Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

“LOST AND FOUND, Life as I (K)NEW It”

As you know, I am usually very hesitant about posting stories relating to families, children, and babies, and that’s not going to change any time soon, but adoptive parents, particularly those who adopt through the foster care system, have a special place in my heart. From my own experience, I know that this type of adoption is a calling and it takes a special kind of person to pull it off.

Amy Hill, playwright and star of Lost and Found: Life as I K(new) It, was 47 years old and single when she adopted a baby girl through the L.A. County DCFS. Now, she and her 11-year old daughter, Penelope have taken their story to the stage in this

two-woman show about the trials and tribulations of multiracial/transracial adoption and single motherhood.

We each have a unique story to tell about our journey towards or away from motherhood. While Amy’s story took a different course to any of our stories, it’s often in the differences that we find common ground.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, consider checking out Amy and Penelope’s show.

 

“LOST AND FOUND, Life as I (K)NEW It”

Japanese American National Museum,
 Los Angeles, CA

October 1 @ 7 pm

October 2 @ 2 pm & 7 pm

Amy Hill explores how her life has evolved since her daughter became a part of her family. She talks about adoption, single motherhood, multiracial/transracial identity mash-ups and her continuing struggles to figure it all out in a humorous and honest way. Far from her days of flying solo, she has moved into a not so solo world: her daughter may or may not make an appearance.

$15 Members, Students, Groups (10+), Seniors

$20 non-members

Want to see a teaser of the show? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTmcqaSkkcs 

It Got Me Thinking…About Insomnia

By Kathleen Guthrie

It’s two o’clock on a Saturday morning. I am sitting at my computer at this ungodly hour because one of our dogs has a new habit of barking at the moon around midnight, and the other dog, who recently injured a leg, started noisily gnawing at the bandage around two. I was able to go back to sleep after the first dog-interruption, but after the second, my brain kicked into gear. After an hour of lying in bed thinking about bills that need to be paid and work I should have finished yesterday and my to do list for the weekend and why I love the movie The Help so much (Viola Davis—she’s amazing), I decided to get up and get something done…like beat my time for finishing a Sudoku puzzle.

In college, I was a habitual all-nighter. Every paper I wrote was completed while I watched the sun rise, then I’d throw on a baseball cap and dash across campus to get it into the TA’s mailbox before the morning deadline, and I still looked and felt as fresh as a daisy. But I’ve lost the skill over the years. I now drag myself to bed around ten, get up at five to fit in gym time, get to my desk by nine at the latest, work long days, and repeat. I nap on the weekends. Sometimes I nap during my lunch breaks.

I don’t know how parents do the sleep-deprivation routine on an ongoing basis, the first six months spent meeting the constant needs of a newborn, then the next eighteen years getting up for nightmares, water requests, barf sessions, and missed curfews. Maybe if I’d become a mom in my twenties I could have pulled it off. But now, I love my sleep time. I need my beauty rest. I want to get a full eight hours with a full dose of REM! I think of it now as a luxury that I get to enjoy because I am childfree, and I am grateful for it. Especially when I am denied the benefits on long nights like tonight.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. Her fastest Sudoku-solving time is 3:16.

Bambinos

If you ever happen to find yourself in Sheffield in the north of England, you might want to steer clear of Vito’s Italian restaurant. Don’t get me wrong, the food is delicious, the service is excellent, and Vito himself, if he happens to come out of the kitchen to talk to you, is charming and funny. But the place is a minefield for the childfree.

During my recent trip home, I went there with my mother and her gentleman friend to celebrate his birthday. Over the course of the meal the waiter (picture 50-ish, stocky Sicilian, with a thick half-Sheffield, half-Italian accent) discovered (from asking me) that I lived in California, was a writer, and was married to an American.

“So,” came the next question, “you have bambinos?”

“Um, no,” I said, quickly going back to my pasta.

“No?” he says. “Why not?”

There was an awkward pause while I weighed my options as to how to answer. I could grab this “teachable moment” and educate this man as to why is wasn’t okay to ask such a prying question; I could tell him the truth and risk embarrassing him, my mum, and her friend; or I could tell a big fat lie.

I chose a hybrid answer. “Too old,” I told him.

Now you think the penny would have dropped for him and he’d have walked away from the conversation, but no. Instead it went on, something like this:

“Too old? How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

Sicilian shrug. “Thirty six?”

“Thanks for the compliment, but I’m 41.”

“41?! That’s not old. My sister-in-law, she have bambinos and she 50! You have plenty of time.”

At which point I think I nodded and smiled and mumbled something like, “We’ll see,” and wondered if I could have steered the conversation differently.

This occasion wasn’t the right place to set this man right. And he wasn’t the right target for a lesson. Here was a man who came from a time and culture where all women have bambinos, and so naturally why wouldn’t I?

