Sarah
“Can you remind yourself of the feeling that you had, when you were informed of your pregnancy?”, the podcast host asked during my interview. “Oh yes, of course I can! It was overwhelming. My doctor had to do the test for me, so I was sitting at his office. After all these months of trying to conceive, it finally happened! This was like a rush, we were so happy, we told everybody about it - directly, without hesitation. We heard so many stories about waiting, or not waiting, but I was convinced that the time had come, I would become a mother. And we would be proud and loving parents. Also, there was fear. Only a light touch of it, not in the foreground. The thought: Are we really doing this now? Is this true, being parents after all these years of not wanting to? We put a child into this world, knowing that we’d never be able to protect it from any pain? Wow!”
The podcast interviewer replied. “Yeah, I can also recall that feeling!”
And I know many of you can. This whole thing is so huge, I cannot tell how. It’s giving me a hard time trying to put my feelings, my experiences, my story in written words. So, this is the attempt to write a submission for all of you, who are interested to read and who are childless not by choice.
Right now, you’ve all understood that I wanted to start with something positive, with a catching phrase, and a phrase that tells some of you to stop reading. In the following I’m writing about darker parts of my life.
The reason why I feel like submitting is – our 16 years old dog and family member Paul recently passed away, and we’re deeply grieving again. Since 2022, there was so much pain in our lives, all the tears, all the depressed hours, all that hope, and disappointment, all that wining and crying - it repeats again.
We are in our forties now and we are living in a small flat, just the two of us. We are a couple since 2003. Since then our lives were full of love and true friendship, loving parents, adventurous journeys around the world, short trip experiences, city trips, parties, hobbies and work. We both worked full time: He is a functional therapist at a hospital for stroke patients, and I am a teacher at a Middle School for problematic teenagers. And in 2020 during the Corona pandemic, we started to wish for our own small family. Simultaneously we started looking for our own house. Paul, our dog, was also at our side and in our family since 2017.
In the summer of 2021 I knew, getting pregnant isn’t as easy as hoped for, nothing happened. Additionally, my cycle was not the best - sometimes too long, sometimes too short. That was the time when I learned a lot about ovaries, and the whole process of fertilisation. I tried to optimize the amount of my ovaries, my cycle, my chance to get pregnant. I took everything that promised to help getting pregnant and more, and I tried to live healthier than ever before, no drinking, no partying – it was like not participating anymore.
And that was the time when we started to visit the so called “Kinderwunschkliniken”, the hospitals for fertilisation. Although my husband and I, we were both scared about the whole process of IVF. We only wanted to do less aggressive treatments, and to get information.
One of my best friends couldn’t get a second child and went through the whole process of IVF several times without success. I saw her suffering; I felt that she had changed. She was so depressed after a while, that she didn’t want to live anymore! That broke my heart, I mean, she has one child, a cute little daughter, how could she be so depressed? For me it was the hormones and the IVF treatments. Then I decided for myself, that I never want to go through that process! If nature didn’t let us be pregnant, we’d go on with our lives like before. No problem, I mean, we were happy without children for so long, why not? I was so wrong.
OMG, I still cannot believe how naive I went on that journey!
After a while, I lost the connection to my body. How could he fail me like this? And there was the feeling of guilt: Why are you so sad, you waited too long. Of course, you’re not getting pregnant, you didn’t live healthy enough. You smoked, you drank, you didn’t sleep enough- and additionally, you are old! How could you even get to the idea, you’re such an egoist!
Meanwhile also the last friends of mine who haven’t had children so far, were blessed with, although they were as old as we, and although they also partied like we did. And I couldn’t wait any longer. Every visit at our friends with their babies, it was so hurtful - I only cried inside!
So, we decided to use a treatment that helped to have an optimized cycle with an ovulation. This was in May 2022. What can I say, you remember the beginning of my story. The overwhelming feeling of joy wasn’t for a long time; I lost the baby early - in the 9th week. This was exactly the other way around- this was heartbreaking. It felt like losing the grip on the ground. It was like time stopped. The pain was awful. And I was alone. My husband couldn’t share the intensity of my feelings, my mother was practical, like always, my brother never was the sensitive type of guy, and for me it felt like I was crushed inside. And most of you know, there was another feeling. I was so jealous; I envied every pregnant woman in the world. Very hurtful, and embarrassing. Yeah, I was embarrassed of myself for these nasty feelings.
