Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Spring Cleaning My Past

I know it’s a bit late in the year, but I’m spring cleaning.

Over the years I’ve been added to mailing lists and e-mail subscriptions based on my plans to be a mother. Even though I’ve moved on to a new chapter in my life, every now and then a reminder from my past pops up to haunt me.

It’s been a while since I’ve received free samples of diapers and formula in the mail, but I still get plenty of postcards for children’s portrait photographers, baby fairs, and parenting classes.

I’ll be unsubscribing myself from the e-mail lists of Babies R Us, Adoptive Families, and my former acupuncturist. It’s not that these reminders send me into any kind of emotional turmoil; I just don’t have a use for their products and they’re cluttering up my Inbox. So it’s time to say “Goodbye.”

Have you done a spring cleaning on your past? Or are you still not ready?

Friends Who Said the Right Thing

“Just ride your husband like the stallion he is, then flip over like a dead bug.”

“Oh, get IVF. Just do it.”

“My friends just adopted from Guatemala; I’ll have them call you.”

There never seems to be a shortage of people with “helpful,” and usually unsolicited, advice that can send us reeling off with our backs up and our feelings hurt. The above quotes are taken directly from my own experience as I was dealing with infertility. All were from people who cared and wanted to help, and every single one hurt. But what about people who say the right thing?

For every person that said something hurtful, the were two more who said something kind (or sometimes just said nothing at all.) One friend who stands out is the woman who quietly confided that she and her husband had experienced similar issues and come to a decision. “We decided that we were already a family,” she told me. “We were just a family of two.” Her words really made me think about what it was I was questing for and eventually I came to the same conclusion that I was also happy with the family I already had—my husband and my cat.

Who are the people who said exactly the right thing at the right time to you?

Waiting for Baby – DivineCaroline

Several years ago I wrote this article for the online magazine Divine Caroline. As proof that whatever you put out there on the internet never really goes away, I just got a notification that the article has cycled its way back to the top of the featured articles list.

For a writer, this is great news, but for me, the personal me, not so much. It’s a harsh reminder of a chapter of my life I’ve tried to close the door on (and done a pretty good job of, thank you very much.) Looking back now, my words seems so naive. I have to ask myself: Would I give the same advice to a hopeful mother-to-be now?

You know what? I think I would. Despite my own experience, I don’t want to be the voice of doom and gloom. Ever. “Bitter” and “childless” so often get strung together in descriptions, and that person is not me. So, I hope that maybe this article will still bring comfort to a hopeful woman, and maybe she’ll get lucky. And if not, I hope she finds support and acceptance, as I have.

via Waiting for Baby – DivineCaroline.

Dealing With a Pregnancy Announcement

Here’s an article I wish I’d found a long time ago. It’s about how to deal with a friend (or relative) announcing a pregnancy. If you’re childless-not-by-choice, this kind of news can trigger some of the worst human emotions—jealousy, rage, feelings of injustice, and worse. I know I’ve thought, (or maybe even said) “It’s not fair. Why her? Why not me?” It’s a terrible thing to think about someone you like or care about.

I like this article because the author turns it around and makes the news not about “me and her” but about the friendship and what the news will mean to both of you. She says:

A friend’s pregnancy may arrive like a bolt from the blue, but once you’ve caught your breath you can use this new event as an opportunity to think more purposefully about what you need and can offer in a friendship. Remember to keep the emphasis on mutuality, on open communication and also on expanding your friendship network in new ways.

Yesterday I got the news through the grapevine that a friend I’ve known for more than 30 years is pregnant. She struggled with infertility, gave up, lost a relationship, and finally settled into a new life with a new partner, who is already a father of two, and accepted that she would never have children of her own. Surprise! Suddenly she’s pregnant.

At one time, this news would have set me off on a personal rampage against the Universe, but when my husband tentatively asked me how I felt, I replied with all honesty that I was happy for her because I know she wanted this, that I was worried about her because of the potential health problems she might have, and that I was concerned about her mental state having finally come to terms with her infertility and started building a life without children. What I want to do now is contact her, congratulate her, and offer whatever support I can from across the other side of the world. I want my friend to be okay. That’s a far cry from the teeth-gnashing banshee I might have turned into a few years ago. I’m calling this progress.

“Getting Over” Infertility

We’ve talked a lot about how to get over being unable to have children and for those of us who are childless-not-by-choice it’s an ongoing effort.