Yes, his question was awkward and embarrassing, but the reality is that anything he asked me in a normal line of conversation could have been awkward. I could have just lost my job, just been abandoned by my husband for a younger woman, just lost my house and been forced to move back in with my mother. He just happened to ask the one question that was my personal trigger and I don’t think that reading him the riot act for his misstep would have been the appropriate thing to do, do you?

Free to be Happy

It came as no great surprise when friends announced recently that they were getting a divorce. They’d been emotionally separated for years and a new job for one had made them physically separated, too. It was hard to see why they’d ever gotten together in the first place, as they always seemed mismatched. But they had kids, and the kids were the reason they’d stayed together.

Fifteen years ago, when I told friends I was leaving my first husband, no one was surprised, and more than one said, “Thank goodness you didn’t have kids together.”

Even now I’m unable to have children with Mr. Fab, I’m still grateful that I didn’t have to drag kids through what would have been a much messier divorce than it was. But how many people do you know who’ve stayed in unhappy marriages because of the kids?

I’m not suggesting being childfree makes it easy to flit around relationships without having to commit, but not having the responsibility for other young lives offers a kind of freedom to find happiness for ourselves.

Happy Auntie’s Day!

By Kathleen Guthrie

We suffer through Mother’s Day. We hide out on Father’s Day. We barely disguise our envy as grandparents essentially get appreciated on two holidays…until now.

Melanie Notkin, the brilliant and delightful founder of Savvy Auntie, has designated July 24 “Auntie’s Day,” an opportunity for nieces and nephews to thank, honor, and acknowledge Aunties By Relation (ABR), Aunties By Choice (ABC), and godmothers. A special website, www.AuntiesDay.com, offers unique ideas for how to celebrate this blessed occasion. Visit Twitter and Facebookfor special promotions.

“Many women without children of their own give tirelessly to children all over the world,” Notkin says. “I hope at the very least they feel acknowledged for their incredibly valuable role in the American Family Village.”

Cheers to you, aunties of the world! Enjoy your special day!

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is “Aunt Kath” to six wonderful young humans.

It’s a zoo out there

Last weekend, Mr. Fab and I visited the Oregon Zoo. It was a beautiful day and we visited the elephants, marveled at the lions, and had a very cool, fun time hanging out in the bat house. I saw Naked Mole Rats, almost saw the critically endangered Amur Leopard, and learned why tigers have white spots on the backs of their ears. When it got too hot, we stopped in a café for a cool drink and snack, and when we’d seen enough zoo we took the MAX back to our hotel and had a pleasant afternoon nap.

If you’re still trying to reconcile the idea that you’ll never be a mother, the zoo is a hard place to visit. Kids far outnumber adults and it can be an emotional minefield with all the cute doe-eyed babies peering at you from their strollers at every turn.

On the other hand, if you’re starting to come to terms with being childfree and looking for some benefits of not having kids, I can strongly recommend a visit to the zoo. For every sweet cherub, you’ll find a red-faced bawling toddler, or a demanding preteen tapping on the glass of the chimpanzee enclosure right next to the sign that says; “Don’t tap on the glass.” Most of the parents at the zoo looked fried, as if they’d rather be anywhere else, and I couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit smug, because Mr. Fab and I chose to be there, and chose exactly when we wanted to go home.

When you’re ready to look for the silver lining of being childfree, trust me, you’ll find plenty of examples, including the joy of an adult trip to the zoo.

Airline bans first class babies

Malaysian Airlines announced this week that they would ban babies from flying first class and that their new fleet of airbus A380s would not be equipped with bassinets in the first class compartment.

According to a related article in the Britain’s The Globe and Mail, a recent poll showed that 70% of first class travelers cited crying babies as the number one annoyance when flying. I think this is true for passengers in all classes, but tossing the babies back into the cheap seats is a bit like the king emptying his chamber pot on the peasants. Nobody wants to spend 10 hours cooped up next to a screaming infant or a belligerent toddler – not even the parents!

I don’t think banning babies from any part of the aircraft (except the cockpit, of course) is the solution. Most parents I’ve seen wrestling with young children on flights want some peace and quiet just as much as the people around them and most are doing the best they can to make that happen.

Wouldn’t a better solution be to create a “kid zone” where children can have a little more flexibility to be children, without being glared at by the other passengers?

I think I will put this out to some of my mom friends and get their opinion. I just don’t think that a baby ban is the solution.

How Did You Know You Wouldn’t Have Children?

I write a lot about issues that affect me now that I’ve more or less come to terms with the fact that I won’t have children. Looking back over the past two or three years, I can see just how far I’ve come, and I’m pleased. Unfortunately, that’s not always very helpful for readers just beginning their journeys and sometimes I’m asked, “How did you get there?”

It’s a good question, but it doesn’t have a simple answer, so I thought I’d take a look back at some of the milestones that shaped my journey and try to analyze what made a difference for me.

Today, I’m starting with The Decision. How did you know you were going have to figure out how to come to terms with being childfree?

