Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Whiny Wednesday: Too Young for Menopause

Over the past couple of years I’ve been “enjoying” a journey into menopause. Yeah, it’s a hoot. All the symptoms of PMS, plus fuzzy head, weight gain, night sweats, the works.

I’ve been prescribed HRT and I’ve been reaching out to older friends for advice, because there’s a lot about this I don’t know. Most of my friends have gladly offered support, however one woman (a friend of a friend) looked at me and said, “Menopause? You’re too young for that.”

I assured her I was not, and left the conversation, but really, is that a helpful thing to say? Yes, I know I’m too young for menopause. Add it to the list of things my body’s given up before its time. And then ask me how I feel about the possibility the rest of me might be aging faster than it should too. Does this ever end?

As you may have guessed, it’s Whiny Wednesday. I feel better for my venting. Hope you feel better for yours.

How Not to Say the Wrong Thing

By Lisa Manterfield

I often refer to this article by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman about how not to say the wrong thing to someone in crisis. I wish it was mandatory reading for everyone, and I especially wish it came with a note explaining that it applies when talking to infertiles and the childless-not-by-choice.

The gist of their Ring Theory is that the person in crisis is at the center of the ring and those next closest to the person occupy subsequent rings. In the case of someone coming to terms with not having children, she would be at the center, her spouse or partner on the next ring, perhaps closest family and friends on the next, and more distant family, coworkers, and acquaintances beyond that.

The rule is that that if people have something mean or insensitive or opinionated to say, they say it to someone on a bigger ring. When speaking to someone on a smaller ring, they can only listen or—if they must say something—offer help, support, or comfort. No advice, no miracle stories, no blame or shame. No offering of their kids, no suggestions to adopt. “I’m sorry” is all that needs to be said. If they want to dump, dump outwards, not inwards.

I wish people would understand that someone who has just acknowledged she won’t ever have children is in crisis, and what she needs more than judgment and unhelpful help is for people to say to the right thing.

How Infertility Stole My Confidence

By Lisa Manterfield

I was always a pretty confident person, even as a child. I could be quite shy, and still am at times, but I was never fearful. I firmly believed that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to and I wasn’t afraid to try anything. I backpacked around South America, jumped out of airplanes, and tried all kinds of strange foods. If anyone told me it couldn’t be done, I took it as a cue to prove her wrong.

This is not the person I am anymore.

I’ve seen a difference in myself. I’m more timid about getting out there and going for what I want. I’ve become a nervous flyer, popping Rescue Remedy and gripping the seat arms on flights. I’ve even caught myself assessing flight times and potential for disaster when considering a trip. I can’t seem to make a decision without asking for opinions from everyone and then second-guessing myself.

After a friend commented on the change, I’m started to take a long hard look at what had happened to me, and the thing that popped to the forefront of my mind is infertility.

I hate to pin everything that’s wrong in my life on infertility, but in this case, I think I’m right. Infertility has taught me that I can’t always get what I want, if only I’d try hard enough. It’s taught me that bad things do happen to good people, and they could even happen to me. And it’s taught me that I am not invincible, and that has made a giant fissure in my confidence.

It’s very disturbing to realize this has happened, because this is not who I am. I am not a timid mouse. I am not afraid of life, but these past several years, that’s who I’ve become.

So, how to undo the damage?

Self-awareness is the first step. Now I know I’m this way, I’m checking in with myself when I feel my courage waver. It’s very helpful to step away from myself and look at what I’m really afraid of, instead of just pulling the blankets over my head and giving into it.

I’m also looking for the old Lisa in some of the places she used to be most confident. I took up orienteering again, which used to be a sport I was pretty good at. I’m not quite as fit as I used to be, but the old skills are still there and reawakening them is helping my confidence to grow again. I’m trying to recognize fear and treat it accordingly.

Finally I’m looking for ways to gently push myself out of my comfort zone (and I’m dragging poor Mr. Fab out of his, too.) We’re learning to sail, something we’ve never done together before. It’s just a small step, but it’s definitely an area in which neither of us is an expert, and yet I’m quite confident that we will survive.

I know I am not invincible, but I want to find my confidence again. According to my plan, I’m not even halfway through my life, and I don’t want to spend those years afraid of what might, or might not, happen.

It Got Me Thinking…About What Will Define Me

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

I was telling a good friend about a difficult and concerning work-related problem I was having, once again airing my righteous grievances, expressing my frustration at not being able to resolve the issue, bemoaning the fact that my life seemed to be such a never-ending struggle.

“Is this going to define you?” she asked.

What? She’d stopped me cold.

“Is This Going To Define You?” She reached for my hand and took a deep breath.

“Look,” she said, “what you’ve gone through—are going through—is real. And it’s awful and ugly and unfair and everything you’ve said. But. You have a choice. You can wallow in being the victim of all this mess, or you can choose to move forward, in whatever way you can. You can choose what will define you.”

