Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Whiny Wednesday: Valentine’s Day

 

Last Wednesday was Valentine’s Day and I completely neglected to do a Whiny Wednesday post. (Thank you, Jane, for the reminder.)

Although my relationship with Mr. Fab survived our infertility, Valentine’s Day for us has become another holiday that’s lost its luster. For the most part, we ignore it.

I know it can be a difficult day (or week) for many of you, so even though it’s a little late, this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is:

Valentine’s Day

And, by the way, if you have any tips for how you approach this day, please share it here for readers who might be struggling.

I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood is a Goodreads giveaway this week. Check out Goodreads.com for your chance to win signed copy.

Why Childlessness Does Not Make Me Less of a Woman

Women having fun at Golden Gate Bridge

By Lisa Manterfield

“I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.”

~Anaïs Nin

There’s an idea going around that not having children somehow makes us “less of a woman.” I don’t subscribe to this idea.

As this quote by author Anaïs Nin states, I am many, many women, and “mother” is only one element of me.

I am a writer, friend, wife, cat mama, reader, thinker, curser, fighter, nature-lover, spider catcher, traveler, cook.

All these women are fluid. They ebb and flow in me as needed. And when one of them isn’t able to fulfill her purpose, the others quickly rally to fill the gap, so I am always whole.

I am never less of a woman.

It Got Me Thinking…About Facebook Sickness

I’m convinced I’ve picked up a new form of morning sickness. The primary symptom of “Facebook Sickness” is feeling nauseated every time a “friend” posts yet another comment or photo updating her (or his wife’s) pregnancy. It’s an epidemic:

“Here’s a picture of me at week 5! Feeling blessed!” (Looking no different than you looked at week 4.5.)

“Here’s the latest ultrasound image!” (Still looks like a blob of nothing to me.)

“Today my pregnant wife is craving ice cream!” (I crave ice cream every day. Big whoop.)

“I’m kicking my mommy today. Love, Baby Girl Smith” (“I barfed up some grass and a few remnants of the missing tennis ball on the hallway carpet today. Love, Louie the dog.”)

I can’t comment with all the clever-ish comments I’m really thinking because that would be rude…and, well, I actually am happy for these people. But I am SO OVER the daily belly photos that I am tempted to post one of my own:

“Here’s a picture of my belly at 51 years, 7 months, and 5 days. Still fat.”

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is feeling cranky today, and it has nothing to do with any kind of hormonal imbalance.

Whiny Wednesday: Pressure to be Amazing


Often we feel pressure to do something incredible with our lives because we won’t be doing the other “incredible” thing: being mothers.

In the past it’s sparked some healthy discussion, so I thought I’d use it as this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic:

Feeling the pressure to do something else amazing instead

Let the healthy discussion begin!

Three Things You Love About You

Bride in car with orange flowers

By Lisa Manterfield

Valentine’s Day can be challenging, full of triggers and missed experiences and what-ifs. So as thoughts turn to love this week, I want to ask you the same question I ask every year around this time:

“What are three things you love about yourself?”

A friend asked me this once, and I was shocked to find myself stumbling over my answer. I couldn’t even name one thing.

I think many us (especially we women) were raised to be modest, not boastful. We often have no problem telling someone else what we admire in them, but can’t then turn the spotlight on ourselves. And even when we do, we can so often point out all the areas for improvement rather than the good things we see in ourselves.

Fortunately for me, my friend is persistent, and she wouldn’t let me off the hook. So here are three things I love about myself:

      1. I’m honest.
      2. I will always stick up for the underdog.
      3. I am not a quitter.

So I challenge you now. What are three things you love about yourself?

Whiny Wednesday: Being Lonely Without Children


Some years ago, a young relative asked why I didn’t have children. I gave him an explanation that was honest, while also being appropriate for a young boy.

And then he asked me, “But won’t you be lonely?”

