When a puppy comes for Christmas – it can change your life…

About three weeks ago I was looking at the Infertility Network UK newsletter and I saw a review of a book called “The Puppy that Came for Christmas and Stayed Forever” by Megan Rix.

There was a puppy on the cover. So of course I had to buy it. And I am so glad I did.

“The Puppy that Came for Christmas” is about Megan and her husband Ian’s journey to try and have a child. It is a story about the emotional rollercoaster that infertility is – and the challenges that so many of us are familiar with. Hearing the news that having a baby is not going to be easy, or may not even be possible, is so heart wrenching. Spending time with people who have children, and particularly with those who have just had a baby, can be so difficult to bear. I could relate to so much of what Megan and Ian went through.

What was different about this book from many personal stories of infertility is that through all of this the focus was very much on how Megan and Ian found a new way of living – a new way of having a family and a life that they value and love.

I won’t give too much away, but that new kind of life started when Megan and Ian volunteered to foster a puppy that would eventually become a helper dog. They took Emma in from when she was eight weeks old to when she was around six months old, when she went on to do her advanced helper dog training.

Emma introduced a whole new way of life that gave so much to Megan and Ian. And even though there was heartbreak when they had to let Emma go at six months of age (something I don’t think I could do – and was unbelievable selfless of Megan and Ian), she started something special.

It’s how I feel about my life now. Although there are times when I still grieve for our babies, and I feel the emotions of jealousy and anger, and the question rises once more of “why us?”, Kirby and I have a life we love. We have our dogs and cats and fish, and our nieces and nephews, we have us, we have travelling to do, and we have a freedom which we wouldn’t have if we had children. Our life is not better than if we had children – it’s our situation, it’s different, and we’ve decided to embrace it as much as possible.

When the end of the book was drawing near I found it hard to finish – I must admit. This wasn’t because it was poorly written, but because I didn’t want to say “goodbye” to my new “friends”. I had been on a journey with people (as well as their dogs) that I related to – and I felt as though Megan and Ian had become my friends. This is something unique, and a testament to Megan and Ian’s story, and the way Megan has written about it.

If – or, I hope, when – you read “The Puppy that Came for Christmas”, you will read about an incident in the book that left me furious when I read it. I think you will know it when you find it, and perhaps, like me, you will wish you could be there to put the particular woman involved in her place and wrap your arms around Megan to comfort and protect her. It happened during a puppy training session and it’s to do with just who makes the best puppy parents…that’s all I’m going to say…

If you have experienced infertility and love dogs I am certain you will love this book.

Actually, even if you’ve never experienced infertility, but you love dogs – you will love this book.

Get ready to fall in love…

And finally here are our boys…who we love so very much…

Baby girl...

In the past month my cousin has given birth to her and her husband’s first child – a baby girl.

And I have been thrown around in a sea of emotions in a way that hasn’t happened in quite some time. I was on edge even before my little second cousin was born.

I had dreams about holding my own baby daughter, and one night I awoke in a panic because I reached out and couldn’t find her crib at the side of our bed.

Another night I sat bolt upright in bed and said aloud “I want to try again.”

I felt angry that we didn’t have a child that would be an elder cousin to the new little baby that was about to be born. I wanted our child to be there to play with her and cuddle her and show her how to get away with as much mischief as possible.

I wondered what it would be like to feel life growing inside of me, to feel those kicks and movements, and to give birth and experience that pain that would bring our child into the world.

Would our cousins’ baby and ours share any features like my cousins and I do? Perhaps eye shape or hair colour or love of animals or interests in music or art or who knows – and we will never know.

In writing that last sentence I have just realised something. We will never know, but I will think about it from time to time and I like the thought of that. As our new baby cousin grows and starts showing her own personality (although I suspect she is already doing that…), and we learn what she likes and what she doesn’t, I will think about what interests our baby might have shared with her.

Of course our baby would no longer be a little child – they would be seven years old if the second round of IVF had worked (where we had an embryo put into my womb) or six years old if the third round had worked. I love the thought of our child, our nephew (almost five years old), and the new baby spending time together. I think my cousins’ little girl would have been quite well looked after and spoilt by her two older boy cousins.

I don’t really know if our baby would have been a boy, but I always thought that it would be – our little Jacob Arthur, Samuel Kirby, or Caleb Maxwell. It’s odd, therefore, that I dreamt about having a daughter before my cousins’ baby was born, but my cousins did know their baby was going to be a girl before she was born and I guess my subconscious decided that in my dreams we would have a girl as well.

