Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Circumstantially Infertile

Thanks to Robin for posting this link on the LWB Facebook page.

In the Huffington Post’s new “Women” section this week, Savvy Auntie, Melanie Notkin writes about the grief and lack of empathy that comes with being “circumstantially infertile.”

Melanie always wanted to have children, but just never met the right person. She talks openly about the insensitive and sometimes cruel things people have said to her. She also makes the case that, just because someone doesn’t have children, doesn’t mean they don’t like kids or aren’t maternal.

Melanie is the author of the fun book, Savvy Auntie, that I reviewed last month, and creator of SavvyAuntie.com. I also had the pleasure of interviewing her recently. More about that soon.

Finding the Silver Lining

When human cloning becomes safe and legal, I’m cloning my mum and renting her out.

During our weekly phone conversation this weekend, the subject of my childlessness came up and I told her that I was glad I’d made the choice I did, to get off the baby crazy train and start living my life again. She understood. (Reason #1 to clone her.)

I joked that Mr. Fab and I are now free to sleep in on Sundays, travel, and more or less do what we want to do when we want to do it.

My mum said something very profound. She said that, before my father died (25 years ago) she couldn’t have ever imagined how she’d survive as a widow. And yet she did. She found the silver lining in being alone. She went back to school; she traveled overseas for the first time; she learned to fix things around the house; and she could please herself what she had for dinner. (Reason #2)

It wasn’t that her life was better without my dad; it was just different, and she kept reminding herself of the positive side of things “because you have to,” she said.

I’m not sure I’ll ever say that I’m glad I didn’t have children. I can’t say that my life is better because of it, but it is very different to the life I’d planned, and most of the time, I can find the silver lining. Thanks to my mother’s hard-earned wisdom, I’m reminded to keep looking for the silver lining, because it’s almost always there.

Meeting New People

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting one of my readers in person!! It was so much fun.

At first it was a little strange, because the only thing we knew we had in common was our infertility and we both knew that the topic would come up, which it did. I learned something new about my own diagnosis from her experience. It was something my own doctors had never told me and, while it doesn’t change my prognosis, it helped me to put another piece of the puzzle in place, and make sense of what happened to me.

We also talked about food, shopping, and Los Angeles, and discovered a mutual love of travel. I left our lunch feeling as if I’d found a new friend and I hope that she felt the same way.

Our childlessness does not define us and it is only a small part of who we are, but my own experience has been that my childfree status is what connects me to someone initially and affords me the opportunity to find out what else we have in common.

We have a dynamic community of women here from all over the world and all walks of life – and with a broad range of interests. I urge you to use the common denominator to find friends with other interests – and avoid have that awkward “do you have kids” question.

On the main site you’ll already find writers, readers, gardeners, pet lovers, and cooks. You’ll find groups in Canada, California, and Texas, too. But is you’re interested in scuba diving, crafting, decorating, or belly dancing; entomology, etymology, archaeology, or theology; philanthropy, mythology, philately, or newts, start a group! Make a connection. Find something else to talk about. You may even find a new friend.

Whiny Wednesday: Busy trying to relax

My husband passed this comic strip across the breakfast table to me earlier this week.

 

This is me.

We really need a vacation. I am long overdue to go home to see my mum. We just planned a weekend away that turned into a business trip and had to be planned and replannned and replanned and rescheduled so many times that I feel as if we’ve spent the past three weeks planning a vacation we’re not actually going to get.

I’m almost ready to throw some clothes in a suitcase, go to the airport with a credit card and get on the next flight to anywhere. Right now, I can’t think of anywhere I wouldn’t want to go.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s your whine?

The “Do You Have Kids?” Conversation

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how “Do you have kids?” is such a natural part of polite, “ice-breaking” conversation, and yet it’s such a loaded question for so many of us.

When we meet new people, we’re looking for something in common to talk about. People with kids know that when they talk to someone else with kids, they automatically have a topic of conversation – their kids. And asking this question is presumed to be okay because the answer is usually anticipated to be either “Yes” or “Not yet.” People just aren’t prepared to hear “No.”

