I am involuntary childless. An older, more cruel term is barren. At 67 the time when I could have become a mother is long past, had I not had an illness that denied me motherhood.
I have only held a baby twice in my life.
When I was a child I thought I would have many children. I picked out names. As one of six sisters I thought I would be like my mother.
When I was 16 I had a serious bladder infection. My parents weren’t big on getting medical care but they finally gave me the money for a doctor. Along with the antibiotics he also gave me another diagnosis— cysts on my ovary. Nothing more was said about it and there was no follow up.
A year later I got pregnant. I have written about the abortion and my regret. I didn’t know at the time it would be the only pregnancy I would ever experience. I was 17.
I suffered intense depression after but eventually pulled myself out. And I stopped any birth control at all. Every couple of months I would get excited at another false alarm. Until I gave up.
I thought that might be the magic bullet— giving up. But it was not.
Why? Because unbeknownst to me those cysts noted years before had come back and were slowly growing out of control.
When I was 25 I began to bleed uncontrollably. I ignored it but my sister Eve did not. She pushed me directly into an appointment with a gyn.
And two days later I was in the hospital for a right salpingo oophorectomy. That is the medical term. The common term is having your dreams pulled out and stomped on.
That was in July of 1982. By Christmas I was back in to get more cysts removed, along with the tube on the right side.
I thought to myself, at least I have the left side. I didn’t know about the scarring. I probably had PCOS. I’ll never know.
Another five years passed, during which time I got married, but not pregnant. In 1987 the bleeding was back. I woke up from the surgery in the maternity ward. Why, I will never know. I also woke up with no tubes or ovaries left. A few years later, in my late 30s, the hot flashes started and that was that.
Or was it?
I have told myself various things about these events. I have told myself that even if I had given birth at 17 there is no guarantee it would be happily ever after.
We can’t know what would have happened if a different path had been taken. Not for sure anyhow. I could have lost my child through accident or disease. They could have grown up to be an addict or criminal and caused me years of grief. There is no way to know.
That story was not very satisfying. My next story is that I may be a biological failure but I am an ecological success. The world needs fewer first world babies, who grow up to be first world consumers. I was just walking my talk. Good story.
Too bad it is bull. It may be technically true. But it was not intentional. It is just balm.
The last story is the best one. It doesn’t require any particular intention on my part and is true: because I have no personal offspring to absorb my attention and energy, I am free to fight for all children.
I can do more than just care about the welfare of children in general— I have the bandwidth to advocate for it.
The world’s children belong to us all. They are the future. Making sure there is a halfway decent planet for them is the sacred duty of each generation. And I am more free to push because I am not protecting individual children.
Thinking of the whole matter in that light helped. But it did not fill the hole that I never want to admit exists. In truth, nothing can fill it. Motherhood is one of those essential experiences that I will never have. Like all losses it has left scars in more places than the spots where my ovaries used to be.
I thought, from time to time, of adopting. But I aged out before single parent adoptions were readily available. I wanted to do the whole thing with a partner but it just never came together. And the years kept passing.
I have been haunted by dreams of a baby all my adult life. In the dream I lose the baby I am supposed to care for. I spend the whole dream searching and wake up tired. The dream is just a reflection of waking life where I have not lost a baby but the ability to have any baby.
And that lack has shaped my life in ways that go way beyond the bare facts. It changed everything.
I know that there are women who are childless by choice. And that is to be respected. But I am not one of them.
Thank you for sharing your story for your honesty and your integrity! 🙏🩷
Thank you for this. I'm deeply touched.