Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Happy 4th Anniversary to Us!

This week marks the 4th anniversary of Life Without Baby. Happy birthday to us!

Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve been tapping away for four years. Time really does fly. And as this birthday ticks around, it’s good to stop and take a moment to look around at where I am now and how far I’ve come.

Those of you who’ve been reading for some time will undoubtedly have noticed the change in the tone of my posts over the years. I’m not so angry any more, I’m bemoaning less the injustices, and I’m finding far more to cherish and enjoy in a life without children. Yes, it’s taken four years (plus some time before I started blogging) but my “life without baby” is all right.

Over the years (and I think especially over the past year) I’ve also noticed a change in how vocal we childless/childfree/sans kid women and men are becoming. When I first started blogging, I found Pamela at Silent Sorority and Tracey at La Belette Rouge. Like me, they were telling their personal stories of coming-to-terms and recovery, quietly and for a small audience of readers who wanted to hear it. We were cautiously stepping into the public eye and speaking about our stories, but (for me, at least) on the personal front, I still carried a lot of shame surrounding my infertility. I hedged when people asked me if I had children, and when I talked about my work, I rarely mentioned this community or my book. I didn’t want the people I met to know about that very personal side of me.

That’s changed for me over the past four years as those feelings of insecurity have fallen away. It’s not been an easy journey, but I’m no longer ashamed that I cannot and did not have children. It’s just another facet of the whole human being I’ve become.

I’m seeing a change in the infertility world too. Where once the option of childfree living was taboo, I see more and more people considering it along with their other family-building options, and finding resources and community to help them.

Last year I spoke on a panel at the Fertility Planit show here in Los Angeles. The panel on “letting go of having genetic offspring” including the childfree option alongside donor eggs and adoption. I’m speaking at the show again next month, but this time the panel title gets right to the point: “Living Childfree with No Regrets.” I’m truly encouraged that this option is now being given serious consideration and that others coming to the end of their fertility journeys won’t be shunted out into the cold to figure out alone how to come to terms with their unexpected lives.

Hearing other people’s stories and discovering I’m not alone has been one of the most important steps in my healing process.  Talking to other women who “get me” has been an enormous source of comfort, and I hope it has been for you, too.

As the site goes into its 5th year, you’ll see a new regular feature, the “Our Stories” series. I hope this series will give those of you who want to be heard the opportunity to speak out in a safe place and share your stories with others. It’s incredible how having a voice can help your own healing and encourage others.

On this birthday, I want to send a huge shout-out and thank you to Kathleen for her incredible support. You’ll have seen her column “It Got Me Thinking…” every Friday, but behind the scenes, she’s been a constant source of ideas and encouragement as I figure out what’s next for this site. She’s also the brains and the editor behind “Our Stories.” Without her help, I’m not sure I’d have maintained the stamina to keep writing for four years!

I also want to thank you. I don’t often chime in on the comments these days, but I always read them, and I’m continually inspired and touched to see your willingness to support one another on your journeys. Thank you for your support of this site.

And so, who knows what the coming year will hold? I hope you’ll stick around to find out.

~Lisa xx

Our Stories: Lisa

As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Our StoriesOne of the most touching aspects of our Life Without Baby community is our willingness to openly, candidly share our stories. Together we’ve learned, grown, sympathized, encouraged, accepted, and celebrated. What a gift!

We want to encourage more story sharing, so we are launching this new column space, and our brave and beautiful leader, Lisa Manterfield, has agreed to be our first interviewee. We’ve learned a lot about and from her as she’s shared the stages of her journey here on Life Without Baby. Read on for a few of her insights, then consider sharing your story through the link on our Our Stories page.

Lisa always wanted and expected to have children, but knew it had to be with the right person. She was 34 when she married “Mr. Fab” and believed she still had plenty of time. Initially she thought his vasectomy reversal might put a wrinkle in her plans, but it turned out her own infertility was the real issue. Now 43 ¾ years old, she has fully accepted that she won’t have children, and she can see the opportunities she has had because of it. Lisa has chosen to answer the following questions.