I felt guilty, at first, about some of the feelings of anger and, I’ll say it, jealousy I had, but I have remembered, yet again, that it is quite normal to have them. And it is also true that, at least for me, I will, from time to time, feel let down by life and sad about not having our own child.

I want you all to know that as well, and that way when you experience those emotions that you feel are wrong or even shameful perhaps you will recognise that they are actually quite normal and then not be so hard on yourself – as I have been somewhat hard on myself lately.

I met my little baby girl cousin just over a week and a half ago, and to say I am smitten is a complete understatement. I am completely and totally head over heels in love and besotted…which I think might be quite obvious in the photo below…

Me and my new cousin...

Friends without kids...

Yet again I’ve been a bit slack with writing blog posts…but I have a good reason…

I’ve had whiplash…from slipping over in the shower…not the smartest thing to do, but I now know that our shower screen is rather strong and our bathroom tiles are rather hard!!

And onto today’s post…

Over the past four to five years we have “collected” a group of friends who don’t have children. 

Together we are four couples of around the same age – more or less. We have dinner at one of our homes every six months or so – although we will now be adding some hikes on the Waterfall Gully to Mt Lofty Summit trail which I am really excited about!

The interesting part of this group of friends is that I have no idea what the story is behind each of the other three couples not having children. Could they not have them? Did they decide not to have them? I don’t know and it’s not something that we’ve talked about or felt the need, so far, to bring up.

I think they know our story, but again we haven’t talked about it directly with them.

It’s clear that all of us love children. Much of the conversation together is about our respective nieces and nephews and how we much we adore them…so it sometimes seems odd that we haven’t talked directly about our own situations.

I would absolutely be happy to talk should any of our friends wish to, but at the same time it’s nice to have a group of friends who don’t have children and with whom we talk about many other things other than why we don’t have children – topics such as travel, hobbies, and so forth. And that we are not “distracted” (that sounds horrible, but I can’t think of another word at the moment) by children.

Does that make sense?

It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with my friends who have children – I most certainly do – but having this group of friends kind of makes it feel like it’s completely normal to not have them.

I am very, very grateful for this group of people!

Aunty Bev...

This post isn’t technically about not have children, but it is about life.

It’s strange that I wrote about all the small things in life last week and posted a collage of some of those small things that are important parts of my life, for this week has made me realise even more how important those seemingly small things are.

Last Wednesday night, the 6^th of May, my Aunty Bev had a massive stroke and collapsed at her home. She never regained consciousness and within a few days the doctors determined that she was brain dead. Life support was removed on Sunday night and she died about fifteen minutes later. She was only 65 years old which is far too young.

Aunty Bev lived in Sydney, New South Wales (which is over 1100 kilometres (or 700 miles) away) with my Uncle Trev. We didn’t get to see her as much I would have liked, but distance and time apart didn’t affect how much she meant (and means) to me.

I’m finding it hard to write at the moment…so instead I will share what I wrote about Aunty Bev on Facebook…

“Aunty Bev always believed in me. She told me she was proud of me and loved my writing. She had a way of making me feel that I was just right just as I am, because she loved me just as I am. It's unbelievable, it's not fair, and it is so hard to think about. But, already I know that her legacy will live on - because she had a way of getting me to see the preciousness of family, friends, and life. And I hope I can pass this on to my nieces and nephews. I love you and miss you Aunty Bev xxx”

It’s the little things that matter – a smile, a voice, a laugh, a hug, and memories that will never fade away.

Uncle Trev and Aunty Bev with my nieces Ella and Hannah

All the small things...

On Sunday it was a year since we put our beautiful cat Minerva down. She was 15 years old, and her kidneys were failing and she only had about 10 percent lung capacity. We didn’t want her to suffer. It was an honour to be there for her as she took her last breath and passed away while we told her over and over again that we loved her – and we still do love her.

In honour of her and the one year anniversary of her death I put her urn with her ashes in the sunshine. I lit some incense and Kirby and I sat and remembered all the funny things she used to do.

We laughed a lot recalling different things. Such as the time when I was blowing on the top of a bottle to make musical sounds, and she came running in, jumped on my lap, smacked me in the face with her paw, then got down and ran back up the hallway. I guess she didn’t like the music I was making! I recall sitting there stunned and then bursting out laughing hysterically – as did Kirby as he was a witness to it.

Thinking about Minerva and all the little things she used to do got me thinking about all the small things in my life that make life interesting, fun, humbling, and sometimes have me feeling wistful.

