typically because they had already outgrown the stories. I had to think hard about what I was going to do with these treasures of mine.

Read them. Ah-hah. That’s what I chose to do. Read them to myself, for myself. And so I dug in.

At this point I still have the Mark Twain books in my to read stack, but all the others have been enjoyed, devoured, and—to my surprise—released. I discovered I needed to love them one last time before I could consider where they might go next.

A couple of those books have been gifted to the daughters of a friend (which made me so happy to do). Others will be donated to the library, where I trust they will thrill some young reader. None of them are going back on my shelf.

I just caught my breath. A year ago I could not have imagined saying that I had, without an emotional breakdown, let them go.

This got me thinking about the whole grieving process. Over the years of wrestling with my losses, I have come to believe that in order to fully let go and move on, I must first acknowledge my grief, then dance openly with it, then bless it and allow it to move out of my heart. Easy? Heck no. Necessary? I think so.

There are so many items we hold dear that represent what we wanted, and what we’ve lost. What is it for you? A family heirloom, hand-me-down baby clothes, the baseball glove/dance shoes/board games saved from your own childhood? Are you ready to open up your hope chest, pull out your treasures, and perhaps let them go? A perfectly fine answer is “No.” But when the time comes that you are ready, know that many of us here at Life Without Baby have been through the process, and we came out intact.

Good luck. And please be gentle with yourself.

Why I Didn’t Adopt After Infertility

Following your response this Whiny Wednesday post, I decided to add my own two cents to the adoption discussion.

When I would tell people I didn’t have children and the topic of infertility came up, they would often ask if I’d considered adoption. Can I tell you how hard it was to keep my sarcasm at bay and to not answer, “Adoption? Really? No, I’d never thought about that. I’m so glad you brought it up.”

But now I’m in a better place I can answer that question easily and in a more friendly and helpful way. I’m doing it today, not for those people who want to make sure I’ve thought of every avenue, but for those of you on this site who might be thinking of adoption and wondering why I didn’t do it.

My answer could be very complex and I could talk about how our adoption options were limited by age and finances, about how much more complicated and heart-wrenching the process was than we’d expected, and about how we didn’t have the emotional strength to risk being matched with a child who could be snatched away again in an instant. But having some distance from that time in my life, I see it more simply now.

We didn’t follow through with adoption because we hadn’t yet dealt with the loss dealt by infertility.

During our adoption training we were warned about the importance of resolving our infertility before diving into this new avenue, but at that time, I didn’t want to hear that. Now I think it was perhaps the most important piece of advice we were given. Adoption isn’t the next logical step on an infertility journey; it’s a step off that road and onto another completely different path. But the infertility journey still needs to be brought to a resolution. You still have to work through that grief.

When we ventured into adoption, we didn’t fully understand this. Perhaps if we’d taken some time to heal first, we might have been better equipped to deal with that wild emotional rollercoaster, but we didn’t, and we weren’t, and that’s the way that story went.

I know that some of you are still weighing your options and making some big decisions. My story is unique to me and my opinion is based solely on my experience, but I hope hearing it helps you.

Our Stories: Anita

As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Anita has known for about 10 years that she’ll not have children. Now 42, she hesitates to describe her dream of motherhood because it isn’t something she allows herself to think about. “To much scratching on this wound can cause it to bleed again,” she says.

But she’s well aware that there are triggers all around us that scratch and wound, and she addresses some of them in her answer to “What’s the hardest part for you about now having children?”

I certainly can relate to what she’s saying, and I sense you will too. After you’ve read her story, I hope you’ll reach out to her in the Comments.

LWB: Describe your dream of motherhood.

Anita: I dreamed about nurturing and raising a child of my own, sharing her life, watching her grow.

LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?

Anita: Circumstance. My husband had been previously married, and they had a son. Before we married we discussed the “having a baby” question, and we both wanted children. A few years into our marriage, my husband decided against having children.

LWB: Where are you on your journey now?

Anita: Acceptance, and depressed. I am not really sure that one can ever really overcome this. I think this is, like the death of a parent, something you learn to live with.

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

Anita: In short, it feels as if being without a child has robbed me of interaction with other women. I am forever lurking on the fringes. I’m not a man, but not a “real” woman either. [Following are some of the situations she finds especially difficult.]

  • Stork teas/baby showers. At work, every now and then, we have a stork tea. In the beginning, I went (because it is expected of women). It was terrible. It felt as if I was going to break apart. Everyone was having fun, but I felt like running away and weeping in my office. I felt as if I was a freak. On the one hand, you have the mothers giving advice to the pregnant woman, talking about pregnancy, birth, and caring for your baby, with little personal stories to illustrate points. Scary things, good things, funny things. On the other hand, you have the young women still able to have children. And I fitted in neither of these groups. I still buy the gift, but I arrange for someone else to take it to the stork tea.
  • The same can be said for gatherings everywhere. The men stand around the fire, and the women sit around discussing their children.
  • Going to a “Womanhood” lecture at our church. The conversations during tea time included “Oh, I already have one child, but I am hoping for another one” and “A woman’s purpose is to have children”. I found myself surrounded by women with many children in tow, with toddlers running around. I excused myself and walked to another room, trying to control my emotions, my despair.
  • Seeing pregnant woman everywhere.
  • Colleagues coming to show their babies after maternity leave.
  • Knowing that you are the last of your family, a biological dead end. There is no one to whom I can pass down my grandfather’s bayonet that he had fought with in the war. No one to pass my mother’s keepsakes. All my keepsakes sold to a secondhand dealer, or chucked away as rubbish. No one to tell the story of our family to. The long line of my family will be snuffed out, and it will be as if I had never existed.