Over the next several days I really thought about what my wise friend had said. She was right. I couldn’t change the choices and behaviors of the other people in this scenario with me, but I did have the power to choose how I would react and who I would become.

Then I got to thinking about my status as a childless woman and how I might apply this advice there. I’m not saying take a stiff-upper-lip approach, because I believe all the stages of grieving are necessary and serve purposes. But at some point, if I want to reach a place of acceptance and peace, I will need to let go and move on. I can choose to be “bitter childless woman” or I can choose to be “strong woman who made the most out of what she got.”

Other people will have their own definitions of me, and that’s their business. The only definition that truly matters, I’ve come to believe, is my own.

 

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is telling the story about her journey in The Mother of All Dilemmas. As she shares her quest to become a single mother (and ultimately embraces a life without children), she explores why society still appears to base a woman’s worth on how many children she has. Watch for updates on the book’s release here at LifeWithoutBaby.com.

 

Childless and Invisible

By Lisa Manterfield

Have you ever been around people who behave as if you can’t possibly know anything about life because you don’t have children?

I’m sure that all of us have heard the old chestnuts, “You wouldn’t understand; you don’t have kids” or “I didn’t understand until I became a mother” (which implies the same thing) or even “Only a parent could know how this feels,” as if being childless strips away all capability of empathy.

And then there are those situations where you just feel invisible, when the conversation about children and parenting is swirling around you and no one even bothers to make eye contact with you because what could you possibly contribute?

These instances make me think of the wonderful “Mr. Cellophane” number from the musical “Chicago.”

And even without clucking like a hen,

Everyone gets noticed now and then,

Unless, of course, that person it should be,

Invisible, inconsequential me.

Personally, I’m done with feeling insignificant because I don’t have kids. It took me a long time to get to this point, but now I hold my ground in conversation. I contribute when I can and simply listen and nod when I can’t, just as I would if I found myself in a conversation on any other topic on which I’m not an expert.

I also keep a list of amazing childless women in case I ever need to remind myself that we don’t need to be parents to make a difference. On my personal list is Amelia Earhart, Dian Fossey, Julia Child, and Juliet Gordon Low, who started the Girl Scout movement. If you need your own role models, Jody Day has put together an outstanding collection on Pinterest.

You’d be hard-pressed to call any of these women insignificant. I remind myself of this when I find myself allowing others to make me feel like less than who I am.

So what do you do when you start to feel like a Ms. Cellophane? Do you feign boredom, try to hop in with an intelligent anecdote, change the subject, or do you slip away and hope no one notices you’ve left?

Whiny Wednesday: You Wouldn’t Understand


I know I’m probably going to have to duck for cover with this week’s topic. We’ve all heard it and the sting never seems to diminish. So here we go:

“You wouldn’t understand; you don’t have kids.”

I’ll be behind the couch if you need me.

Whiny Wednesday: The Baby Shower


This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is that old chestnut:

The baby shower!

A reader wrote:

I would like to know how others handle baby showers. I have vowed to not go to any more baby showers after leaving the last one in tears and disappointed in myself because I felt so strong before I went. Do others have emotional issues about other people’s baby showers or am I alone?

After assuring her that she definitely was not alone in feeling this way, I thought I’d turn the topic over to you.

Please whine, rant, empathize, and even advise on this most delicate of topics.

Whiny Wednesday: Making Friends When You Don’t Have Kids


This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic comes from a reader and is ripe for a rant and perhaps some ideas.

She writes:

“I still haven’t figured out how to make friends with people my own age (40s) who have children. I often feel disposable, or okay to invite to things when it suits them. I’m a thoughtful, caring person who deserves better.”

What do you think about this? It’s Whiny Wednesday, so let it all out.

Whiny Wednesday: Do You Want Mine?


If you’re new to the site, you might wondering what Whiny Wednesday is all about.

A few years ago, some readers commented that they couldn’t express how they felt around friends and colleagues, as they were always made to feel as if they were whining. So, we created Whiny Wednesday as a safe place to vent about about whatever’s on your mind each week. It can be an issue surrounding living without children, or just a general grumble about life, work, family, the world.

I used to start each post with a gripe of my own, but lately I’ve found I’ve covered most of what bothers me, so I put out a call for Whiny Wednesday topics, and you, dear readers, came through! So, each week, I offer one of your suggested topics as a starting point, but as always, any topic is fair game.

So, let’s kick off with this week’s topic:

Parents who respond to hearing that you don’t have children with, “Do you want mine?”

Happy whining!

 

Our Stories: Zoe

As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Zoe’s turning point came during “an excessive attack of the googles,” when she came across a woman on a fertility board with the same stats. Upon closer inspection, Zoe realized the woman had posted seven years earlier, and had endured nine IVF failures since. “I did not want to be that woman,” she decided then and there.

