Am I still worthy if I didn’t try?
Am I still worthy if I didn’t decide?
Am I still worthy if I’m childless through not making a choice?
And if the answer is ‘Yes,’ where do I fit?
In what camp do I sit?
Where do I belong?
That question is the soundtrack of my life.
I nearly tried to have a child. I checked myself in for a Fertility MOT at the London Women’s Clinic. My fertility was ‘average for my age’, I was told. In other words, mediocre. I was over 40 by that point.
I pondered freezing my eggs, but by then my eggs were middle aged. Not a wise way to spend my hard-earned cash, I was advised.
I went to a ‘Solo Motherhood’ seminar and chatted to a consultant about ‘going it alone’ with IVF. I watched a presentation about choosing a sperm donor from a catalogue – a bit like choosing a man on a dating website, only we’d never meet.
I had a counselling session to discuss the solo motherhood route, knowing deep down that I wouldn’t take that path. I’d watched my mum struggle to bring up two kids on her own post-divorce. No career to speak of. Financial headaches galore. Stress. Worry. And no time for herself.
I didn’t want that life.
All of which left me where I’d started – early forties, single and childless, not willing to do what other women had found the courage to do, to bite the bullet and have a baby alone.
Socially Infertile?
At the time, it seemed I fitted neatly into the ‘socially infertile’ camp – not able to find a partner to have babies with before my fertility ran out.
But my story, of course, is more complex than that.
As I delved deep into my psyche in therapy and as I walked away numerous times from an adorable man who didn’t want children, only to walk straight back into his arms a few months later, I understood that I was ambivalent about motherhood, scared to make a choice.
Ambivalence – meaning to be pulled strongly in two directions – had been my companion for life. Upheaval at home when I was young meant I grew up without a secure base, not trusting anyone else and not trusting myself. Life was scary and decisions felt life-threatening, be they about what colour shoes to buy or what man to date.
Analysis-paralysis was my permanent state.
If I could avoid making a purchase, choosing a partner or deciding to be a mum, I could never get it wrong, I reasoned. I could never make a mistake.
But sitting on the fence like that leads to a life half-lived, which is more painful than making a wrong choice.
Eventually, with the support of professionals and friends and with a fierce determination to break free of my baggage, I did make choices.
I bought a flat. I left my job. At 43, I committed to the man who didn’t want children because I realised that I didn’t want to be without him and that a partner for life was at the top of my priority list. I bought a house with that man and, aged 48, I married him.
You can’t get more decisive than that.
Yet when it came to children, to motherhood, the ambivalence remained.
I didn’t force the issue of babies in our relationship. I was 45 and he was 50 by the time we moved into the same home and it felt too late.
Not only that, but I still wasn’t sure. I still didn’t know what I wanted. And I still had too many questions and worries about being a mum.
Could I handle it, especially at this age? Would I make a good mum or a terrible one? Would I be able to love my child or would I resent a baby for taking all my energy and time?
I now know (perhaps because I’m a year into parenting a rather needy pup) that it would have been extremely hard, incredibly challenging in fact, but that I would have grown hugely through the process and ultimately found my peace.
But I didn’t make the choice to try. Or maybe that was a choice. Maybe my subconscious chose for me, because my subconscious remembers how tough it was for Mum growing up - it remembers deciding that I didn’t want her life.
Where does that leave me? Childless through ambivalence. Childless through not making a choice. Childless because of the circumstances of my own childhood and the scars my early life relationships left. Childless because of my own dysfunctional relationship patterns that meant it took me years to find healthy love (I do wonder whether my husband and I would have had kids if we’d met 10 years earlier).
And where do I fit, not only in a world of many mothers who repeatedly exclaim that their child is their everything and they’d never known true love before they gave birth, but in a world of women who did try to conceive, who tried many rounds in the bedroom or many rounds of IVF, who lost babies or who tried and failed to adopt?
Do I still belong?
Maybe belonging is a choice, just as it’s a choice to seek out difference, and if that’s the case, first and foremost, I choose to belong to myself. I choose to belong to my own life, to my own story, because no matter how complex I am and how messy it’s been, right here I’m a perfect fit.
Katherine Baldwin
Katherine Baldwin
Katherine Baldwin supports and empowers single women who are childless not by choice to find a healthy and loving relationship. As a relationships coach, midlife mentor and author of ‘How to Fall in Love’, Katherine guides her clients on a journey to the heart, supporting them to love and accept themselves, grow in self-esteem and confidence, understand their relationship patterns, face their relationship fears, let go of the life they had planned, create a new, fulfilling life and find healthy love. Katherine is known for her authenticity, vulnerability and empathy.