So, imagine you’re at a function, wandering around with a glass of wine in one hand and a shrimp on a skewer in the other and you strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know. You talk about the weather, she asks where you’re from or what you do for a living, and then she asks, “Do you have kids?” Assuming this is someone you don’t want to offend, you resist a snarky answer and instead say a simple “No.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that this response is usually met with a horrified silence (although occasionally I’ll get, “You’re lucky,” or “You can have mine.”) People just don’t know what to say when I tell them I don’t have kids, and in order to fill the silence I find myself explaining why I don’t kids, and imparting some very personal information about myself.

So, let’s help these poor people out. No, seriously. Instead of the stunned silence, what do you wish people would say? Do you want them to ask if you’re childfree by choice? Do you want them to ask if you’re ok with not having kids? Or would you prefer them to change the subject to someone or something else so you don’t have to talk about you anymore? Assuming someone opens this conversation, what would you want her to say next?

It Got Me Thinking…About Telling Friends

By Kathleen Guthrie

“I’m leaving my husband.”

It was girls night out, and my small group of gal-pals was catching up over wine when Jen* dropped this bombshell on us.

“What?!” After twenty years and three kids together, their marriage was one I held up as a role model for making things work. How did it suddenly come to this?

That night I learned she’d been going to counseling for years, trying to make it work, trying to overlook her husband’s shortcomings for the sake of keeping their family together. She’d wanted to leave him months earlier, but the timing wasn’t right, and now she was ready to take the leap and begin to build a better life for her and her children.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked, as I reached over to touch her hand.

“Because you are so happy and in love, and I didn’t want to take away from any of your pre-wedding romantic bliss.”

I quickly replayed our recent visits in my mind and looked for clues that things were amiss, some hint of her pain that I hadn’t picked up on, some expression or comment that gave an opening for my to check in with her, to ask her deeper questions, to see how she was doing. Had I said anything that made her feel worse? Had she felt I was rubbing her face in my happiness? Had my joy in my new role as bride-to-be added to her hurt? I hated that I had not been a good friend to her in her time of need.

I respected her choice to hide her situation from me, yet it also broke my heart. “I wish you’d told me. I want to know so that I can be there for you.”

“But you have so much else on your plate with all the wedding stuff.”

“I’ll always have stuff on my plate, but my priorities include taking care of my friends.”

As I mulled over this in the ensuing week, it reminded me of our conversations—on LWB—about talking to our friends and families about our struggles with infertility and childfreeness. When do you tell them? What and how much do you tell? It’s not dissimilar from Jen’s decision to not tell her friends what was going down in her marriage, and I found it interesting to be on the other side of the conversation for a change.

And here’s what I learned: It’s important that we share our pain so that we can allow our friends to support us. Allow them to be better listeners, to learn how to help you with a hug or by knowing when it’s better to ignore the elephant in the room. Once you open up to a close friend, you also have an ally in groups. Moving forward, when the dynamic shifts to all things pregnancy and mommydom, and you feel yourself being pushed to the periphery, your informed and sensitive friend can help steer the group back to more inclusive topics before you have a meltdown.

Please share. How else will I know what you need? I want to help. I want to be there for you. I say to Jen, as I say to you, “Please let me know how I can best support you.”

*Not her real name, of course.

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

Interview with author, Dr. Ellen Walker

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Ellen Walker, author of Complete Without Kids: An Insider’s Guide to Childfree Living by Choice or by Chance. Ellen is childfree by choice, and even though I am childfree by chance, we had plenty to talk about on the subjects of friendship and community, the drive for motherhood, and what to do when life doesn’t go as planned. Here’s our conversation:

Life Without Baby: How did you make the decision to be childfree?

Ellen Walker: I never spent a lot of time thinking about motherhood. I was busy with work, travel, and hobbies, and I always had partners that never wanted a family.

My current husband already had grown children, and I never felt pressure from him, this was the first time I’d really been close to a father-son relationship, and when I’d hear him on the phone, telling his son he loved him, it tugged at my heartstrings. For the first time, I began to question my decision not to have children, and suddenly I wanted a baby of my own.

After many tearful discussions and weeks of writing, talking, and contemplating, I was able to step back and analyze. I realized that if I really wanted children, I would have made it happen before.

LWB: What do you think triggered that urge?

EW: I think it’s a basic biological drive to create a child, especially in a relationship with a man. You have a primitive urge to have his baby. It’s also about not wanting to be left out of a group. When friends are having babies and people are bringing photos of children into work, you have nothing to talk about with them.

