Welcome

We always thought we would have kids. We started trying when we believed we were ready. A month went by, then two months, six months, a year. Nothing happened.

Something was wrong, but nobody could tell us what - and they still can't to this day. We tried IVF three times but our results were not good. We were devastated.

Eighteen months after our last IVF cycle, we knew we would not be having our own children. And, somehow, we have moved to a life that is much different to the one we thought we'd have.

This blog is about what we do now we know we won't be having children - the thoughts, dreams, realities, sorrows, and joys that have become our new life path.

I hope you will enjoy what I will be sharing, and I hope that if you are at the point where life without children is a reality for you, that you might find some hope and inspiration here.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

How do they do it?


The other night I was feeling very tired. It had been one of those days. We had ants in the kitchen (I mean everywhere in the kitchen!), I had rescued a water hen who was not very well and taken it to a water bird rescue place, my cat, Minerva, had thrown up her breakfast, and I had a sore lower back.

It was 9pm and I hadn’t done half the things I wanted to do. I wanted to finish a short story draft, plus read up on some environmental causes, and I wanted to put sealant around the door sills so  the ants would lose their inside privileges. And I still had to do the dishes.

Life just wasn’t fair – I was tired!

Then I thought about what I would have done that day if I had a little one in tow. It would have been a day filled with nappies, feeding, behaviour correcting, picking up, housework in spare moments, tidying up toys, bathing, plus a desire to do all the things I mentioned above. I couldn’t have said to the kid that I had a sore back and therefore they would have to wait while I rested. Kids don’t come with an off switch.

I look at my friends and I see them caring for their children 24/7 and I sometimes wonder how they do it. I know that they are tired, and I know that sometimes they just want to run away from housework, their jobs and sometimes even their children (for a little bit), but they don’t. When they have a tough day they have to keep on going for their children.

I sometimes wonder how the hell I would have managed. And I give absolute credit to Mums and Dads everywhere.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Sometimes...


Kirby and I have known for about three years that we can’t have children, and mostly we are okay with it.

Then there are days when it slams into us (me today!) with such a force I want to run and hide.

Today I had to go to a gynaecologist for a little problem (no need to go into details!!). What I didn’t really pick up on was that the gynaecologist was also an obstetrician. I arrived at the clinic and headed to the waiting room which was just around the corner from the reception desk.

There I was confronted with the sight of five obviously pregnant women. Normally I am okay with this kind of thing, but today it struck me hard. I wanted to be one of them – I wanted to be sitting in the waiting room ready to see my doctor to talk about the next stages of the journey toward meeting our baby.

I honestly felt like crying and I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t – after all I’d waited two months for this appointment…

I don’t belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in a higher power, and just lately I’ve been meditating and praying and asking for a bit of help and guidance when I need it instead of thinking I have to do it all on my own.  I asked for help as I was sitting in the waiting room, and soon I could feel my heart gently taking the lead over my head (my head being the naughty negative self).

When I meditate I have a mantra I use, which is “I am all, all is me”. This helps me to realise that I am a part of everything and everything is a part of me. In the waiting room I suddenly felt as though I was a part of all of these women and the amazing transformations that were happening within them and the children that would soon be in their lives. I will never experience that directly for myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t love the fact that it is happening for them.

After having this realisation I remembered my plans for next year. Next year I am going to Thailand to work at an elephant sanctuary (Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary in Sukhothai – check it out – http://blesele.org/ the work they do is amazing!) instead of having a 40th birthday bash.

I can do this so much more easily than many other women because I don’t have children of my own. I can take off on an adventure whenever I feel like it. And I intend to. After Thailand I hope to do a trek through Nepal and Tibet, walk the Cradle Mountains in Tasmania (Australia), a meditation retreat somewhere and I plan on having many, many other adventures.

This is my life now. And all of those women are a part of that too.                                                                     

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Changes...

About a year and a half ago Kirby and I decided it was time to do something with the big front room of our house that we had intended for our children. We needed to let go some more. We needed to be able to walk through our house without constantly picturing our kids playing and sleeping safely in their beds in that room.

We ended up dividing the room into two, with one part being a dining room and the other a small study for me. It was rather exciting as we didn’t really have a dining room and now we could have friends and family over for meals more often. We painted a feature wall in an almost apple shade of green and put a lovely picture of trees in the centre of it.

The room looked good. We used it. We didn’t forget that we had intended it to be our children’s room, but it made it easier to see it being used differently.

Then we moved house.

We moved mainly to be closer to our nephew, but also because our old house was eighty years old and needed a lot of maintenance. We bought our lovely new home further out of the city near some beautiful wetlands. It was literally love at first sight when we found it.

As we anticipated moving into our home we though about the different things we could do with it, how it would be our home as a couple…

We were very, very excited.

The six month anniversary of our move has come and gone and to be honest the house is pretty much the same as when we moved in. It is our home, but it is not really reflective of who we are as individuals and as a couple.

Recently I thought that perhaps we needed to live in the house for a while before we could decide what we really wanted to do with the rooms, the colours, the textiles… I figured if we gave it time we would see what we wanted to do.