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

Anita: “No.” Sure, I have a stepson, but he already has a mom. For a while I hoped that I could be his “other” mom, but it wasn’t to be.

LWB: What is the best part about not having children?

Anita: Listening to our neighbor’s child scream seemingly for hours every night, and feeling thankful that it is not our child.

 

Won’t you share your story with us? The act of answering the questions itself can be very healing, plus we’d like to support you by telling you “You are not alone.” Please visit the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is mostly at peace with her childlessness.

 

 

 

Whiny Wednesday: Baby Names You Never Got to Use

This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is a tough one.

Baby names you never got to use

As always, you’re free to vent on your own topic, too.

Making the Best of a Life Without Children

By Lisa Manterfield

Thanks to Iris for forwarding this article about living happily without children.

I love this author’s attitude to the hand she’s been dealt. At first read, she seems almost flippant about her inability to have children, but she’s packed a whole life story into one article, and reading between the lines, it’s clear to see the pain she felt, the struggles she and her partner went through in coming-to-terms with being childfree, and the attitudes she still has to endure from others. But her whole outlook was encapsulated in this paragraph:

“We didn’t get to have something. We had 2 choices as a result of that – let it control, dictate and sadden the rest of our lives or find something else to do instead. Either way, we still wouldn’t get to have kids. So which is the best choice?”

Are you still struggling to come to terms with your own situation and feeling that childlessness is “controlling, dictating, and saddening” your life? If so, can you see what your “find something else to do instead” could be? And could you do it?

I don’t this author is trivializing the blow she was dealt – far from it – but I love that she’s found a way to turn her situation to her advantage. What do you think?

It Got Me Thinking…About Doing a Fairy Deed

I don’t recall exactly how it started, but years ago I devised a strategy for picking myself off the floor when Life really really knocks me down. Some people might call it practicing random acts of kindness or paying it forward. I call my version of delivering surprises that I hope will make people smile “Fairy Deeds.”

Fairy Deeds come in all sorts of creative guises, from sending packets of wildflower seeds to friends (when I was bemoaning the fact that I had no space for a pretty garden of my own) to dropping off scratcher lottery tickets (when I was worried about how the bills were going to get paid) to wrapping up (in colored paper and a satin bow) a big package of Oreo cookies for a friend who had shared with me that she, too, had dealt with difficult losses with a note that said, “To remind you of the sweet things in life.”

The key to all of them, for me, is that they must be done anonymously. There is something about the adrenaline rush that happens when you’re making deliveries under the cover of darkness and the silly feeling of holding a juicy secret as you overhear a recipient sharing trying to figure out who the fairy is that completely lifts me out of my own malaise.

I’m thinking about Fairy Deeds this week because one of the deeds that was the most fun for me was done on July 4th, our Independence Day in the United States. Our country’s birthday was always a family holiday, one that included the gathering of close friends and extended family, the serving of favorite foods (homemade peach ice cream), and many traditions. As far back as I can remember, I looked forward to one day hosting my own family-focused celebrations, and well, we all know how that worked out.

On that original 4th of July, I had to work late and missed all the picnics, barbecues, and fireworks watchings I might have otherwise attended. Feeling beyond lonely, and nursing an epic case of self-pity, I faced the choice of going home and wallowing or…choosing to do something different.

I stopped at the market on the way home from work and picked up six ginormous watermelons. At home, I thought of people I knew who were also going through tough times, and wrote each a short note of encouragement. After several hilarious attempts with various types of tape and string, I finally came up with a way to attach each note: staples. OMG, I was already laughing at myself, so my plan was working. I loaded up the back seat of my car and headed out just after midnight.

Picture this: Like a thief in the night, I “canvassed” each home, making sure the coast was clear. Then I parked out of the occupants’ visual range, lugged the watermelon out of the back, and waddled (you try running with a huge melon in your arms!) up to the front porch. Quietly, stealthily (I was totally holding my breath), I placed the watermelon at the door, then dashed back to my car and, with my heart pounding out of my chest, raced to the next delivery. It was awesome!

I heard some of those friends later share what they’d discovered the next morning, and it filled my heart to know that I’d succeeded in doing something that surprised and amused them. There was no question I had cheered myself up.

This week, if you’re feeling sad/lonely/stuck, I encourage you to give this a try. It doesn’t have to be a big or expensive gesture, it can be as simple as:

  • Paying for the coffee for the person in line behind you.
  • Cutting some pretty flowers or herbs from your garden and dropping them off for a neighbor.
  • Leaving a box of donuts or bag of cookies in the break room with a note thanking your co-workers for being awesome people.
  • Placing lemons and a cup of sugar in a gift bag and dropping it off for a friend who’s going through a tough time, encouraging her to “Make lemonade.”

I wish you a magical week!

 

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