But deciding to stop unsuccessful treatments and making peace with a life without babies are different things. Zoe quotes John Cleese: “I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.” In her own words, Zoe says, “Clinging onto hope was not something I was prepared to do indefinitely. I wanted to walk away with my sanity intact.”

Here’s her story.

LWB: Describe your dream of motherhood.

Zoe: I always said I’d have a toddler by the time I was 30. My dad used to joke that would mean I’d have to give birth at 28, so get pregnant at 27, be in a relationship by 26, and that I was saying this whilst aged 26, and it “obviously isn’t going to be that moron in the baseball cap you brought round last week, so you better start looking”.

I dreamt of filling a child’s life with music (both myself and my partner are musicians), books, wellies, dogs, silly humour, and doodles. I’d also always been positive about adopting. My parents fostered many kids before we came along, so that was part of my dream too.

LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?

Zoe: Circumstance. I always went out with guys who weren’t ready, and I respected them. I was in a long-term relationship from 26, stopped taking the pill at 30. He responded by forcing me to take the morning-after pill when he forgot to use a condom. That devastated me. Then two weeks shy of my 33rd birthday, he just left, saying he didn’t love me, wasn’t ready for kids and wanted to “free me up”. He is now a father of one with the girl he got with three weeks after leaving me.

I got with my future husband pretty quickly after that—we’d been friends for years. He’d had an undescended testicle till aged 12, and two years in, we confirmed he had very low sperm count and IVF ICSI was our only option. Six months later, when I was just 36, we found out I had Diminished Ovarian Reserve (the ovaries of a 45 year old) and wouldn’t respond to IVF. Double whammy. He can’t have kids without IVF, I can’t get pregnant with it. We did it anyway. It failed drastically.

We don’t want double donor. I have my own very clear feelings about that, and it feels good to actively make a decision together against it. I would adopt, but my partner won’t, and I have chosen a life with him.

LWB: Where are you on your journey now? (for example: still in denial, angry, hoping for a miracle, depressed, crawling toward acceptance, embracing Plan B)

Zoe: Never in denial, as I always thought we’d have a problem and have been pretty realistic the whole way through. I moved from anger (at my ex-partner, who I now realize took the only fertile years of my life) into depression. Currently trying to convince myself of Plan B. Every day I take a huge amount of physical and emotional effort, convincing myself that this is okay, I am okay, a life without children will be okay. Every morning all the hard work I did the day before, getting to a place of acceptance, has vanished, and I have to start convincing myself all over again.

LWB: What’s the hardest part about not having children?

Zoe: The constant exclusion from life’s milestones. I never wanted to live like a 20-something forever. I wanted a family life and all that entailed.

Also I’m particularly upset about the fact there will be no one there to bother about what I leave behind. My legacy, I suppose. I have hundreds of recordings of me singing and playing songs, scrapbooks of band tours I’ve been on, photos of achievements I’ve made, venues I’ve played, and no one to listen to them or read them or look at them when I’m gone. I was looking forward to the exciting “this is what mummy used to do before she had you” conversations.

LWB: What’s one thing you want other people (moms, younger women, men, grandmothers, teachers, strangers) to know about your being childfree?

Zoe: That it wasn’t planned. That it wasn’t my fault. That it’s not a normal thing to go through at 36, and that I am broken with grief and would be grateful for their understanding on that.

Rather than what I want other women to know though, I want to speak to men in their 30s. I want them to know that their decisions to love their girlfriends/wives, but yet dismiss their requests to start a family because they are not ready, until they are 40 in some cases, is not something women should have to bear. We are not being mental or unnecessarily naggy. We are legitimately worried that it will be too late. Men should bear some of this responsibility, they should meet us half way.

LWB: What’s your Plan B?

Zoe: Being an aunt to my one and only niece/nephew, who was conceived at the point I found out I couldn’t have children naturally and was born a few weeks after I found out I can never have children at all.

Getting married, with the knowledge I have already been through one of the hardest things you can go through with a partner, and starting off with the understanding that it will be a marriage without kids. But I am so glad I know this from the outset and am still choosing to do it. That feels empowering to me.

 

What is your Plan B? Or are your wounds so raw that you can’t even imagine a happy future? We can all benefit from hearing about your experiences, plus we’d like to support you. Please visit the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire, and consider sharing your story with women who truly understand what you’re going through.

Did you know Kathleen Guthrie Woods is getting ready to tell her own story? The Mother of All Dilemmas follows her journey of pursuing being a single mother then embracing a life without children, and explores the reasons our society still presumes to calculate a woman’s worth based on whether or not she’s a mother. Keep an eye on LifeWithoutBaby.com for announcements about the book’s release.