It’s only really been in the last few weeks that I’ve truly realised why we haven’t made any changes yet. Kirby and I still have work to do as a couple. I mean, we always will have work to do for the rest of our lives, but we have work to do in terms of clarifying what works for each of us (colour, sound, light, smell), sharing those ideas with each other and creating common goals that we can work towards. We need to create a vision together – that doesn’t include anyone else, and doesn’t include children.

I’ve been busy in my little mind creating the house of my dreams, but what I like and what I want may not be what Kirby likes and wants. After eight years together and almost seven years of marriage you would think we would have our likes and dislikes permanently imprinted on each other’s brains, but not so!

This weekend Kirby and I will be sitting down together to have a bit of a brain storming session. I’m looking forward to it, but I think Kirby is looking toward it with some trepidation! I have promised that I won’t be stubborn in my ideas – well, not much…

Friday, February 8, 2013

Row for your life...


After we realised that we weren’t going to be having children I was in a very downward spiral. I couldn’t see past the emptiness of the rooms in our house, nothing was right, and the only thing I wanted was the one thing I couldn’t have – our child. My life seemed to be a great big nothing.

But, somewhere way down in my depths a little spark of light ignited and slowly I began to warm up to the idea of a life where I didn’t have my own children. It started to look interesting, and even appealing, and eventually I couldn’t wait to get started on all the things I was going to do.

I was going to travel, I was going to learn about anything that caught my interest, I was going to get into volunteer work in conservation and/or human rights, I was going to be the healthiest I could be so that I could enjoy life for as long as possible, I was going to be a writer, and I was going to be on a life quest in regards to my spirituality.

So, that excitement rose about two years ago – just after our nephew was born. I did nothing with it, and it went away again.

The excitement didn’t exactly fall into oblivion, but it somehow got muddled up in life and I forgot about it. I forgot about all the things I was going to do and experience – the things that, while not making up for not having a child, would help to make my life meaningful.

About two weeks ago I wrote a letter to myself (how crazy does that sound??!!) and it was the best thing I could have done. I gave myself the wakeup call that I needed. I was hard on myself, I cut through all of the excuses not to do things that were squirming their way around my brain, and I gave myself plans to get on with the life that I know I want.

Looking back now I can see why I didn’t pick up on those threads of excitement, hang on tight and ride all the way through to adventure. I didn’t have the confidence. I think that much of this had to do with the fact that I can’t have a baby.

Being a mother is something I always thought was inevitable for me. It was something I was going to be good at (at least for the most part), and carrying a baby in my body was something I longed to do. Pregnancy, in particular, was something I saw as so fundamental to being a woman that I never doubted that it would happen for me. When I was unable to conceive and create a child I felt like a failure as a woman, and then a failure as a person.

This sense of failure, without my realising it, began to taint my self-confidence. I failed as a woman, so therefore I would fail at pretty much anything else I tried too. Whenever I thought about doing something different or new my inner-self would go on about how I would never succeed, that I was just going to fail again, that people would judge me for even trying, that I should just lay low until it was all over. All over?
I didn’t want it to be all over with me still sitting, hiding under a rug in the corner. The letter from me to myself told me that I didn’t want that.

The letter I wrote was personal, but this is a section of it that I want to share:

I think it’s time to acknowledge that you have not being making the steps toward that life. You are still stuck. Your identity is grey and murky and somewhere out on the ocean in the fog, but you are not picking up the oars to row to where you might find yourself. It is disappointing. Life keeps on moving and the years pass. Do you want to be stuck in the fog forever? How will you feel at the end of your life? Tired, wasted, unhappy? What will you have missed that you will never get back?

I am not at a point yet where I have rowed out of the fog. My inner-self still has that part that tells me to stop and hide somewhere – to lay low in the boat.

But there’s something else in me as well – something that seems to be getting stronger – something that is saying “Get up, pick up those oars, and row for your life.”

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

I'm back...again!

I didn’t mean to…

Really…I didn’t mean to disappear from entering blog posts…

This past year has been one of big, big changes. It took a lot longer than expected, but we finally moved to be closer to our two year old nephew last July.

It was a huge, but good, step for us. Our new home is near wetlands where I walk our two dogs every day (they love it – although Ari the big dog is a little wary of the ducks! He is not the world's bravest dog...).

What has been my excuse since July? I’ll be honest – I have been a little unconfident as to whether I have anything of real value to say. I have told myself that what I have to say isn’t really very good and that I can’t write anyway – so why bother?

Then I realised that I had 24 likes on Facebook for “When You Can’t Have Kids” and I didn’t know some of the people who liked it. I could look at it like it is “only” 24 likes, but it has been an incredible boost for me to come back to blogging.

We in that category of wanting kids but not being able to have them don’t have very many places to call home – so perhaps I can provide a little bit of shelter? It won’t be a mansion – more like a log cabin somewhere in the woods by a lake with a pot of tea on the fire, but you are all welcome here.

Thank you for boosting my spirits.