If you dealt with infertility, a doctor probably gave you a diagnosis that you knew would mean the end of the line, but if you were anything like me, you didn’t just throw up your hands at that point and say, “Okay, well I guess I just won’t bother trying anymore, then.” So, when did you know you were at that point?

If you are childfree by some circumstance other than infertility, maybe your journey was different. Maybe you toyed with the idea of having children despite your situation. How did you know that motherhood was definitely not going to be a part of your future?

And if you are childfree-by-choice, when did you know you wouldn’t have children?

I think all our stories are different, because it’s such a big milestone in our lives and not something that changes in an instant. For me, a number of factors were in play, but I think the biggest one was that I knew my husband and I were suddenly on different tracks. I think that he knew (although he didn’t like it) that it wasn’t going happen for us, whereas I was still running from doctor to doctor trying to find something that would work. I could feel us begin to drift apart and I finally realized that my marriage was more important to me than trying to prove that I wasn’t infertile.

“Don’t you mean you realized that your marriage was more important than having children, Lisa?”

No. And that’s one of the other factors in this. I realized that my quest was no longer about having children; it was about winning and proving that I wasn’t broken. My doctor had told me that using donor eggs would give me about a 50 percent chance of conceiving, but I didn’t want to use donor eggs and I didn’t want to go through IVF. That was my choice for my own reasons. But if having children was my top priority, wouldn’t I have done whatever it takes?

This is way too much public psychoanalysis for me right now, so let’s just say that my decision to get off the crazy train came slowly. There were many events that happened that pushed me towards the decision and many more that made me change my mind again along the way. Eventually though, I reached the Tipping Point and started figuring out how I was going to come to terms with the fact that something was wrong with me and that I wasn’t going to have children.

How about you? How did you get to that point? Please share your stories; yours could be the one that makes a big difference to someone who is trying to start coming to terms.

It Got Me Thinking…About Relocating

By Kathleen Guthrie

Good friends who live in the Midwest recently learned that layoffs are imminent, and they are looking at yet another move to another company, another town, another home. I’ve lost track of how many companies they’ve worked for over the years, but they’ve changed states at least two times since their kids were born, and in a few months, they’ll be packing up and making their way across another border.

Losing a job, uprooting from a community, managing all of the stresses that come with a move of any size or distance…my heart goes out to them. Add to that the difficulties for their now-teenage children. After the last move, their sons, who were sports stars in their former town, had to try to quickly prove themselves to new coaches (with mixed success). My friend, who has always been involved with her kids’ schools, was turned away from serving on the PTA board (talk about small town politics). Their daughter had to navigate new cliques. Now they’re going to do it all again.

My heart goes out to them, and then I say a little prayer of gratitude that we don’t have kids. If, God forbid, we are one day victims of budget reforms or downsizing and have to move to take new jobs, we could go anywhere in the world. Certainly, it would be painful to say good-bye to friends and nearby family, and it would break my heart to leave the city we love so much, but we could do it. We would make it work, without the limitations and challenges parents face, such as having to find a house near the right schools, or yanking a hormonal teenager away from her friends, or worrying that the painful choices we sometimes have to make are hurting the people we love the most.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s found that her book collection has grown every time she’s had to pack for a move.

Ride, Sally Ride!

By Kathleen Guthrie

For years, whenever I heard Wilson Pickett sing “Ride Sally, ride” in the classic tune “Mustang Sally,” I thought he was singing “Ride, Sally Ride”—for astronaut Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. It still makes sense to me, although I now know the song was first released in 1965, and Sally made her historic flight two decades later.

While my contemporaries and I were playing dress-up in our mothers’ satin pumps and imagining glamorous exploits for Barbie and her chums, Sally was paving the way for a whole new universe of possibilities for girls. With a BA, BS, and a master’s degree in physics, she was a PhD candidate in astrophysics looking for new challenges when she responded to an ad in the newspaper. Over 8,000 people applied, only 35 were accepted, of which six were women. In 1978, Sally joined NASA’s space program.

Her giant leap for womankind occurred on June 18, 1983, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. During the 6 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes, 59 seconds of Mission STS-7, Mission Specialist 2 Sally K. Ride and her four crewmembers deployed two satellites and conducted numerous experiments. They traveled 2.2 million miles and orbited Earth 97 times. Her favorite part was being weightless: “I could do 30 somersaults in a row and slither like a seal from one side of the cabin to the other,” she said. “And of course we couldn’t resist playing a little bit with our food!”

Sally is childfree, but she has spent the intervening years raising future astronauts. She has made it her mission here on Earth to show kids that science is cool. She has written several books on space aimed at kids and, in 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, a company dedicated to encouraging and supporting boys’ and girls’ interests in science, math, and technology.

Maybe one day she’ll return to space. As it stands now, Sally took her second and final space ride in 1984. Guess what was played as her morning wake-up song?

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s finding inspiration in the stories of many of our “cheroes” (heroes who are childfree) as we celebrate National Women’s History Month.