Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Another Voice for the Childless-Not-By-Choice

We’ve long bemoaned the lack of media coverage for the childless and childfree. I know that I’ve complained several times about “safe” magazines, such as Runner’s World springing unexpected parenting articles on me in between the shoe reviews and training programs.

 

So, when I was asked recently to contribute some thoughts about childfree/childless/infertility blogs for a sidebar to an article about the mommy blog phenomenon, I was understandably hesitant.

 

Well, the article came out in BITCH Magazine this month (Spring ’11) and I must say that I’m thrilled. After the main Mommy Blog article was a FULL PAGE article entitled Barren Bloggers in Breederville!

 

OK, not the most flattering of monikers, especially considering one of the bloggers mentioned now has twins, but right up there, flying the flag for the “life after infertility” crowd was Silent Sorority’s Pamela – and yours truly.

 

And Hallelujah, if the author didn’t make a point of mentioning that some women choose a life path that doesn’t include motherhood, and that (and I quote) “Infertility and adoption experts stress that [adoption] is not a universal solution,” especially for “emotionally and financially drained” infertility patients, hesitant to “embark on yet another uncertain journey.” Honestly, I could kiss the author for getting those words into print. In fact I am considering printing them out and keeping them in my pocket for the next time someone asks if we ever considered adoption before deciding to live childfree.

 

Anyway, I’m keeping an eye open for the article popping up online, and when it does, I will most definitely be posting it here.

 

Sisters, if we just keep talking, eventually, we will be heard. –x-

Surviving

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the death of my father. 25 years have passed and I’ve grown from a teenage girl to a woman, but if I was sitting in a room with you, I still wouldn’t be able to tell you about my dad without my voice cracking.

Losing my dad was the single most significant thing that had ever happened to me. It changed the whole trajectory of my life and it colored everything I did for many, many years.

Then I found out I couldn’t have children.

In many ways that has trumped my father’s death. It has taken the title of Most Significant Event. It has changed the trajectory of my life in ways I could never have imagined, and it still colors everything that I do. But already I am able to tell you that I can’t have children, without my voice cracking. Because what losing my dad taught me is that life goes on and that I will survive. It does, and I will.

Last night I spoke about writing at the Wellness Community, a cancer support center near my home. I sat in a room with survivors, women whose Most Significant Event has given them an up-close view of their own mortality. Their diagnosis changed their lives and continues to color everything that they do. But they’re here, they’re talking (often with cracking voices), they’re telling their stories and they are surviving.

Life deals us blows; it’s the nature of the thing. But we go on and we survive. That’s what makes us human.

Whiny Wednesday – Thoughtless Comments

It’s Whiny Wednesday and I’ve been brewing a post for a couple of weeks about people who leave thoughtless comments on blogs.

I’ve come across several cases recently of commenters posting hateful or at least unthinking comments on blogs and websites. The worst was on an article about infertility that I reposted here. That article generated some of the most cruel and heartless comments I’ve ever read on the subject.

Then, last week a fellow blogger told me of her experience with an equally unpleasant throw away comment someone left on a blog she visits. It was one of those comments about the childless and childfree that we know in our hearts aren’t true, but that sting anyway. The words, bitter, pathetic and whiny are often associated with those stereotypes.

I know better than to read comments on news sites, because I always get riled up, and yet I do it anyway, and then find myself stomping around furious that someone could be so thoughtless and insensitive.

Finally last week, I had lunch with a friend who had published an article called My Husband, the Convicted Murderer on Salon.com. Her article spawned 122 comments, ranging from support and understanding to the inevitable hate mail variety. I asked her; “How do you deal with this?” and she gave me some helpful advice.

She said (and I’m paraphrasing here):

“Some people just come looking for a fight. They’re looking for controversy and they’re looking for someone to leave their darkest thoughts. The internet is the perfect, almost anonymous place to do that.”

She’s right. People come from all sorts of dark places, and often with their own personal agenda. Sometimes people post before they think, or they just don’t bother wasting energy thinking at all. There’s nothing we can do to help those people, and odds are, they don’t want to be helped or educated or enlightened. They just want to fight.

I feel very fortunate that most of the people who find this blog are coming with something positive to say. It has helped create the kind of community I’d envisioned when I first started this project. But when I venture out into the wider world and encounter the other kind of commenters out there, I’ll be sure to keep my friend’s advice in mind.

It’s Whiny Wednesday, so chime in to the discussion or feel free to have a whine of your own.

