Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

The Next Happy: An Interview With Tracey Cleantis

By Lisa Manterfield

Tracey Cleantis 2015Last week I sat down with Tracey Cleantis to talk about her new book, The Next Happy: Let Go of the Life You Planned and Find a New Way Forward.

Tracey has long been a voice for the infertility community and many of you will know her from her blog, La Belette Rouge, where she talked openly about letting go of the dream of motherhood and finding a new way forward. Now she’s taken what she’s learned from her personal experience and paired it with her professional expertise as a therapist to offer a roadmap for letting go of a dream and moving forward.

The Next Happy: Interview with Tracey Cleantis from Lisa Manterfield on Vimeo.

 Tracey is offering a signed copy of her book. If you’d like to be entered into the drawing, please just add #TheNextHappy to your comments below.

The Next Happy cover

You can learn more about Tracey at TraceyCleantis.com and find her book on Amazon, Indiebound and other major book retailers.

Whiny Wednesday

Whiny_WednesdayHappy Whiny Wednesday! I hope you’re doing okay today. If not, this is the place to get it off your chest.

This week we turn to spotlight on the men in our lives and discuss the topic of:

Spouses or partners who aren’t dealing or healing

If you have one of these, we’d like to hear to about it.

Dealing With the Day-to-Day Challenges

By Lisa Manterfield

WorkBook3_3DThe third book in the new Life Without Baby ebook series is out today. In Dealing With the Day-to-Day Challenges I tackle all those issues we talk about here on the blog, including what to say when someone asks if you have kids, how to handle surprise pregnancy announcements, and how to get through social events and holidays.

I sent an early draft of the book to Kathleen, who offered me lots of great notes for improvement. In fact, one of her comments resulted in an entire new chapter. She said that while it’s important to cover the big issues that come up for us, one of the biggest day-to-day challenges, especially in the early stages, can be simply getting out of bed and bracing ourselves to face a world that seems to have shut us out.

I really appreciated her insight, because the truth is I’d forgotten what it was like to lie in bed in the morning and absolutely dread having to get up and face people. I’d forgotten what it was like to go to work each day being constantly on guard in case anyone said anything to flip the switch on my emotions again. I’d forgotten how often I seriously considered staying in bed and hoping it would all just go away.

I hope I’ve managed to tackle all those issues in this book, and I want to say a big “thank you” to Kathleen for her insight and for the amazing work she’s done editing the whole series.

Workbook 3: Dealing With the Day-to-Day Challenges is now out on Amazon, along with books 1 and 2 in the series. If you’ve read the books and found them helpful, I’d be very grateful if you’d consider adding a review on Amazon. It can help really help other people find the books—especially those women in the early stages who’ve yet to discover that they aren’t alone after all.

Whiny Wednesday

Whiny_WednesdayThis week’s topic is for those of you who arrived here via the infertility route.

Do you feel you were left hanging by the fertility industry?

Okay, I know that’s a loaded question, so if you don’t feel like jumping in on this topic, or if it doesn’t apply to you, feel free to bring your own whine to the party this week.

Nothing is Crazy

By Lisa Manterfield

Furious womanI nicknamed my infertility journey “The Crazy Train.” It felt crazy because of the endless cycle of doctors and opinions that never seemed to get results. It was crazy because of the rollercoaster of emotions I experienced, one day feeling full of hope and certain it was going to happen for me, and the next sobbing my heart out because everything felt hopeless. And it was also crazy because of the things I told myself, the beliefs I chose to adopt to get myself through the mess, the potions, old wives’ tales, and witchcraft (quite literally) I tried in the hopes of conceiving.

But when someone referred to me as “crazy” for what I did, I took offense. Because nothing on this journey is really crazy.

Everything I did was something that was right for me at the time. All my behavior came out of an ever-mounting cycle of determination and frustration. And only when I met others like me who’d also been on that journey, and also thought they were crazy, did I realize how absolutely normal I was.

So, if you’ve been feeling like you’re losing your mind or if you’re wondering if you’re crazy, rest assured you’re not. Because nothing is crazy on this journey; it’s all perfectly normal.

Dealing With Issues and Protecting Yourself

By Lisa Manterfield

300px-Cnl03I’ve learned a lot from my experience of navigating the world as an unwillingly childless woman. I’ve learned that it’s not a straight road of recovery, where you get progressively better day after day, and where challenges become easier to handle each time you encounter them. It’s more like a wild slip’n slide, where you get up, fall down, make progress and sometimes get hurt—sometimes all in the same day.

When I first started trying to navigate my new path in life, I took a very cavalier attitude, putting on a brave face and telling myself I could handle whatever challenges came my way. I was strong enough, I thought, to volunteer at my local hospital’s NICU, to visit friends and hold their newborn babies, and to keep pretending everything was okay, when it wasn’t.

If I had to do it all again, I’d be kinder to myself. I’d take note of how I was really feeling, and treat myself accordingly. I’d understand that there are stages to the healing process and I’d assess where I was before deciding how much I could handle. For example:

Stage 1: Protection

In the early stages—maybe when I’d just made the decision to let go of my dream of motherhood, or I was feeling especially vulnerable—I’d take drastic steps to protect myself. This might mean saying no to events I felt obligated to attend and more-or-less hibernating during the most difficult ones. I’d know I wasn’t going to do this forever, but I’d also know that it was okay to put my own needs first.

Stage 2: Experimentation

In this stage, I’d start to step carefully out in the world again. I might have events I was worried about attending, but if I really wanted to go, I’d say yes to the invitation. I might not feel like being social, but I’d make an effort to test myself, to go out knowing someone would ask if I had children, and hoping I’d be ready with an answer. These would be the days that gave me hope that this would eventually get better over time.