The depression started right then. I only worked, and survived – the moment I got pregnant, my doctor took me out of school. I wasn’t allowed to work anymore. The rules for pregnant teachers were strict so early after the lockdown. That’s why everybody knew I was pregnant, and everybody knew, I lost it, when I returned to school too early, and without any happy announcements.
I didn’t learn to cope with that kind of hard feelings. In my family, nearly everybody had a kind of depression. I didn’t expect to feel like that, because I knew about the risks of getting pregnant, I thought, I would be tough. I wasn’t. Inside I started a hard struggle with myself, I blamed myself for all of it.
There was a light during these dark years - we married in 2023. I must admit that this was a pleasure and exactly as we planned it in absolute harmony–- and our bond got deeper during that time. We promised ourselves, that our relationship is much more important than anything else.
Nevertheless, after our marriage it began to darken in me, but I still didn’t want to give up – more visits to a ‘Kinderwunschklinik’ – hope – disappointment.
To cut a long story short, I lost another child, and then I lost my ovaries – very early very strong perimenopause - and then also the hormones of my thyroid. The darkness around me was nearly unbearable, yet I still took part in life; I worked; I had sex in the middle of my cycle, but I couldn’t feel much. My husband also felt terrible. He didn’t know me anymore. He wasn’t capable of fulfilling my greatest wish. We argued so much during that period. I ended up severely depressed, in therapy and in a clinic.
I couldn’t recover from all that pain without help, and I really needed a break.
The time when my healing journey started was difficult, but necessary. I found a therapist who actually saved my life, who managed to help me find the connection to my body again. I wasn’t working. I attended a retreat for women childless not by choice, I read Jody Days book. I attended the childless not by choice online community and I managed to meet a woman from that community in Berlin. Slowly, very slowly, I felt better. My husband also supported me a lot.This podcast interview I mentioned at the beginning actually happened, and was part of the process, because sharing the pain is helpful. Grief wants to be seen and to be comforted!
My husband and my therapist convinced me to go to a psychosomatic clinic. Fortunately, I could bring Paul with me. In that clinic I recovered from my depression, and I learned an immense amount about psychology. Acceptance is what helped me through, letting it go was part of the healing process. Talking about my feelings, my fears and my dark thoughts opened a whole new perspective for me. The most important part is - I didn’t blame myself anymore. I forgave myself and started caring for me and my soul again. And, last but not least, I finally convinced my husband to do a little symbolic ‘funeral’ -a ceremony which was about packing a box with things from our journey - for our lost children.
At the clinic, I learned a useful lesson: people can feel useless, lonely and depressed with or without having the experience of being a parent. Many people suffer because life is unfair, people die and get sick. And people who cannot achieve all the so-called social achievements – hetero, family, own house and animals, at least two cars – can easily feel like being outcasted.
To summarize and come to an end: on the one hand we are sad, because we lost Paul – but this is not the same pain, the same overall mourning as before. Our dog was old, and he already didn’t participate much in our daily lives. He was sleeping and resting a lot. Still, we miss him - we really loved him. And he was there for us during our darkest times! We are grateful for that and keep him buried deeply in our hearts!
On the other hand, we are grateful, because we are also happy and free and debtless! We didn’t buy a house with a loan. We still live in our lovely flat with the wonderful view and the small town that we both still admire! That means, we can find out, what life has to offer!
We decided to stop working full time, we are enjoying our freedom. And we don’t blame ourselves for that! There are many things to do, when you are childless. And now we are also ‘dogless’, which means except of work, there are no duties to fulfill!
The two attached pictures are symbolic for parts of my story; of my life: The picture taken at the crematory for animals is a symbol for the painful years, the hurtful events and farewells – farewell of the idea of having an own property, farewell of the children never born, farewell of the imagination of having a family, farewell of being dog-parents – and the second picture taken at a recent holiday in the Netherlands is a symbol for the freedom to go wherever we want!
This also includes leaving this country to live another life somewhere else. Or opening our own dog shelter. Or travelling to Brazil, what we’ve always wanted to do, but couldn’t, because of Paul. Or go hiking around the world. Or give another dog from a rescue animal shelter a good life. Or learn something new – like I’ve already started, because I learned playing the guitar and I did a further education to become a sauna steam infusion master. Or find a job as a babysitter, what I’ve also already done!
Who knows what happens next?! My story will be continued….
