Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

More Than Just an Infertile Couple

Over the summer my husband and I went with a group of friends to see one of our favorite bands in concert. We’ve seen them several times in that last couple of years, but this concert was a small outdoor venue at a winery in Sonoma County, the heart of California’s Wine Country.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, the wine flowed, the picnic we brought was delicious, and when I suggested to my husband that we get up to dance on the lawn, he said yes. We danced through the entire show, until I was perspiring in a most unladylike manner and we’d just about worn a bald spot on the grass. Our other friends (who all have children) have “husbands-who-don’t-dance” and the wives, I’m sure, coveted my husband for a couple of hours. After the show we bought a CD, got it autographed by the band and even chased down the drummer, who I have a small , strange crush on. And we laughed. We danced and laughed and ate and drank. It really was a perfect day.

Two months have passed and I’m still thinking about that day. We’ve been to other concerts and events since and had a good time, maybe even been to better concerts, but that day sticks in my mind. That day my husband and I were the people we used to be before we were an infertile couple. Somewhere along that journey, little bits of who we were chipped off and we forgot why we ever got together and wanted children in the first place. That day reminded me.

If you’re childless-not-by-choice (or even not-exactly-by-choice) has the experienced changed who you are? And when was the last time you did something with your partner that made you both happy? If it’s been a while, can you plan something in the upcoming weeks that will break you out of your “infertile couple” state and remind you why you got together in the first place?

Earlier this year, Vicki at A Woman Without Children wrote about a hiking adventure with her husband. Maybe this will give you some inspiration, too.   

Ten Things I Love About My Body

Sparked by a suggestion from Jennifer on yesterday’s post, Happily Childless, Not-So-Happily Infertile, I’ve decided to cut my body some slack. So, it didn’t do exactly what I wanted it to do. Like Jennifer said, maybe it did the best it could. In truth, my body has been good to me and even it would never win a medal in the Reproductive Olympics, it would at least make the team in other areas.

Here are my top ten things I love and appreciate about my body:

  1. It’s never had a major illness that’s caused me to be hospitalized or aggressively treated
  2. My immune system is a ninja when it comes to fighting colds and flus.
  3. My digestive system is built like a nuclear fallout shelter, allowing me to eat just about anything
  4. My brain can do a Sudoku or Ken-ken  in pen
  5. My 40-year-old hair is still dark and shiny, except for a couple of grey rebels
  6. My shoulders are flexible enough that I can scratch my own back almost anywhere
  7. My legs can run, propel a bike, and do ten sets of stairs at the beach
  8. My boobs are closer to my chin than they are to my bellybutton
  9. My heart has the ability to swell to twice its normal size in the presence of someone I love
  10. My rump has superhuman magnetic powers for my husband’s hand

Be good to your body. Tell it (and us) what you love most about it.

Happily Childless, Not-So-Happily Infertile

Recently I’ve been dreaming about babies. These aren’t sad dreams or dreams of longing, just dreams in which I’ve interacted, in a very tender way, with a baby that wasn’t mine. I’ve woken up thinking about the dream, but not upset by it.

Last night I had a different dream. I was on one of those double decker open-topped tour buses (like the one I took in San Francisco last week) and the tour guide asked if anyone had ever tried (and he implied, failed) to have a baby. I reluctantly put up my hand. Looking around the bus, I saw that I was the only one.

“And what was that like?” asked the tour guide.

“It was horrible,” I replied. “It’s completely out of your control and there’s nothing you can do about it. There are procedures and things you can do to help, but you can’t control whether they work or not.”

After that the dream gets fuzzy and I woke up feeling very out-of-sorts.

Pottering around the kitchen this morning, I knew this would be a blog post of some nature, I just didn’t know about what. The dreams didn’t make much sense and I couldn’t decipher any meaning to them.

Buttering my toast, it came to me.

I am happily childless, but I am not happily infertile. I have reconciled the fact that I am not going to have children and I am okay with that. In fact, the more time passes, the more I realize how much I enjoy my life without children and what an upheaval to that life children would be. The part I haven’t yet reconciled is my infertility. I still can’t fully get to grips with the idea that my body failed me and that, no matter how hard I worked, not matter how dedicated I was to the goal,  there was nothing I could do to change that.

I don’t feel alone in my childlessness–the majority of my friends don’t have children—but infertility is still, and maybe will always be, something that makes me feel like the odd one out—the only person on the bus with her hand in the air.

Nobel Prize Awarded to Father of IVF

Last week, Robert G. Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize in Psychology and Medicine for his work in in vitro fertilization. Edwards pioneered the technique that has allowed millions of infertile women to have biological children (about 4 million so far) of their own. There is no disputing that his work was ground-breaking and has made a huge and largely positive impact on our society.

And yet…

When I heard the announcement on the radio, my toes curled. I never went through IVF myself, but through this website, I’ve spoken to many women who have. I’ve heard their stories about the treatment, the drugs, the pain and the sickness, and I’ve heard about the failed attempts, numerous failed attempts in some cases. The two men discussing the Nobel Prize on the radio gushed about the miraculous technology and explained for the audience the basic process of retrieving, fertilizing, and transplanting the egg. Their commentary was full of wide-eyed wonder. But there was no mention of the drugs, the pain, the expense, the heartache, and I felt that they only told a fraction of the story.