All the small things that I am honoured to have in my life.

So instead of writing more – here is a collage of just some of the small things I love.

If I can only visualise hard enough...

I guess at some point most of us think that we can have whatever we want in life. I know I used to. I looked for the magical answer that would bring me the life I wanted. You name it – I tried it. Crystals, Feng Shui, prayer and meditation, and visualisation.

Visualisation – that’s a big one. But I’ll write more about that later.

Even since I knew Kirby and I would never have children I thought I could have the life I wanted. I negotiated with life, I thought if I can’t have kids then I would compromise and think about what else I wanted and then I could have a life that encompassed that instead.

It seems crazy to me now. I don’t, personally, believe that things happen to us on purpose to teach us things, but sometimes you can learn something anyway and I know one of the lessons I took away from not having children is that life isn’t going to hand me what I want just because I want it. It has just taken me a while to really understand this.

And back to visualisation. There are many self-help “gurus” around who say that we can have the life we want by using visualisation and just making it happen. It’s curious that the lives they suggest we can have all involve big houses, expensive cars, and a lot of money – and how the tickets for the seminars these people run are generally a couple of hundred dollars each, if not more.

To me – it’s kind of cultish. It’s getting people to pay lots of money to someone who is going to tell them they can have it all – when no one, ever, can really have it all. So, they are selling a lie.

Wow! That sucks...

We who have not been able to have children know very well that we can’t have it all no matter what we do or try or visualise. And, this means there are quite possibly other things we can’t have either – for example, a dream of mine is to climb Mount Everest (seriously!), but I am unlikely to ever do it because I have a heart murmur and a hole in my heart.

I would like to travel the world for a year or two, but that means I couldn’t have my pets – I want both! But, I can’t have both.

I want people I care about to get better – but some of them never will again.

Now that I’ve accepted that I can’t control every aspect of my life and there will never be a point where I have everything I want and I will live happily ever after I have found a sense of happiness I didn’t expect. Sounds strange, doesn’t it…

I’ve read a book recently called “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand PositiveThinking” by Oliver Burkeman. And I get it. By being realistic I can focus on what is here, now, rather than waiting or striving for something that is never going to happen. And by focussing on what is here and now I appreciate the smaller things rather than constantly waiting and hoping for the bigger things to happen.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have goals or don’t push myself in certain directions – for example, I might not be able to climb Mount Everest, but I fully intend to go on treks in Tasmania, and in the Himalayas at a lower altitude. I’m starting training to do this very soon.

I’ve put a short poem about my feelings about not having it all on a postcard which you can feel free to download and share.

This is what not having children has taught me – and blessed me with.

Time heals all...

At least I was thinking maybe this was the case…

I realised a couple of weeks ago that I hadn’t been thinking about babies and IVF and infertility. And it surprised me, because in previous years I had always experienced feelings of sorrow, guilt, and even anger, as April approached.

I was positive that this lack of conscious thought about April meant the wound of not being able to have children had healed. The scar tissue had become so strong that it wouldn’t tear open again this year to leave my heart and arms empty.

It crossed my mind that perhaps the souls of my babies had moved on. Maybe they had let me go and I had let them go too.

I felt strong.  It was over it. Time truly does heal all.

Then I went to the supermarket.

There were prams everywhere. There were babies everywhere from newborns to almost toddlers.

Parents held the hands of older children, corrected their behaviour, laughed with their children, called them back to their sides when their kids had wandered of, and, sadly, there were also “parents” who seemed to take great joy in belittling their children in public.

That old familiar loneliness and emptiness arrived so suddenly that I struggled to keep the tears in my eyes from falling down my cheeks.  

We didn’t even get to the stage of egg collection with our first round of IVF. No embryo was created. Still, I think about the child we could have had – the little boy or girl who would be turning six this month.

Who would that little person have been?

We’ll never know.

I tend to think about the child that could have been from our first IVF round as their due date would have been our wedding anniversary.

When we married we had a picture of what our lives would be like – and that included having children and raising them as best we could. There were no doubts that this dream would become a reality. After all, our friends and family were having children and never had any problems – so why would we? It never even crossed our minds that we would.

Our wedding day...

And I can never forget those dreams or that potential child, and I don’t think a time will ever come when I feel all okay about it. I will never be “over it”, and time doesn’t really heal all.

I also know that missing my child doesn’t mean I’m not strong. Perhaps it actually means I am strong – because I can think about our children, grieve for them, while still being able to love and feel and live.

Happy sixth birthday angel child.