To this I responded that I had Mr. Fab and that I’d be fine. But actually, I think he may have hit a nerve, because even though I value the quiet time I have, sometimes it can feel a little lonely.

It’s Whiny Wednesday, what truths have hit a nerve with you?

How Did You Know it Was Time to Stop Pursuing Motherhood?

Woman waiting for sunrise

By Lisa Manterfield

Last year I had the pleasure of doing a podcast interview with Cathy at Slow Swimmers and Fried Eggs. We had an excellent conversation and covered the gamut of topics from the shock of realizing we were infertile to the unexpected benefits of living childfree. One of the questions she asked about my “lightbulb” moment, that one event or conversation or realization that told me I had to stop pursuing my quest for motherhood.

There were several moments that I wrote about in detail in I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home. These were moments when I knew, deep down, that I had to stop treatment and had to find a way to move on without children.

The first was when I was sitting at a bus stop on my way home from my third doctor appointment of the week. I realized that getting pregnant had become a full-time job and that it was consuming every aspect of my life. Case in point, I don’t even remember why I was taking the bus (two buses, actually) to my appointments, but I do remember that this had become my habit. I can picture myself now, staring out the bus window, almost in a trance, so wrapped up my world of infertility, I was barely aware of my actions. I knew then I had lost touch with reality and myself.

Another point came not long after Mr. Fab realized that adoption wasn’t going to be a viable option for us. This really should have been the stopping point, but before long I found myself in the infertility section of the bookstore, browsing a book by a doctor who had performed fertility miracles through Chinese Medicine. I bought the book, even though we’d already traveled far down that road. When I mentioned it to Mr. Fab, he said all the right, supportive things, but I saw his face drop for a moment. I knew that he was wrung out, that he had reached the end of his journey, and that I should have been at the end of mine, too. But by the end of that week, I had an appointment with the miracle doctor and I was back on the bus, both literally and figuratively.

One of my last lightbulb moments came when Mr. Fab’s first grandchild was born. That passing of the motherhood torch to the next generation served to tell me that it was time for my journey to end. I had done all I could, motherhood wasn’t going to happen for me, and I had to let it go.

In between these events, and even after I was sure I would not be a mother, there were many moments of doubt, of second-guessing, of what-ifs. But for every step backwards, I took two steps forward toward recovery, and then three, and then four, until the backward slips became fewer and eventually stopped.

I imagine each of you has a similar story of realization and doubts. What were your “lightbulb” moments and how did you finally know it was time to stop?

You can list to my interview with Cathy here.

 

It Got Me Thinking…About Half-Truths

My friend Kim* is an amazing pediatric dentist. Not only is she highly skilled, but she is passionate about what she feels is her calling. I have always admired her and, quite honestly, have at times been envious as I see her in action, see how her patients L-O-V-E her, see how energized she is by her work. In fact, it doesn’t seem appropriate to call it “work” because she glows when she is in her element and even outside when she talks about it.

So I was stunned when she announced she was letting go of her practice.

“What?! Why?”

“It sucks the life out of me, it takes too much energy, and I’m exhausted,” she said.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said. But that wasn’t entirely what I was thinking. See, Kim now also has a one-year-old daughter. Her job hadn’t changed. She’d never found it life-sucking before, quite the contrary. No, it is being a parent that is sapping her energy and making her too tired to continue to enjoy her job. I was saddened to hear that she was choosing to sacrifice her first great love, and also to hear that she was misplacing the blame.

But while I was quick to judge, once I took a step back and looked at the big picture, what I felt was compassion. I realized this was perhaps her way—consciously or unconsciously—of making peace with her sacrifice in her own mind. I do the same thing when people ask me why I don’t want kids and I respond by joking that my dogs take all the parenting urges out of me. Oh, I wanted kids, but I didn’t get to have them, and rather than have a complete meltdown in public, I deliver a half-baked “excuse.” I could easily imagine myself telling one of those strangers, “I just don’t have the energy to be a parent” versus revealing the fully honest and painful reasons for my childlessness.