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

Lisa: If you’d asked me this three or four years ago, I might have answered feeling like a social outcast, not relating to friends, not leaving a legacy or having someone to leave my stuff to, not experiencing the joys of shaping a little human, never experiencing pregnancy…the list goes on. But I think if I went back to that list every six months or so, I’d find myself crossing things off. Most of the things that used to be so hard don’t seem so important anymore, and I’m really enjoying the advantages of not having children.

 

LWB: What’s the best advice you’ve received?

Lisa: It wasn’t so much advice as a passing comment that stuck. A friend hinted that she and her husband had had fertility issues, didn’t have children, and now she realized they were okay as a family of two. Her comment struck me on two levels. Firstly, it caused me to rethink my definition of family and I realized that, yes, I too already had a real family, just a small one. I’d always thought of us as a couple who wouldn’t be a real family until we had children, but that wasn’t true. I also saw in her my first infertility survivor, and I knew that if she could say she was okay, I would too. It was a big shift for me.

 

LWB: What have you learned about yourself?

Lisa: I’ve learned that I’m incredibly resilient. I now know from experience that I can go through whatever life might throw at me and come out the other side in one piece, and perhaps even stronger than I was before. I’ve learned to be less judgmental of others, because you never know what personal hell someone is going through at any time. My experience has made me more compassionate towards others who are hurting too. I’m much more likely to stop and take the time to reach out to a friend in need.

 

LWB: What is the best advice you’d offer someone else like you?

Lisa: Everyone’s journey is so different that it’s almost impossible to give advice. How do you tell someone it’s time to give up on a dream? That stopping point is different for everyone. I might advise someone like me to decide ahead of time which options she’s prepared to try and how far she’s willing to go and for how long, but in reality, you do what you do, you get caught up in hope and a growing desire for success, and the last thing you’d want to hear is someone telling you to stop and accept that it’s not working. So, I’d just offer support instead. It’s much more valuable than advice.

 

LWB: What is your hope for yourself this coming year?

Lisa: I’ve been working hard for a long time now on another big dream—to be a fiction author—and this year, I feel as if something good is going to happen to me. That resilience I talked about earlier has come in very handy, as I seem to have a habit of picking dreams that I can’t fully control. It’s been interesting to see how much of my experience of dealing with loss has come through in my latest novel, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with infertility. So maybe this will prove to be the silver lining of my experience. I hope so.

You can read more of Lisa’s story in her award-winning memoir, I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home, and find out what she’s currently working on at LisaManterfield.com.

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

My Perfect Imperfect Life

Courtesy Hasbro Games

Courtesy Hasbro Games

I’ve been taking a fantastic creative writing class at UCLA Extension. Each week, we start off with a writing exercise from a choice of prompts, and last week, one of the prompts was, “I’m tired of pretending my life isn’t perfect.” I almost took the prompt.

It’s not hard to write about the part of my life that is so obviously imperfect: the fact that I wasn’t able to have children. I could (and do) write about that broken bit. But if I took my life apart, I’d find lots of areas that aren’t perfect. Isn’t every life like that? Everyone has challenges, and life would probably be dull without them. But part of the thrill of living is overcoming life’s challenges. Without the obstacles there’s no glory of victory.

My life is flawed in many ways, as all lives are, but it’s also a good and happy life, and on the whole it’s pretty close to perfect. And it’s hard work to keep clinging to the idea that it isn’t. It’s tiring to keep feeling bad about the parts of my life that didn’t work out as planned.

I didn’t get to have children, and it’s true that, for a long period of time, it made my life feel empty and deeply flawed. But that changed over time. I worked to overcome that flaw, to seek and take advantage of the silver linings, to work through my sadness—by writing, in my case—by gathering this community and sharing our stories. My marriage made it through infertility. That’s a victory in itself. And while there are still many challenges in my life, few of them are related to my childlessness anymore.

