I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. While growing up, I thought I’d meet my Prince Charming by the time I turned 26, be married by 28 and become a mother by 30.
But have you noticed that fairy tales only talk about “finding your true love and living happily after” but they never talk about what happens afterwards? There’s no sequels about Cinderella, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty becoming mothers, that’s for sure!
Even without fictional expectations, I’d say that most of us have grown up in a world where marriage and kids are an inevitable life path.When I reflect on 30+ years of being an adult, it’s hard to draw many parallels between the life I thought I’d have and the life I have now. Much like trips to a carnival or an amusement park, the expectations are often very different to what actually happens once you get there.
I grew up in a cultural context with“particular” requirements for the professional and personal aspects of my life such as becoming a doctor/lawyer/engineer, marrying someone within my community by the age of 25 and having at least one child before 30. The one thing I knew was that I was never going to settle for the wrong person to marry and raise children with.
In late 2003, I got engaged to an American guy whomI’d met on one of my vacations. Even though he was a few years younger, he seemed like a nice enough person that I figured I’d give it a chance despite the distance. I felt that my life plans were finally getting back on track and that it wasn’t too late to become a mother and give my Mum a grandchild.
A few months before the wedding, I realised I was rushing into a lifelong commitment with someone who wasn’t right for me so that I could do what was expected of me as a woman in my early 30s. I called off the wedding knowing that it was the right decision for me even though I had failed to meet cultural expectations. I had ignored our incompatibility in my pursuit of achieving my dream to “live happily ever after”.
I was still optimistic that I would find the right person sometime in my thirties. I became painfully aware of my biological clock ticking louder and louder with each passing year. I used to joke with my female friends “does anyone know how to take out the batteries of our biological clocks?”. Everywhere I looked, friends and family were getting married and having kids. I also knew that being a single mother was not right for me both personally and culturally.
I was often getting asked by friends happily ensconced in relationships “what’s a great girl like you doing single? Why hasn’t someone snapped you up by now?”. When I spent time with their kids, they added “you’d make such a great mother!” or “you’re lucky you don’t have kids” or “make sure you enjoy your freedom before you become a mum!”.
I faced continued pressure from my mother for me to get married and have a child “before it was too late”. I kept myself busy with friends, family, travel, volunteering and work. My attempts at dating only resulted in providing great fodder when catching up with married friends and their kids. I was the proverbial Bridget Jones but with no Mark Darcy in sight.
As my life was hurtling towards 40, I did a lot of soul-searching as I knew it was becoming increasingly unlikely that I’d become a mother given that even finding someone suitable to date was a challenge. I didn’t want to get into a relationship and then rush into marriage. Been there, done that!
So at 39, I decided that I would make the most out of life and be happily single, footloose and fancy-free for the rest of my life. And if the right person came along at some point, I would at least get married. If he already had a child, I’d happily be a stepmother and if he didn’t, that he’d accept not having kids.
A few months shy of my 40th birthday, the stars and planets magically aligned for me to meet the love of my life. After a few months, I knew I’d met “The One” especially when he talked about wanting to have a child. I was hesitant about the challenges of getting pregnant but knew he would make a good father as he had a child and I’d seen what a great Dad he was. While I’d never had any gynaecological issues, I knew that the chances of me falling pregnant, let alone successfully carrying a child to term, rapidly diminished once I turned 40. I was 41 when we got married and was advised by my GP that doing IVF was our only possible chance to become parents.
Going through IVF was like being on the scariest roller coasterin the park. It wrecked us mentally, physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually. We went through cycle after cycle with continued failure. Each precious embryo that was determined to be unsuitable for getting frozen was agonising. Each transfer that ended in a big fat negative pregnancy test after a torturous two-week wait was gut-wrenching. The final blow was finally getting pregnant in mid-2014 only to have a miscarriage at 11 weeks after not hearing a heartbeat and no progress in the growth of our baby.
Our dreams of parenthood died with the loss of that child. Even with the remaining embryos we had, I felt that the continued failed transfers only increased my anger, confusion and grief as to why we were unable to have a child. When we did our last cycle, I was nearly 44 years old and I somehow knew that my dream of having a child with my husband was not going to come true. We had just bought our first home. I knew we would never hear the sound of our child’s laughter or where we would get to watch our child take his/her first steps or say their first words.
In August 2017, I discovered the term #childlessnotbychoice. At last, I finally fit in somewhere in the world. With the creation of events like World Childless Week, I had an identity being childless due to infertility and I was no longer alone in my grief. In August 2018, on the 4thanniversary of our miscarriage, we did a photoshoot with our two puppies with a photographer who wanted to capture portraits where the dogs were more like family members than pets. That day, I realised that I had spent too many years believing that being unable to become a mother diminished my worth as a woman or what I could contribute to the world. Or that it was possible to know love and joy without having a child of my own. I found myself wondering why I had assumed that being childless made me "less" or that having a child would have only been an amazing and painless experience.
I wish that we didn't need definitions attached to our reproductive status! But that's how society has crafted the narrative for men and women, but particularly women. I’ve chosen to share my story but I know that being unable to have a child is not the end of my story. I have so much to look forward to and I hope if you are childless, you know that you do too.
Here’s what I know now as I look towards the future decades of my life.
Life is like an amusement park
We don't know how long we have to wait to get on certain rides/experiences and if we’ll enjoy them once we get there.
There are many park rides/life experiences that people avoid because they seem too daunting and that’s perfectly acceptable!
You don’t have to be a child or have a child to have fun in life.
At the end of it all, we should make the most out of every moment we’re here.
Regardless of how our lives turn out, our experiences are all valid and we can ALL still enjoy being there together!
Anonymous
Photo by Harrison Haines from Pexels