I try to keep perspective and not allow any lingering bitterness about my own infertility to taint my opinion, but that’s impossible. I can’t unknow what I know, and yes, IVF has had a positive impact on millions of women, but it’s been a detriment to many more. Unfortunately, that side of the story is still seldom told.

A Voice for Life Without Baby

Last weekend author, blogger, non-mom cheerleader, and fellow Life Without Baby member, Pamela Tsigdinos, received an award from RESOLVE, The National Infertility Association, for her book Silent Sorority. Her post about the experience gave me goosebumps.

Pamela has taken her experience with infertility and turned it around into something outstanding. She is speaking out and being heard with her message that there is life after infertility, that there is life without children, and what’s more, that life is good.

Pamela, I know you’ll be reading this. I applaud you for the great work you’ve done and continue to do. Kudos, sister!

“BARREN: life on infertile soil” Opens Tonight

Don’t forget! Monica Wiesblotts’ new exhibit “Barren: Life on Infertile Soil” opens tonight at Gallery 255 in Ventura, California.

Monica is a photographer whose work “examines the quiet reflections of a life without children in a child-centric world, and what it means to navigate daily in those constraints”.

If you’re in Southern California between now and October 23rd, check out Monica’s show.

My Spare Room

My mum arrived last week for her annual 6-week-long visit. This means I spent the prior two weeks tearing my house apart and reassembling it to accommodate a guest. We have two bedrooms in our house, the second room being my fulltime office. It usually contains my desk, computer, files, papers, office supplies—basically everything I need to do my job on a daily basis. But right now it contains a bed and a couple of suitcases, with my desk and computer squeezed into one corner.

While clearing out the room, I started thinking about a book I recently read—Kathryn Stockett’s The Help (an excellent book that I can recommend highly.) One of the characters in the book has a series of spare rooms in her large house, at least one of which is set up to receive the children she expects or is expected to have (the mystery is revealed later in the book, but I’m not about to blow it now.) I realized that I had never envisioned my spare room as a nursery. I think that in my mind, we would make do in our little place and once children came along, we’d figure out how to move to a larger house, maybe in a different town. But a part of me can’t help wondering what had really been going on in my subconscious mind that I never planned for a place for a child to live, despite planning, or at least thinking about, all kinds of details involved in being a mother.

What about you? Did you ever make solid plans that included actions, rather than simply daydreams?

Infertility: On the Rise or Less Taboo?

If you’ve ever bought a new car, you’ll know that once you decide on the make and model (and sometimes even the color), you start to notice that same car everywhere you go. For me, it’s been the same with infertility. Since joining the ranks of the “ovarially challenged” I’ve noticed infertility everywhere—in the news, in the movies, in my social circle. And yet there was a time when couples without children were rare and the subject wasn’t discussed in polite company. So what’s changed?

Is infertility on the rise or are we just more open to talking about it?

[polldaddy poll=3807667]

Finding Her Place After Infertility

Several months ago, one of our sisters, Wendy, was in crisis. She had been working as a child development specialist, but after her infertility diagnosis she realized she could no longer stand to work in that environment. She quit her job and then found herself, in her words, “trying to find out who the hell I am and what to do with my life.”

Well, she found out. A couple of weeks ago she got a call out-of-the-blue, and last week she left for Bangladesh to take a position with UNICEF as a pre-primary education consultant.

I’ve never met Wendy, but I’ve been following her journey on the forum, and I’m so inspired by her accomplishments. Here’s a woman who was knocked sideways by her unplanned childlessness, and yet she’s found her way.

She told me:

I have spent a lot of time thinking, and the only way I can make sense of my infertility is that maybe [it] means I can and should continue development work. Rather than focus only on the children who might be living with me under my roof, I can impact so many more children. Indirectly, yes, but many more. Working in international development, I can work to improve their schools, their home life, their health and sanitation, their nutrition, their families’ lives.

Congratulations, Wendy. Good luck in your new endeavor.

Healing Bit-by-Bit

I’m ovulating. The fact that my body continues to go through this useless motion is of little consequence, other than the fact that my hormones go wild and I click into nesting mode, cleaning and tidying everything in sight. For someone as disorganized as me, it’s useful to have this happen once a month, and especially so this month.

I am preparing for the Royal Visit, otherwise known as my mother’s annual trip to stay with us for about five weeks. As I work from a home office and we live in a small two-bedroom house, this means I have to convert my office into a guest room, while still leaving a small corner in which I can continue to work.

It’s a nightmare, self-inflicted, but no less horrendous. Yesterday I threw out six bags of papers, today I boxed up everything that I can live without for the next month-and-a-half, and the rest is in a pile in the middle of the floor, awaiting my decision regarding its fate. I’m thinking that if I don’t look at it, it will just go away, but I know that come Wednesday morning, I’ll be stuffing it into a closet, where it will remain, probably forever.

During yesterday’s purge I came across some things: all my notes and test results from my assorted fertility-related doctors, information from two different adoption agencies, and a baby naming book, half filled in.

The whole lot went in the trash.

Not that tossing it didn’t leave a dent in my heart. It did. But it was a small dent and will heal quickly. And this is how it works. This is how we move on, one small step, one event, one reminder, one discarded memento at a time. It’s slow and it’s painful, but bit-by-bit, it works.