Stage 3: The New Normal

This is the stage I’m in most of the time now, but it took me some time to get here. I’ve worked through my grief and found my own ways to manage tough scenarios. I can answer questions like “Do you have kids?” calmly, and I’ve found ways to reinvent the holidays so I can enjoy them again. I am a childless woman and I’m okay with telling people that. I can even answer them if they decide to ask prying questions or make assumptions about why I don’t have children.

If I’d understood these stages earlier, I might have cut myself a little more slack when my emotions caught up with me or I got caught out in a situation I thought I could handle.

What do you think? Have you moved through similar stages and was it a linear path for you, or was it more the slip’n slide version?

Whiny Wednesday

Whiny_WednesdayThis week’s topic is the antithesis of the “People who talk about nothing but their kids” topic, but it can be just as difficult to deal with:

 People who assume you don’t want to be around         their kids

 Feel free to bring your own topics to the comments if this isn’t what’s on your nerves this week.

Navigating Workplace Challenges

By Lisa Manterfield
Young Businesswoman Standing with Two Young Business ExecutivesDuring my years of trying to conceive, I worked in the corporate world. I managed a department of about eight people. When I first took the position, only one member of my staff had children. By the end of two years, only two of us remained childless. I had three pregnant women in my department at one point, and every new announcement was followed by “It’s your turn next.” Of course, my turn never came.

There are so many challenges in the workplace when you don’t have children. There are cubicles festooned with photos of children, lunch groups dominated by kid talk, and family-oriented company picnics. There’s also the challenge of some parents using their parental responsibilities as an excuse to bend the rules and not pull their weight. And, of course, there are the inevitable pregnancy announcements and subsequent baby showers.

What are some of the workplace challenges you face and how have you found ways to navigate them?

Holiday Self-Preservation

By Lisa Manterfield

Woman Giving Gift, Portrait, Blurred.Imagine you have a good friend who experiences a death in the family right before the holidays. She’s dealing with funeral arrangements and in among the holiday cards that people sent before they got the news are sympathy cards and notes of condolence. She has her loved one’s belongings to go through and her mind is anywhere but on the holidays. She is mourning and there is little or no room in her grief for festivities.

You understand this and so you forgive your friend when she doesn’t send a card or a gift this year. You don’t expect her to attend the annual get-together you usually have with your group of friends. Instead, you check in on her to make sure she’s okay and you let her know that you’re there for her if she needs anything. You both know next year will be different, that she’ll be back celebrating with you, even though this will always be a difficult time of year for her.

If you’re in the earliest stages of your journey, where perhaps your latest round of IVF has failed or you’ve just come to the realization that children aren’t going to be part of your plan, you’re also grieving a great loss. The difference is, most people around you aren’t going to understand why you aren’t in the holiday spirit and they’re going to expect you to attend events, show up with gifts, and contribute to the merriment. They probably won’t make the same concessions you would make for your friend, so it’s up to you to treat yourself as kindly as you would treat her.

If this year feels too difficult for you, consider taking the year off.

Seriously, what would happen if you didn’t send out cards this year? What would happen if you mailed gift certificates instead of subjecting yourself to the mall and all its triggering festivities to shop for gifts? Do you have to decorate? Can you make excuses for parties you don’t want to attend? Could you even take a year off from whatever family obligations you might have?

It’s just one year. Will the people you love disown you? Some might be upset and yes, there’ll be that relative or friend who’ll never let you not forget, but odds are, most will forgive and forget.

We often try so hard to be there for other people, to meet their expectations and give them the holiday experience they want. But maybe this year you could give yourself what you need instead.

(Still) Learning About the Fertility Industry

By Lisa Manterfield

thinkingIf you’ve been hanging around the childless-not-by-choice community for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly come across the wonderful Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos. Author of the groundbreaking book Silent Sorority, Pamela has long been a steady and articulate voice for our community.

More recently, she’s turned her attention and her voice to the fertility industry. After the recent announcements from both Apple and Facebook that they would include egg-freezing coverage as part of their employee benefit packages, Pamela wrote articles for two renowned publications on the realities of that procedure. You can read what she has to say in Fortune and Wired.

As always, when I hear first-hand accounts and well-researched data on fertility treatments, I find the statistics shocking, sobering, and infuriating. I think about all the people who told me to “just do IVF”, often based on nothing more than the fact that such-and-such celebrity had done it and had been successful, but with no knowledge of what the procedure actually involves, what the odds of success might be, or whether it was even a viable option for my situation (which it wasn’t).

Even the medical professionals I met during my journey offered little in-depth information about what was ahead for me. My first experience was an almost flippant referral from a primary care physician, basically “Go see this guy. He’ll get you pregnant.” And my first visit to a fertility clinic involved a calendar of procedures and a chart of costs, with no discussion about the physical or psychological effects of what I was about to go through, or honest and realistic statistics of what the chances of success really were.

I’ll admit I was naïve going in, but I don’t consider myself to be an ignorant person. I did my research, but I still wasn’t prepared. I was given glossy brochures filled with terms I didn’t understand and procedures that seemed more invasive than what I felt I needed. And they all included pictures of adorable babies and joyous parents, but never hard information—the kind I needed to make a life-changing decision. I received a stellar sales pitch, but never felt guided by a trusted professional who had my welfare and best interests at heart. Even though I’m wiser now, I continue to be educated by people like Pamela.

If you’ve been through fertility treatments, how do you feel about the process? Has your view changed? Do you feel you went in prepared? What do you think should change for women facing this in the future?

Please leave your comments below and also consider stopping by Pamela’s blog to offer support for the work she’s doing.