I came across this article today about Infertility’s Double Whammy, when friends begin having grandchildren. The article gave me little encouragement, but it does fall into the category of forewarned is forearmed. The author warns:

The continuity of fertility can leave you feeling totally excluded from the great human cycle, for ever outside the loop of life. And what makes it especially hurtful is that people blithely assume that you have ‘got over’ your disappointment by the time you have reached the age when your contemporaries are becoming grannies. As a result, those same people can be a lot less sensitive about the fact that infertility is not just an issue in your 30s and 40s, but can also come back to haunt you in your 50s and 60s.

This is something that wasn’t even on my radar. My plan for this is to make sure I’m on a tall ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean or searching for lesser spotted dodos in the Amazon when my friends’ babies start having babies.

Has anyone had this experience of grandbaby envy yet?

Thanks, But It’s Not For Us

I’m still here. (See yesterday’s post.) I survived the fertility book and here’s my review:

It looks like a very thorough book that gives good details about all the factors of infertility, the tests needed, and the vast array of up-to-the-minute treatments available. It even offers some commonsense tips to hanging onto one’s sanity during fertility treatments and what options are available when pregnancy is no longer an option.

I think it’s fair to say that this book is not for us. If you know someone setting out on the road to conception, pass along the information, otherwise I strongly recommend keeping that particular door firmly closed.

Cracking open that door again

About a month ago a very nice gentleman contacted me and asked if I would review his new book on this blog. The book’s title was A Baby at Last! and was co-authored by this man and two fertility doctors. I politely explained that I didn’t think our audiences were the same group of people, but he replied that the book also contained a section about moving on without children. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take a look.”

The book has been burning a hole through my office floor ever since. I haven’t even taken it out of the envelope. There are three reasons for this:

  1. The author is a friend of a friend, or at least an acquaintance of a friend, and I feel obligated to write something positive about his book.
  2. There’s no way on this green earth I can recommend a fertility book to the women who I know read this site. It goes against everything we’re attempting to do here.
  3. And here the rest of the truth comes out: It hasn’t been long since my shelf-full of fertility books went into a Goodwill bag and out of my house forever. The very last thing I want to do is crack open that door again. What if, in turning to the chapter on moving on, I inadvertently spot some new idea, something I’ve never seen before, a solution that just might work for me? What if it triggers a tailspin and undoes all the positive progress I’ve been making?

But, according to the Press Release, the book is out today, and a promise is a promise, so tonight I’m going to crack it open and find out what the authors have to say about moving on. With luck, I’ll have some great advice to pass along, but if there’s no post tomorrow, you’ll know why.

Wish me luck.

A Beautiful Essay About Infertility

Every Sunday, The New York Times publishes essays in its Style section, under the heading Modern Love. They’re always worth a read. I recently stumbled across this gorgeous essay about infertility, Alone on a Path Shared By Many, by Allison Amend.

Here is a woman who dealt with the blow of infertility long before she was ready to have children, but she expresses the loss and grief beautifully, and her brother’s well-meaning comments need to be added to our list of the amazing things people say.

Kudos to Allison for her frankness.

Justifying the Decision to Remain Childless

After posting yesterday’s article about surrogates in India, I came across this Op-Ed piece about a study that looked at the emotional impact on children conceived through sperm and egg donation. Here’s what the researchers found:

“a population that’s at once grateful to the fertility industry and uneasy about the way they were conceived, supportive of assisted fertility but haunted by the feeling of being a bought-and-paid-for child.

Americans conceived through sperm donation also are more likely to feel alienated from their immediate family than either biological or adopted children. They’re twice as likely as adoptees to report envying peers who knew their biological parents, twice as likely to worry that their parents “might have lied to me about important matters” and three times as likely to report feeling “confused about who is a member of my family and who is not.”

And the realities of commercialized reproduction — in which desirable donors can father dozens of children by different mothers, creating far-flung networks of half-siblings who will never know each other — weigh heavily on them. They are more likely than adoptees to say that “when I see someone who resembles me, I often wonder if we are related,” for instance, and much more likely to worry about accidentally falling into a romantic relationship with a relative.”

I found this fascinating and wonder how many parents consider this, and if it’s just one of those issues that will need to be dealt with if and when it arises. I know that when I was faced with the possibility of first sperm and later egg donation, these findings didn’t occur to me. Something didn’t feel right to me, but that’s all that I really knew.

I think that now I am probably looking for justification of my decision to not have a baby by any possible means, but if so, I’m having no trouble finding evidence to support my case.