Approximate reading time: 10 minutes
I have writer’s block.
I do.
I hate it when this happens….I have been so excited to write the final attachment post.
And yet
It’s a dismal state of affairs.
(Sometimes I feel like the only thing 100% consistent about me is my innate ability to be completely inconsistent!)
Were it not for that stupid pact I made with myself that I would post one post a week….
I could quite simply just fall off the radar for a couple of
weeks,
months,
years
until the
creative juices were flowing again.
(It has worked so well for me in the past!)
Or just maybe I just need to write about what’s really going on in my head at the moment?
(There’s a scary thought!)
As much as I have loved studying attachment theory it has been ever so slightly triggering for me.
Just when I thought I had got all my ‘childless grief‘ under wraps last year,
I then decided to study a course that is 95% looking at the connection between mothers and babies.
I have been crying a lot these last two months.
(On and off, continuously, at times.)
Partly because for the first time I am really starting to understand the mechanics of my own “singlehood-ness”.
How my own attachment style has played such a huge part in keeping me single.
And partly because for the first time in my life I actually feel emotionally ready to have my own biological child……
which then comes hand in hand with the very harsh reality that this is very likely not going to be happening for me.
****
Grief is a funny thing.
People don’t understand it.
People are not comfortable with it.
People genuinely would prefer you not to speak to them about it.
It often feels like involuntary childlessness is the most disenfranchised grief of all.
You haven’t lost anything tangible.
As someone so very kindly pointed out to me two weeks ago when I
inadvertently burst into tears for (seemingly) no apparent reason.
“Maybe you just need to get a little bit of perspective,
I mean it’s not like actually losing a child, is it?
Just imagine how horrible that would be!”
I was a little stunned.
(How did this suddenly turn into a competition?)
Yes sure, the intensity and pain of losing a child would undoubtedly be unbearable on the grief scale….
Except that person, who has lost a child, is allowed and expected to grieve.
Not so much if you are childless.
Last year I was so frustrated and angered by continually feeling shut down and shamed every time I tried to talk about this grief that I wrote a poem called “Childless by Chance”.
(I will post it tomorrow)
This poem has been a work in progress fuel by anger and bitterness!!
yes you heard me…
Every time I have attempted to address or bring up this topic with people it has consequently led to yet another verse has been added.
Seriously it always amazes how often well-meaning people can say the most careless and insensitive things to people who don’t have children.
Most of the time we simply just suck it up with a smile.
Yesterday I was at a school where I have been a couple of times before and I am aware that the secretary had a baby last year. She is truly a lovely person and we often have little chats when I go there. I asked her how her daughter was doing and she told me how she has been up most nights with her because she is sick.
As we reached the classroom she randomly asked if I had kids to which I replied no.
Her response back was:
“Oh aren’t you lucky!”
Mmmmm……yes indeed aren’t I the lucky one.
Of course, I said nothing back.
(The next time someone says that to me I’m going to say something!)
Years ago I would have been enraged, angered and hurt…
Nowadays I am just mildly frustrated and find it almost laughable at times that people can even say such thoughtless things.
Another childless friend of mine, was talking about how difficult she finds it continually going to her friend’s children’s birthday parties.
(She is braver than me, I think I would simply refuse!)
She commented how at the most recent party she had sat and listened to a mum talk about all her anxieties and stresses of ‘being a mum’.
At the end of the conversation, this very grateful person thanked her for listening
(My friend is indeed an awesome listener with the biggest, kindest heart)
and said:
“It must be because you are single, that you have the bandwidth to listen so well”
My friend admitted she felt slightly frustrated
“Bandwidth???”
She said …..
“This person seemed to think that just because I am single and childless I don’t have any of my own issues going through my head. I have recently lost my mother, I am pretty sure my boss is having a nervous breakdown, which makes work intolerable, and I’m sitting at a party watching other people’s children play, while continually having to answer
THAT
question:
“Oh, which child is yours?
Not once did she even ask me anything about my life…..”
****
A couple of years ago I found this video of Iris.
I loved it!
( I think I even posted it on Facebook.)
It’s such a lovely-positive-happy-ever-after-story about never giving up hope.
Iris was 53 when she had her baby using IVF.
I realise that subconsciously these last couple of years I have clung desperately to Iris’s story!
That could be me!
I mean look how many actresses have babies in their late 40’s.
It’s doable.
Surely,
like all of those people,
I too could be the ‘exception’ to the rule?
(And so the fantasy went.)
Despite the fact that I have always sworn I would never go down the IVF road without a partner, the last couple of weeks I have been doing some IVF research.
I think I just got to that point where I needed to do something….
anything to stop the crying.
Anything to stop feeling like this victim of my own life.
It has been enlightening.
I have learnt a lot…
Like did you know…
Women over 45 who are using donor eggs
(They will rarely let a woman over 45 uses her own eggs)
have a 1% chance of having a live birth.
1%
Iris was indeed the exception.
As happy and beautiful as her story is…
(I am definitely not faulting her for sharing it because let’s face it we all love stories like this!)
…if Iris is the 1% success rate then essentially there are 99 other women out there who also had IVF and it didn’t work for.
Women who didn’t end up getting their very own little bundle of joy.
A sombre thought.
I continued my research and found out more:
A package of 3 IFV cycles cost: £9160
Medical Consultations and advanced fertility scans cost: £760
Egg donation (including all the scans and monitoring) for the retrieval of 6 eggs cost: £5950
Sperm donation (x3 samples) cost: £2970
When all added up it comes to the delightful amount of £18840,
but
you will have a baby….
(Correction you will a 1% chance of having a baby.)
The irony is I vaguely remember reading an article written by a fertility doctor years ago telling me that exact fact.
I remember feeling very angry at the poor man.
How dare he attempt to ruin my fantasy, to take away my hope!!
Needless to say it has hit me with absolute clarity these last couple of weeks that what all these actresses (and no doubt most other people who get pregnant in their late 40’s and 50’s) fail to tell you is how many cycles they needed to have before they could make that 1% a reality.
And exactly how much money they spent doing it.
Hard truth:
I honestly cannot spend almost £20000 on a 1% chance.
As a supply teacher/dog walker who has a student loan to pay off…
Not a chance in hell!!
Frankly, I would rather go down the route of adoption and fostering than spend the next 7 years paying off something that has a 99% chance of not working.
Maybe it’s just time I accept that I won’t be able to have my own biological child.
It has been a bitter pill to swallow and it’s still not down yet!
Yes, I could probably be more positive and have faith that:
I am the exception to the rule.
“It absolutely will work!“
But I can’t seem to muster up enough hope and faith these days.
It seems I am fresh out!
Perhaps this is the beginning of my transformation into a cynical old cat lady?
Or maybe I am turning into a pragmatist!
(Heaven forbid!)
A research study done on childlessness in the UK found that just under one in five British women are currently reaching age 45 with no biological children of their own. The same study found that of those childless women 31% of them had never wanted children and a mere 2% had been too focused on their careers. 1
The remaining 67% were simply childless by circumstance.
Clearly, I am not alone.
(But that doesn’t stop the random crying.)
My therapist, thank goodness, seems to think the crying will end in the not-too-distant future and
that there is hope for me yet.
So for now I’ll hold on to that.
(Although he seems a bit reluctant to give me the exact date?)
Sigh,
I wish he would!
Credits
Baby Image by Pexels from Pixabay
Teddy Image by Cheryl Holt from Pixabay
- Berrington, A. (1970) Childlessness in the UK, SpringerLink. Springer International Publishing. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44667-7_3 (Accessed: November 26, 2022).