P.S. On the subject of other blogs, here’s an article tying in to our National Women’s History month series that I posted on Divine Caroline earlier this week.

Death Penalty for Women Who Miscarry

Ironic that, in this month of celebrating women who made history, this story should hit the headlines.

Kathleen Guthrie sent me this report:

As reported on MSNBC TV yesterday, Bobby Franklin, a Georgia lawmaker, has proposed a bill that would hold women criminally and legally accountable—and eligible for the death penalty—if they miscarry.

This isn’t just the case of one extreme politician. The bill has made it to the legislature, and similar bills are being considered in other states.

I am too stunned to be outraged yet; in fact the bill is so ludicrous that I find myself on the verge of laughing.

But really, it’s not funny.

The women who came before us fought hard for our reproductive rights, and yet it seems we are in constant danger of losing our grip on those rights.

I realize that this bill is a political vehicle to overturn abortion law, but what kind of a country do we live in where a law that would systematically wipe out women who are unable to reproduce make it any further than the first trash can?

IComLeavWe February 2011

I’ll say right up front here that, while I’ve been aware of the existence of Melissa Ford and her Stirrup Queens blog for a number of years, I’ve always stayed away.

One of the hardest parts of coming to terms with being childless is the constant lure of the miracle treatment. I know I’m over it, and I understand that some precise combination of yoga, asparagus, and ground yak horn is not going to fix my dodgy ovaries, but I can never help thinking what if? For this reason, I’ve steered clear of any fertility websites that are still in the TTC mode.

Regardless, I ventured over to Stirrup Queens recently and was pleasantly surprised to find that Mel now has a whole section of blogs devoted to living childfree after infertility, and that some of my favorite blogettes have their sites listed.

So, this week is IComLeaveWe, or International Comment Leaving Week, on Stirrup Queens. There’s a full explanation here:  [link] but basically, the idea is to support this community of bloggers by posting comments of five blogs every day for the week of February 21-28 (plus replying to one comment on your own blog, if you have one.)

So, in the spirit of community, I will be lurking around the blogosphere this week, catching up on what others are doing. Here is Mel’s list of blogs that are covering the “childfree after infertility” point of view. I plan to visit these and others on my own blogroll, and bring back my favorites to share.

  1. A Fresh Start
  2. Apron Strings for Emily
  3. BarrenChemist
  4. Barren, Broken, and Beginning Again
  5. (NOT) Coming to a Uterus Near You
  6. Coming2Terms
  7. Crashing, Burning, & Getting Back Up
  8. The Fertile Soul
  9. Forever Reaching
  10. La Belette Rouge
  11. Life Without Baby
  12. Making Toy Soldiers
  13. The Miss Ruby
  14. My So-Called Life
  15. my whole is greater than the sum of my parts
  16. My Words Fly Up, My Thoughts Remain Below
  17. No Kidding in NZ
  18. Plan B: Family of Two
  19. That Girl with Endo
  20. Upon Awakening…

If your blog isn’t listed, please add it here and I’ll put it on my tour.

Going to the Silence

Pamela posted this Huffington Post article yesterday and I saw it circulating around Facebook, so I’m sure many of you have seen it.

I thought it was a very intelligent and insightful piece and I was so glad the author was talking about infertility as a disease and how it’s something that needs to be talked about and better understood.

Of course, many of the comments just served to prove the author’s point that infertility is misunderstood, that it’s about so much more than selfish reproduction of oneself, and that the mental health aspects are hugely underestimated. If you decide to read the comments, be warned that they are not kind.

I read the article and I read as many of the comments as I could bear, and then I shrank down in my chair and reached for the mouse to close the article. I was upset, but I didn’t have the strength to add to the discussion. I didn’t want to get involved. I just wanted the whole thing to go away and leave me alone.

I’ve been feeling this way all week, which is why my posts have been creeping in mid-morning, instead of at 6:00 a.m. sharp. Because this week, I’m one of those women mentioned in the article who doesn’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to announce my infertility to the world; I don’t want to have to defend myself against people who would rather say something spiteful than engage their brains and think beyond their own little worlds for just a minute. I don’t want to speak up.

Taped to my computer screen is a quote by Amy Goodman. It says, “Go to where the silence is and say something.” It’s the mantra I use to remind myself to push the writing envelope and dare to say something that hasn’t been said before. I try to do that when I write, but it’s uncomfortable and painful, and just plain easier to not do it.

