#189: Childless vs. child-free

Hey!

Today I’m answering a question from a reader who’s struggling to get pregnant and also struggling to envision a life without kids. I skipped over this question several times when combing through my options because I wasn’t sure I could be helpful. But given how much I’ve written about having a baby, I wanted to spend some time thinking about a different side of this experience that I know plenty of my subscribers are going through. I hope those readers will weigh in and offer some perspective too!

Fertility spiraling

Dear Baby, My partner and I have been trying to conceive for the last year and a half. I really wanted to avoid going through an IVF cycle, but found myself booking an appointment with my fertility specialist after a particularly devastating negative pregnancy test the morning of my 37th birthday followed by a friend revealing her pregnancy that day at lunch.

I went through 10 days of injections and an egg retrieval, which went surprisingly well! We were so relieved. We had undergone a bunch of tests last year, which all showed no signs of infertility, though it now appears as though the lab at the time had messed up our results, which has a huge effect on our chances to conceive. We didn't get a single embryo, and the gynecologist said it would be a tough journey forward.

I feel so defeated, worried about how the coming cycles will affect my body, and trying to come to terms with the possibility of never becoming a mother. I worry about falling into a deep depression and I'm having trouble envisioning a future without a family. Mostly, I worry what this will do to my relationship. This is something my partner and I both wanted and I can already feel the stress affecting our dynamics and the way we communicate. Is there a way to reframe my perspective on this? Am I thinking too far ahead?

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. If the last two years have taught me anything, it’s that matters of life and death are nearly impossible to comprehend outside of them. We may have ideas about how we’d feel in a given situation, but until we’re actually in them, those ideas are deeply theoretical and almost certainly wrong. I think fertility and parenthood sit squarely in this emotional forcefield. For me this has been one of the most frustrating aspects of them—I’ve felt misunderstood in the most teenaged way. But that also means I can’t fully grasp your experience either, and I’d never suggest I can “fix it” with the right words. Whatever you’re feeling right now is authentic, involuntary (in the Mark Twain way), and impervious to judgment from people who aren’t in your position. And that includes your former self who, without the information you have now, may have thought you’d handle this differently. I spent a lot of energy thinking about how I thought I’d deal with everything, and what a waste.

What I’m describing is a lonely place. Your sweetest and most sympathetic friend probably doesn’t quite get it. Your partner probably doesn’t either, or at the very least is having a distinct experience from you, which can feel lonely too. Emotionally isolating experiences like this usually bring up a lot of shame because they give you the impression of unhinging from normality. There’s also the fact that your body isn’t doing something you’ve been told it’s biologically wired to do, and that countless resources claim will happen if you tweak your behavior—consume the right vitamins, foods, teas, medications; do this or that movement or meditation. When I was trying to get pregnant, I was surprised by how active the process felt given I’d spent years fearing I’d get knocked up accidentally. But that intentionality gave me the sense that success was in my hands, when truly, it wasn’t. That was a maddening bait-and-switch. I can only imagine how much more maddening it becomes as you work with doctors, give yourself shots, undergo procedures in hospital gowns and still are told it’s up to fate. You must be fried.

I was so sick of the grooves I was wearing down in my brain while trying to get pregnant that I tried to teach myself to write with my right (opposite) hand just to carve a new one

Beyond the pressure to get pregnant, there’s the pressure to approach all this in the right way: Cheer yourself on, but accept it’s out of your hands. Have hope, but not so much that you’ll be disappointed. Loosen your grip, but don’t lose sight of why you’re putting yourself through this. I think that last one seems particularly hard, and could be why you’re struggling to envision a future without kids. The process you’re going through is so emotionally and physically taxing that, in order to keep going, you’ve probably had to hold tightly onto why motherhood is worth all this to you. This may have been a source of resilience, but as an argument, it’s also in opposition to the voice in your head that’s now trying to say you’d be just as happy without kids. Of course you’re not finding that very convincing, why would you? These two views are incompatible.

At least, they probably feel that way. I experienced this on a smaller scale with trying to get pregnant too. I felt tugged all the time between two emotional poles: one where motherhood was this massive unknowable risk I was bolstering myself to take—emotionally, financially, socially—out of sheer faith in its importance to me, and another where I wanted to just relax, slow down, and accept whatever happened. There was also, intermittently mixed in, breath-taking excitement. Ping-ponging between these states made me feel frankly insane, which made me feel ashamed, which made me not want to talk about it, and around the loop I went. I’ve now spent a sizable chunk of this answer merely trying to explain the cognitive dissonance of trying to conceive. But it’s very important to me that you understand, first and foremost, how sane you are, and how many of us would feel or have felt how you do right now.