When I think about it from my heart, I realize Kim and I aren’t all that different. We’ve both lost something we wanted, we’ve both sacrificed big dreams, and we’ve both lied to ourselves in an effort to salve the wounds. It makes me think that if we could be more honest with ourselves, and if we could then better communicate our real feelings with each other, there would be a smaller divide between the moms and non-moms.

We’re all women, doing the best we can with the paths we’ve been given. I hope that by being aware of this, the next time I am at the receiving end of a half-truth, I will bypass judgment and instead model understanding and compassion.

*Her name and details have been changed to protect her privacy.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods, truth be told, continues to struggle with making peace with being childless.

Whiny Wednesday: Parenting is the Hardest Job in the World

Kathleen has been on fire with the Whiny Wednesday suggestions lately. This week’s is a good one, so I’ll just leave it here for you to do with it as you please:

“Parenting is the hardest job in the world”

How We Heal Our Emotional Scars

Woman walking alone on beach

By Lisa Manterfield

I have a large scar on my left knee. It has black lines of grit in it, and smooth patches of scar tissue that catch the light on an otherwise rough patch of skin.

My scar is 30 years old and I don’t think about it very often anymore. It doesn’t hurt, even when I poke it, and the wound that caused it healed long ago.

But if I think back to the day I got my scar, all the memories and the pain come flooding back. I remember the bike accident. I remember riding through the trees on a gorgeous sunny day, laughing with my friends and flirting with a boy I liked. I remember trying to get his attention and catching my front wheel on his back tire. I don’t recall sailing through the air, but I must have done, because I do remember skidding along the trail, trading bits of knee for bits of trail.

I remember sitting in the bath at home and crying as my mum tried to clean the wound. And I remember my older brother—a bit of an expert on injuries and scars—gently coaxing me to scrub out the grit or be left with a terrible scar.

I also have a vague recollection of a discussion among adults (not my parents) about plastic surgery and what a shame it would be if a “pretty girl” was disfigured by an ugly scar.

It all happened so long ago, but dredging up these memories can bring back all that pain, my embarrassment, the tenderness of my brother, the feeling that my scar would make me “less than” I could have been. I can feel all of it again as if it had happened in more recent memory.

I feel this way about my infertility and childlessness, too. Most days, I don’t think about it anymore. But lately I’ve been writing about grief and loss, and some of those awful feelings of sadness, anger, and deep, deep loss have been coming back to me.

It’s taught me that the healing process for emotional scars is much the same as for physical scars.

You have to suffer some terrible pain to clean the wound. You have to struggle through the initial all-consuming grief. You have to ask for support from people who might not know how to give it. You have to walk again, even if every step is agony. You’ll meet people who will see you as damaged and less than you could have been, because you no longer fit into their ideal of perfect.

But over time the healing begins. You’ll knock your healing wound a few times and break it open again. In one particularly unfortunate incident, you’ll fall on the same wound and end up with a double scar. But you’ll remember how much you loved riding a bike and you’ll take it up again. And you’ll meet new people, who don’t care whether you have one ugly knee, because they’re more interested in some other facet of who you are. And you’ll realize that being a “pretty girl” wasn’t what you were destined to be anyway, and you’re happy being an outdoorsy girl who’s accumulated a multitude of scars since then.

And when you’re shaving your legs (which is trickier because of the scar) you might sometimes recall how you got the scar and the pain you went through. But most days, you won’t even think about.

Having a big scar on my knee means I never got the opportunity to be a leg model, but I got to be so many other things instead, things that have made my life journey quite interesting. My infertility scar is much newer than my knee scar, but I can already see it healing in a way I couldn’t have imagined when it was new and raw. I am starting to wonder about what new destiny it’s leading me to.

For more about hiding and revealing our scars, check out this guest post from Quasi-Momma.