But the quote applies to my infertility too. It’s painful and uncomfortable to talk about it, and it’s so much easier to stay quiet and say nothing. But there is a silence out there and it’s damaging. As long as we stay quiet, the stigma, the misunderstanding, and the hurtful comments will prevail.

I didn’t want to, but I left a comment on the Huffington Post article and I’m reposting the article here. It’s not much, but it’s my way of going to where the silence is and speaking up until we are heard.

A Fresh Start

Tomorrow I am relocating to the opposite end of the state and I’m suffering from a bit of mover’s melancholy. This week I went to my local farmer’s market and bought my favorite things for the last time, I ran with the friends I will never see again, and I stood in my garden looking at the flowers that will surely die without me.

Ok, so that’s a bit dramatic and in actual fact, our move is only temporary and really just a change of base camps. We’ve been living in two places for almost a year now, based in the south and traveling to the north for work, and all we’re doing is moving my office and the cat, and reversing the travel direction. But still, I already miss my home.

Despite this, I think the move will be good for us. It’s going to be another fresh start.  We’ve had several fresh starts in the past few years – particularly at the various milestones of our infertility journey – and this is another one of those. Getting the book out into the world was another milestone, a kind of release of the story, a letting go, and it seems to warrant some symbolic marking of the end of one thing and the beginning of something else. The move will accomplish that.

I’m a big fan of fresh starts. I think sometimes we get bogged down with our norm and keep trying to solve the same old issues over and over, when sometimes we just need to get off the tracks and do something else for a while. Even a small change in the daily routine can mix things up a bit and give us a new perspective.

So, despite my sadness at leaving the familiar behind, I’m very much looking forward to my fresh start.

Bye-Bye Baby Clutter

As part of my “New Year, New Me” campaign, I’ve been trying to unload some of the clutter in my life. Last week I went through the dozens of marketing emails I get every day and unsubscribed to the ones I no longer need.

I haven’t ordered from Victoria’s Secret in years, so I took myself of their list. I don’t ever remember ordering from a company called Shari’s Berries, so they’re gone too. And the company who sends me emails in Spanish (no idea what they sell) no longer has my permission to do so.

I’m also pleased to say that I’m parting with my residual baby clutter, too. When the regular newsletter from Adoptive Families came in, I scrolled right to the bottom and unsubscribed. Babies R Us got the boot long ago, as did the portrait photographer who got me on her list.

I also went through the Mystery Closet in my office. There I found a sample of diapers and some kind of baby journal. I didn’t even bother to look what it was. In the trash it went.

What I’m pleased to report is that I had no hesitation letting go of these things, and any sadness I felt about no longer needing them was, at most, fleeting.

It Got Me Thinking…About Privacy

By Kathleen Guthrie

Earlier this week I wrote about inappropriate chitchat, and my heart breaks over the comments (several came offline). Readers shared some of the horrible, though possibly well-intentioned, things people have said to them that added salt to the already devastating wounds of infertility.

“When are you going to have kids?”

“So which one of you is the reason you can’t have children?”

“Why don’t you just adopt?”

We’ve all heard variations on this theme, and I don’t know if it ever gets easier to come up with an appropriate response. The bigger issue I think we haven’t yet discussed is when—if ever—to tell people, and who we should tell, versus our right to privacy.

How are you handling this? Did you break the news to a few key people, expecting them to spread the message down the line? Did you tell just close family and friends, hoping to gain their support? Did you include a paragraph in your annual holiday newsletter? Or have you kept it to yourself?

Speaking of privacy, if you’re uncomfortable openly posting your thoughts or concerns on the blog, there are members-only discussions going on in the forums. You’ll find comfort, compassion, empathy, and support here. I hope you’ll reach out. Meanwhile, consider yourself cyber-hugged.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She believes “Life is what happens when you’ve made other plans.”

Whiny Wednesday: No Running Away

In Time to Lose My “Baby” Fat recently, I mentioned my campaign to get back in shape. As of Monday, I am in training to participate (note I didn’t say “compete”) in a local sprint triathlon. As my bike is in need of repair, I decided I’d look for a spin class until it’s fixed. I Googled my hometown and “Cycle class” and, lo and behold, up popped the fertility clinic where I spent so many fun hours. Apparently “cycle” is a key word there.

Sometimes it seems that you can run (or bike or swim) but you just can’t hide.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. Bring it on, ladies.