You mentioned that you’re afraid of becoming depressed, and it made me wonder if on some level you already are. You may feel like you’re not bottoming out yet because you still have some hope, but you shouldn’t underestimate how awful it can be to live in fear of the bottom. One of the most enduring lessons of my adult life so far is that the time we spend fearing “the hard part” very often is the hard part. It’s amazingly ironic. We can spend so much energy bracing for the lows that we fail to see we’re already there: worried, sad, alienated. Disappointment, on the other hand, while painful, carries a certain momentum. It’s conclusive, final—it’s an end, but also a beginning. The beauty of our fears finally coming true is that we’re released from the fear itself. That shift is full of transcendent possibility.

Maybe you’ll end up becoming a parent and this fear of infertility will never come true, but I just wanted to acknowledge that this moment—this in-between time where you still have some hope but also feel defeated and afraid and uncertain—may very well turn out to be the most difficult part of the process. You’re in the thick of it, and it’s worth noting that you’re already getting through. From what I’ve heard, a lot of women feel a profound shift in outlook once they actually have clarity, but you don’t have that yet. So while I do think that putting time, energy, and imagination into envisioning a life without kids (spending more time with people who’ve chosen to not have them, tapping into your nurturing and mothering sensibilities outside the context of having your own, etc) will help flesh out this alternative path, I also want to raise the possibility that it may not lock in and feel authentic to you until you’re further along in this process. Maybe you’re not quite ready yet. That doesn’t have to mean so much.

It might also help to remember the limits of “envisioning” anyway. Like I recently wrote, we may have vague notions of how we’ll feel as parents or as older childless adults, but these are mostly symbolic. Reality, in either direction, will be much richer. The other day, someone left a comment under my newsletter about this fork in the road that really resonated: “For people who want kids, having kids is the most wonderful, earth-shattering, joyous and reconstituting decision they can [make]. However, I think for people who do not want to have kids, not having kids can be the most wonderful, earth-shattering, joyous and reconstituting decision they can [make].” She went on: “We frame having a child as a decision to change and not having a child as a decision to stay the same when I think they are ultimately both a change. You gain something and you give something up in both, as with most big decisions.” (Emphasis mine.)

When I was trying I started feeding myself nourishing breakfasts rather than skipping them. I told myself this was about fertility but I think it was toward a different kind of growth

You may not feel like you’re facing a “decision” or making a “choice,” but it sounds like you’ll have some agency in how long you keep trying, and I think that can feel meaningful in its own way. When Avi and I were trying to conceive, we were told by a doctor that it may be difficult for us. But then we spoke to a different one who waved the other doctor off with an eye-roll and told us to keep trying, and he was right. I’m not suggesting your doctor is wrong or anything, just that fertility is fickle and mysterious, and a “tough road” will mean different things to different people. In that sense, you’ll likely have more moments ahead when you and your partner will get to choose—to keep at it, or to release yourselves, whichever path seems to offer you the fullest shared life. And I think those moments will be unifying and affirming, even if the idea of them currently fills you with dread.

I feel like I’m talking in code a bit. Trying to have a baby is such a head trip it can be hard to not speak in metaphors: bottoming out, mental loops, ghost ship lives. Maybe that’s one of the more useful things to keep in mind as you navigate this time, with yourself and with your partner—you’re both tripping out a little. This is not your average rough patch. The wisdom you’ve both collected from other aspects of your lives won’t necessarily apply, and that includes how to talk to and show up for each other. I remember feeling totally mystified by the way Avi handled certain aspects of the process—what he was and wasn’t moved by, for instance—and I could tell he was just as mystified by me. At that point we’d been together for six years and thought we knew each other better than that. Last year, when I interviewed Dr. Janet Jaffe, a clinical psychologist who specializes in infertility, she told me about what she calls “the reproductive story,” which refers to the sweeping personal narratives we’ve often unknowingly built around parenthood our entire lives that only emerge when we finally decide to pursue it (or not). I wonder if you and your partner could use a little help dissecting those. Or at the very least, some grace while you do it together.

Something else Dr. Jaffe emphasized a lot was that fertility struggles can be genuinely traumatic. So even though this is obvious advice: Try to be gentle with yourself and your relationship. Denying yourselves the care and time you need to address whatever’s coming up right now could compound what’s already there. She also said something I’ll never forget about those who go through this process, which is that when people are forced to be deeply intentional about their life paths—for instance, putting in tons of effort to have kids or accept another life—they tend not to take those choices for granted. So even if you feel like this process sucks and is unfair and destructive to your sense of self, I hope, at the very least, you can trust you’re building to something greater than the sum of these heavy parts.

If you have advice for the questioner, please share it!

Thank you as always for trusting me with your questions (and reminder you can submit them here!).

I hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley