I always wanted to be a mother. I have memories from childhood of mothering my dolls. When I started school I began to play "house" with my other little girl friends. Even at kindergarten age I was aware that for the other girls, playing house was about the Mommy/Daddy romantic relationships. For me it was always about taking care of the "babies". I'm that person that everyone calls the caretaker. It has just always been my nature.

It didn't occur to me growing up that I would never have children. As teenagers my friends and I would sit around and talk about "the future" ... marriage to some famous actor or musician; how many rooms we'd want in our Beverly Hills mansion; our fantasy cars; our dream jobs. I was always the one picturing children. The others would all insist they would NEVER have children. Or maybe they'd adopt. They all have children now. Some have even entered the grandparent stage.

The closest I ever came was a false positive on a pregnancy test. I was in a doctor's office on a Friday afternoon for an unrelated reason. They wanted to confirm I wasn't pregnant before filling a prescription. At that point we had been unsuccessfully "trying" for almost 3 years. I was fairly certain I was not pregnant, but we did the test anyway. To my surprise and sheer joy, it was positive. They took my blood to test later and sent me home ... without the medication I had been seeking in the first place. We spent the weekend over the moon about our not unplanned but definitely unexpected news. Nursery room planning started and baby name ideas were batted around. Boy or girl? We both agreed we didn't care. Monday afternoon I got the word that the blood test confirmed there was no pregnancy after all. Devastation doesn't even come close to describing the seconds, minutes, days, and even weeks that followed. Years really. That was over 20 years ago. I never received a positive pregnancy test result again. In my early 40s I required a hysterectomy and the door was forever closed.

It's not socially acceptable to grieve for something that never physically existed.

That joy filled weekend was built on literally nothing. When someone miscarries we all gather around in support. It's perfectly acceptable to expect that a person would grieve in that situation. And of course, it absolutely SHOULD be perfectly acceptable.

I lost something that never existed. An unrealized dream. I lost an idea of motherhood; the vision of all the things that come with that title. Carrying a child; giving birth; watching the child grow and become an adult with their own dreams.

I can't say that out loud. I don't know how to explain that I can be happy for the birth of someone else's child while at the same time it pulls me back under the wave of my own sadness all over again. I can't tell strangers who wish me a "Happy Mother's Day" every year that I was only a mother for 72-ish hours that wasn't even real. When someone says they lost a child, I can't say, "So did I." Because I absolutely did not. I'm fully aware that it is NOT the same.

So my own personal version of loss gets stuffed way down deep in my gut ... only to surface again at inopportune times where everyone else is happy ... Christmas and children's birthday parties. Baby showers ... those are probably the epitome of difficult. At some point my friends stopped having babies. I thought the worst of the baby shower depression was over. And then their babies started having babies. The circle of life. For everyone else anyway.

I am 49 years of age and childless. It wasn't my choice. It is what it is.

Monica Dial Foster

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