Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

It Got Me Thinking…About Who Will Care for Me

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

I usually include in my byline for this column that I am “mostly at peace with being childfree.” I now can tolerate the occasional baby shower, I genuinely celebrate news of friends’ pregnancies, and I relish my unscheduled weekends. I am growing accustomed to a childfree life, but one nagging issue still troubles me.

A couple of years ago, complications from arthritis, pain, and plain ol’ old age crept up on my 14-year-old chocolate lab, Scout. It fell to me to provide for her new needs, like carrying her home from walks when her legs could go no further, supplementing her diet with soft treats like ground turkey and steamed broccoli, and lugging her up and down our front stairs for pee breaks throughout the day.

I’m not complaining. I feel privileged to have been Scout’s human, and I wanted her final days to be as comfortable as possible and full of love. I cherish this precious time with her. But it’s got me thinking….

In caring for my sweet girl, I was forced to confront my greatest fear, the one big bad ugly fear I have about being childfree: Who will take care of me? When my mind or body gives in to the inevitable aging process, who will step up to manage my finances or coordinate medical care? Who will assist me up stairs or change the batteries in the smoke detector or make sure there’s food in the fridge? I worry there will be no one to keep me company in the lonely hours of my golden years, and to hold my hand, offering comfort and prayers, when it’s my time to pass from this life to the next. Will I end up paying someone to perform all these tasks perfunctorily?

Both my grandmothers lived into their 90s. When they needed help in their final years, there were children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren at their sides. But I am childfree. I have no caretaker in the wings. I am saddened by this thought and, frankly, I am scared.

Whiny Wednesday: Infertility Amnesia


A friend of mine went through infertility hell a few years ago. When we learned of one another’s journeys, we were both glad to have an empathetic shoulder to lean on.

Then she became a mother, and developed infertility amnesia.

I’m not begrudging her the celebrations, the constant Facebook posts, or the incessant parenting talk. I get it; I’m sure I’d do the same in her situation. But the final straw came last week.

A group of us gets together about once a year and we’re starting to plan for this year. We usually go out for dinner, or bowling, or drinks and dancing. Several of us in the group don’t have children and those who do are always glad for a childfree night of adult fun.

This year, the new mom suggested we change things up and do something family-oriented and include the kids. “Maybe a beach picnic or Disneyland.” I kid you not.

Thankfully one of the other parents shot the idea down, but I had to wonder how she would have felt five years ago, in the thick of her infertility hell, if someone had made this same suggestion.

She would have felt excluded and she would have been upset. Which is just how I felt when I got her email.

Today is Whiny Wednesday. Who or what has done you wrong this week?

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.

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, let me ask you:

“What are three things you love about yourself?”

A friend asked me this recently, 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?

It Got Me Thinking…About Working with (Other People’s) Kids

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

In an interview I did recently, a woman shared with me what she went through when she faced 40, single and childfree. “I had to reassess my situation and consider the fact that perhaps it wasn’t in the cards for me to have a child after all,” she said. At the time, she decided to switch careers and return to school to get her teaching credential. “I figured, well, that would be my connection to children and the next generation, and I was okay with that.”

I’m here to tell you I had a physical reaction to her comment. I mean, bully for her, but I would so not have been okay with that trade-off. Even after years of healing, I still can’t imagine feeling “okay” spending my days with other people’s children while grieving for the children I could never have.

But as we know from reading the stories on this site, every woman has her own unique experience of grieving, and every woman has her own unique journey to healing. I think it’s remarkable that here, at Life Without Baby, we openly share our experiences and learn about options we hadn’t thought of for ourselves.

Join a Conversation

With that in mind, I took a tour around the Forum Discussions on our LWB Community page. Have you checked this out yet? What a remarkable source of information, inspiration, support, and compassion.

On this topic, you’ll find “Learning to be around children again” in which LWBers offer suggestions from volunteering in schools and instigating relationships with kids of friends. (One woman, a skilled figure skater, offered to teach her non-skating friend’s kids how to ice skate—love that!) In “You may think I’m crazy,” another woman shared how volunteering in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), holding and comforting babies, helped comfort her through her grief.

On the flip side, a Discussion titled “No interest in volunteering…thoughts?” asked “Does anyone just NOT want kids in their life?” That’s a conversation you’ll want to visit if you are fed up with people who keep telling you you’ll feel better if you’ll just focus your energy on nurturing other people’s kids.

There’s no right or wrong way to go about your healing, only what feels right to you. And to help you on your journey, I encourage you to scroll through the Discussions and contribute your thoughts—and take in the love and advice from other commenters. If you don’t find a conversation that speaks to what you need, start one!

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.

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 week 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?

My podcast interview with Cathy will be out in April. I’ll look forward to sharing it with you here.

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.