LWB: Do you find that most of your friends are also childfree?

EW: Yes. My female friends tend to be 10-20 years older because the women my own age didn’t have time for friends without kids. Their friends went to soccer games and connected because of their kids. I did seek out childfree people, but most came about through chance meetings.

LWB: How important is it to find your own community?

EW: Really important. I never thought about it until I started meeting people and got really excited when they didn’t have children. I began to seek out others. I found a childfree Meetup group and went to a few meetings. It was fun, but I realized that just being childfree does not make someone a good candidate for friendship. Now, I look for people with interests in common, and if they happen to be childfree, I nurture those relationships.

LWB: Do you ever regret your decision?

EW: Sometimes. In a way I feel as if I’ve missed a big life stage. I’ve been career driven for a long time, and I’m feeling as if I’m ready to do something else. Many women my age with children are now focusing on their careers, and I’m ready to retire. I’m trying to figure out the next stage.

If I’d been raising kids, I wouldn’t have had the energy I’ve had for other things. I’m glad I made the choice and pursued my career. I’ve had the opportunity to impact people’s lives and I’ve written a book. I wouldn’t have been able to do those things. Everyone has regrets, but luckily mine are fleeting. Mother’s Day is always hard. I recently wrote an article about it for Psychology Today, asking people to be careful about saying “Happy Mother’s Day” to every woman and to be aware that it can be a very painful day for some women, and not a happy day.

LWB: What advice would you give to someone struggling with being childfree?

EW: Let yourself go through a real grieving process, preferably with a therapist. A dream is something you’d hoped to have as a part of your identity and most likely wanted it your whole life. Losing that dream is like a death, and a formal grieving process has to include acceptance. Only then can you make a decision about where you’re going to put your energy. Then you can create a new dream, picture your future, and figure out how to make that happen.

While writing my book, I interviewed a woman in her 90s. She had never talked about her childlessness. Decades later, she still hadn’t reconciled and come-to-terms with it. She had so many strengths and talents, and had she dealt with her grief and loss, she could have embraced a new life.

LWB: It was a pleasure talking to you about your choices and hearing your insight.

EW: This is a really important issue for women of the world. We are peers for the next generation of women who may experience pressure from mothers to have grandchildren. We need to talk about this topic and be good role models for young women.

LWB: I couldn’t agree more.

To learn more about Ellen Walker, please visit her website, CompleteWithoutKids.com

Whiny Wednesday: Smelly Cat

There are lost of pluses to being “off the baby crazy train.” My Health Savings Account (used to pay everything not covered by health insurance) is carrying a healthy balance instead of being wrung dry. Most weeks I have no doctor’s appointments at all. My love life has improved dramatically. Beer and sushi are back on the menu. I’m happier. But the big downside is that the responsibility for cleaning out the cat box has fallen back to me.

Let me say, I love my cat. As far as furry friends go, she really is the cat’s meow. She’s a snuggle buddy, her fur is lovely and silky, and she loves to wrestle. But I do not know how a creature so cute can produce such a ferocious stink.

Today is Whiny Wednesday and this is my whine. What’s yours?

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?

It Got Me Thinking…About Transplants

By Kathleen Guthrie

If my sister needed a new kidney, I’d be the first one in line to give her one of mine. I also have a pink donor dot on my driver’s license that will allow surgeons to remove and share any viable organs with strangers when my time has come. So when I first saw this article about a 25-year-old woman possibly getting her mother’s uterus so that she could have her own children, my heart cheered for the miracles of modern science.

And then I read more closely, and these little words made my heart stop: “…Sara is so desperate….” Oh, dear God, here we go again.

Described as “completely unproven,” this tricky and experimental procedure involves surgeries and drug therapies for both the recipient and the donor, in this case, Sara’s mother. If the transplant is successful and Sara is able to bear a child, she will later have to endure another surgery to have the uterus removed. These women apparently are willing to go through all of this, even knowing that in a previous attempt, the mother-to-be’s body rejected the transplanted uterus when she was four months pregnant. I find the multitude of tragedies in that scenario horrifying.

I want to believe that miracles are possible. I want to know that there is hope for Sara and for my friends who would make wonderful parents if this is indeed the “cure” they need. But I can’t help but worry that this is just another example of greedy, egotistical doctors preying on the desperation of others.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She loves children, but won’t be having any of her own.