So, yes, I am a flawed human, with challenges to face, but I no longer wish to pretend my life isn’t perfect, just as it is, warts and all.

(And by the way, I didn’t take the prompt because there was another that sparked an idea. I’m glad I took that one instead, because that exercise turned into short story instead.)

Our Stories

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

j0178801Over the past few years, as I’ve told strangers about how I ended up childfree, I’ve found that my openness has served as an invitation for other women to open up and candidly share their stories. I’ve heard from women who are overwhelmed by the demands of motherhood, who desperately wanted children and were unable to, who never wanted children, and who fall into every category in between.

I am humbled to be the recipient of their stories. But more than that, I’ve discovered that sharing stories has been part of a larger healing progress as we learn from each other’s experiences and take opportunities to offer compassion and support.

We see it every week here at LWB, and that’s why I want to introduce more storytelling through this column space. For what intrigues and inspires me more than anything else we have here is our stories, your stories, and the beautiful responses I read to those stories in the comments and forums.

On the new Our Stories page, you’ll find a downloadable questionnaire. In a simple Q&A format, you’ll be invited to share insights, experiences, advice, and encouragement. (Know that we will keep you anonymous.) We’ll do a bit of editing to make sure we cover a range of points of view and to keep posts to readable lengths, then we’ll run them as they fit.

I believe that in sharing our stories we offer each other tremendous gifts, including acceptance, awareness, and tips for healing. I believe that even though the details of our journeys will vary, you will recognize a soul sister in each story and you will know for certain that you are not alone.

Won’t you share your story with us?

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

Whiny Wednesday

Whiny_WednesdayYesterday, I put my mum on a plane and sent her home to the UK. After a five-week visit, it’s always a bittersweet farewell.

I have my office back and I can get back to writing without interruption. I have no one I need to worry about or entertain or feed, except myself, Mr. Fab, and my cat. But I miss her already and I don’t know when I’ll see her next, so my whine today is that I wish I hadn’t chosen to live quite so far away.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s bothering you today?

Guest Post: Who to Blame, if Not My Body

By Paula Coston

Young couple sitting on jettyAs a 59-year-old, I’m still often asked why I never had children, and still find it hard to explain to people who ask. If my reason had been purely biological issues – infertility, endometriosis, chronic health problems – I might be more able to silence the questions.

Apart from physiology, there are plenty of reasons for our childlessness, including:

  • Being single; or losing, or not meeting or having, a suitable partner.
  • Having a partner who doesn’t want children.
  • Being with an infertile partner.
  • After becoming an adoptive mother or stepmother, find out that that ‘doesn’t seem enough’.
  • Not feeling able to afford a family, or to leave a job.
  • Being gay.
  • Early term loss, miscarriage, abortion, still birth, cot death, early infant death.
  • Not realising in time how quickly our fertility reduces from the age of 35 and beyond.
  • Caring for a disabled, sick, elderly or otherwise vulnerable family member during our fertile years.
  • The influence of our own upbringing: for instance abusive parenting, or our own family’s religious, moral or class attitudes.

These factors aren’t mutually exclusive. I never consciously put off having a family for my career, but somehow it took over for a while. I was dating various people, then, within the space of a few years, I turned around and my siblings and most of my friends were having children, and time went on, and I just never found the suitable partner I longed for. I tried to adopt as a single, but after three years of trying, that didn’t work out, so for the sake of my ongoing sanity I gave up.

If any of the reasons above apply to you, they probably do in a different combination. And they in turn may have interacted with biological factors: women who suddenly see they have limited options, for example singles, may take measures such as IVF, and still arrive at no happy outcome.

Such reasons – which may shift and change over time – are delicate personal matters. Yet if you’re like me, you somehow feel that you still have to self-justify. We are often made to feel guilty for being childless, somehow wrong-footed. But it’s not as simple as making the wrong choices in life at the wrong times. It may not be our bodies’ fault, but it’s not as simple as being ours either: social influences and pressures and constraints, and the parts played by our loved ones, must also share the blame.

It would help if we had a term to answer our interrogators. The only phrases available to us so far are vague and unfamiliar and unwieldy: ‘childlessness by happenstance’ ‘social infertility’, ‘social factor childlessness’. If you have a more inspired suggestion, please do let me know.

 

Paula Coston is a 59-year-old administrator in an English university. She writes on childlessness, singledom, the older woman and more at http://boywoman.wordpress.com and for The Huffington Post. Her novel – the first in English about a modern woman childless by circumstance – comes out in April/May, entitled On the Far Side, There’s a Boy.

It Got Me Thinking…About Good Girls

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Facing a Problem“But I did everything right!”

My sweet friend Connie* was in the midst of a serious health crisis, and I was doing my best to be supportive when she blurted this out. I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, that she’d find the silver lining in her experiences, that that which did not kill her would make her stronger. But the reality was that what she was facing might very well kill her, and the unfairness of it all was breaking my heart.

For, you see, Connie is a “good girl.” She is a dutiful and loving daughter, sister, and friend. She is loyal to her employer and she is honest on her tax returns. She doesn’t drink too much or eat too much, and she’s never smoked any substance, legal or otherwise. She has followed her doctors’ instructions to a T, but she wasn’t responding to the prescribed treatment and she was facing a scary and uncertain future.

Our exchange reminded me of so many conversations I’ve had with women who are childfree not by choice. They waited to be financially able to support a family, only to discover their reproductive years had passed them by. They waited to meet Mr. Right—who would also be Daddy Right—then encountered inexplicable fertility challenges. They planned and dreamed and planned some more, then were denied the privileges and blessings of having children. These were good girls who would have been good, loving mothers, but they got gypped.

Twenty or so years ago, I asked my mother to share with me the best life advice she’d ever received. She thought for a moment, then replied: “Life is not fair.” I had expected something more encouraging, along the lines of “Good girls win!” But she went on to explain that good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people, and vice versa, and if you can accept the randomness of life, perhaps you’ll better appreciate when good things do come your way.

I get this on an intellectual level, and I’ve certainly experienced it throughout my life. Still, I wish reality had a little less bite. I wish the good women I know who want to be mothers could have their miracle babies. I hope Connie’s doctors come up with a miracle cure that allows Connie to make a full recovery. I wish good girls (like me) would get all the good things in life they deserve. It seems only fair.

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

*Not her real name. As of this posting, her condition has improved, but she’s not yet out of the woods.

Whiny Wednesday

Whiny_WednesdayAloha!

It’s Whiny Wednesday, the day for grumbling and griping about whatever’s on your mind.

I, however, am in Hawaii with my mum, so I have absolutely nothing to whine about.

But please, don’t let my Aloha spirit wreck your Whiny Wednesday.

Whine on, my friends.

No Kidding Nancy

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

No Kidding cover“A couple of lousy choices in men (damn the nineties) and some reproductive system woes later,” and Nancy Van Iderstine found herself “Not Pregnant at the Ob-Gyn.” Her story is part of a collection of funny, sad, and eye-opening essays titled No Kidding: Women Writers on Bypassing Motherhood edited by Henriette Mantel. (Available in Kindle and paperback on Amazon.)

I was introduced to Nancy by a mutual friend maybe 10 years ago: “You’re both great writers, you both work in entertainment!” But it wasn’t until this book came out that I learned we were also both childfree-not-by-choice. I wanted to hear more about her journey, and she agreed to chat.

LWB: Did you always want children?

NVI: Yes, but I personally did not endure a lot of external pressure to have kids. I was active in life, and when I was younger, I thought: “Everything is still going to happen.”

LWB: When did you know for sure you weren’t going to have kids?

NVI: About 12 years ago I was in a difficult relationship, and it was clear I could not bring a child into it.  [She later ruled out adoption due to the “demands of (her) work and involvement in various social, environmental, and animal causes”.] But part of me didn’t fully give up until I had a hysterectomy seven years ago. That brought with it early menopause and the related physical, mental, emotional, and financial challenges.

LWB: How did you face this?

NVI: I had a meltdown, and I went into mourning.

LWB: Are you still mourning?

NVI: I still go ga-ga over strangers’ babies; I am drawn to babies like magic. I see in them this awe of life, and it is exhilarating to be around them. It used to rip my heart out, but now I have cats and I treat them like babies.

LWB: How do you respond to the accusation that we are selfish because we don’t have children?

NVI: Women are put in the hot seat more than men over the baby issue. We’re told anything we experience in life is nothing compared to having kids. I was talking with a relative of mine, a woman who is of the 1950s generation. I was telling her how heartbroken I was over issues in a relationship, and she came back with “Imagine doing all that and having children.” It totally removed all the legitimacy of my concerns, as if my concerns only mattered if I was a mommy. I started to cry and said to her, “Do you have any idea how much I wanted kids?” It hasn’t worked out for me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to feel pain and express it. Because I’m not a mother? Sure, overall, friends who have kids are less self-absorbed because circumstances pull them out of themselves. But people in animal rescue exhaust themselves doing good work too.

LWB: What do you wish you could have told your younger self?

NVI: “Please trust your intuition” and “Please stop selling yourself short.” I ignored my inner voice. I wish I had allowed myself to be confident; I would have made fewer mistakes. There’s a lot to be said for feeling empowered.

LWB: How did you come to be part of this book?

NVI: I spent a year back east helping my mom and I bumped into Henriette. We had grown up near each other in Vermont. She told me she was working on a project and asked “Would you like to submit something?” She knew I was an actor/writer, had seen and enjoyed my one-woman show, and she knew my history, including my hysterectomy.

LWB: What was the experience like?

NVI: I sensed most of the contributors were comediennes and I wondered if there might not be enough of a mournful side. I wanted to present the sorrowful side, and then I second-guessed myself: Do I want to be the unfunny one? Do I sound whiney? I felt like I was lamenting it—my tale of woe, my bad dating, my lost uterus—but I’ve found my story is much more universal than I’d thought and I was okay with it. I don’t know many hyster-sisters, and I feel good about giving them a voice. One woman came up to me at a reading and said “I was so moved” even though she was a mom. She also went through the process of a hysterectomy. I became aware that this is why you do it. I feel like in everything I do, I want people to take something away, to feel, happy or sad.

LWB: What has the reaction to the book been like?

NVI: Hugely positive. I’m kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop! Overall, readers are intrigued by it, and they’ve embraced it. The only backlash I fear is that I often write for people who have kids. They may have the perception that I don’t like kids, since they don’t know my background. I’m surprised the book was so well received because women deciding what to do with their lives pushes buttons.

LWB: Do you have any advice for our readers?

NVI: I think there’s a reason we are drawn to what we do. Whatever our choices, we are right (if you’re not a criminal). Whenever I returned to somewhat puritanical New England, I apologized for all of my life decisions—until about two years ago. It never really helped me. We have been apologizing to ourselves, justifying ourselves. Do we have to answer every critic? We really don’t. We’re three-dimensional. We need to stop apologizing and just give something to the world.

 

No Kidding: Women Writers On Bypassing Parenthood features 37 essays from amazing, funny women, including Margaret Cho, Wendy Liebman, and Nora Dunn.

In addition to her contribution to No Kidding, Nancy Van Iderstine wrote Twentieth Century Fox: The First 75 Years, edited State Of Mind (the first book in Sven Davison’s Godhead Trilogy), and authored Vegan & Gluten-free Recipes To LIVE For: Comfort Food That Comforts! A performer with a gift for character voices, Nancy stars as Mama Chu in Little Big Panda, and she remains one of a small group of women who have played monsters in the Power Rangers franchise. See what Nancy’s up to at http://nancyvaniderstine.virb.com/.

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