to ask how you cope if you can't have children?

[ohbigdaddio]

Just that really...did you adopt? Or have you accepted it and has your life taken a new, fulfilling direction? Do you ever really get over it? Or are you still finding it difficult years later?

DH and I have been TTC for nearly a year and a half, got another negative pregnancy test result this morning, both feel very down and deflated and considering giving up. I feel really numb today and not sure what I want to do next.

Not sure we can cope with emotional highs and lows (well, mainly lows!) for much longer and it's all we think about.
Age is not on our side, I'm 38, approaching 39 so not really got time to have a break from it all. Next step would be IVF, obviously with no guarantees.

Would love to hear any positive thoughts on a child free life, especially if you really wanted children at one point.

'expectation that if you don't have children you then must be wealthy, amazing holidays, long lie ins, plus a high flying career.'

Yep, and it's total bullshit. Childfree people have responsibilities and boring aspects of life like everyone else. And not everyone is a thrill seeker or an altruistic type. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a quiet, steady life where you can spend lots of time pleasing yourself. Personally, I couldn't give a fig about my 'legacy', when I'm gone, I'm gone. Even if I did have kids, they would have their own identity far beyond being Child of Me

That's a great list chesty.

Carmen. That was a pretty horrible post. I really think you should apologise to the poster you criticised so harshly. You were way out of line in my opinion.

And I agree with the two previous posters. Making a meaningful life without children is not necessarily about travelling the world and climbing to the top of the career ladder.

It can be about far more meaningful stuff than that. For me it has been about becoming a very involved aunt, really developing my creative interests and remaining very connected to my family in ways that mightn't have been possible if I'd had my own children.

Not being a mother doesn't mean you become totally focussed on your job and glamorous holidays.

My post wasn't the horrible one. The horrible comments that I read were made by someone saying really harsh things towards someone who had struggled with secondary infertility. And every post I have read on this thread has mentioned some kind of suffering and how that person has worked towards coping with that, so yes suffering is a theme of this thread. The poster I mentioned has lashed out at a complete stranger who has mentioned their own pain on a thread that has mainly been people showing mutual support towards one another, so I do think their comments are nasty and unnecessary.

While I don't want to minimise the pain of secondary infertility, this is supposed to be a thread about childlessness. So it's a different kind of pain. It's a bit like wandering into a thread about divorce and posting about a friendship breaking up: everyone recognises the pain of that and its validity, but it's not really on topic. I think it's important to recognise that we don't have to compete about who has suffered the most quantitatively to see that different kinds of pain are qualitatively different.

The OP is 38, and has been trying to conceive for 18 months, she and her partner have not yet had any infertility investigations. Firstly this does not indicate that she may not conceive naturally and secondly IVF may not be the only answer. Many of those who have posted have said yes, they went through this anguish for a lengthy period of time but eventually had a child. it would not be a "miracle" if this woman conceived, it may be entirely possible and just taking a little longer than usual. There have been some nasty posts on here, I only posted, explaining that my circumstances were different, to say adoption was an option that hadn't been widely discussed at that point. The whole "my anguish is worse than yours" response that this has evoked is really not very nice. Anyone desperately wanting a child has the same feelings for the duration of that experience whether they eventually have a baby or not. I also think there has been far too much emphasis on all the wonderful things you can do if you don't have a baby - goodness I never realised I could get an MBE and be a CEO just through infertility. Pretty obviously you will be financially better off, which brings some opportunities but most of us lead the same sort of lives in general terms with or without children.

True ExConstance, but the OP seems to want to hear the experiences of those who had to eventually resign themselves to childlessness and how they went forward and carved out an alternative life for themselves. Some of the posters who eventually had children have described very well how they were getting on with life without children, because that is very valid to the OP's question.

But those coming on and saying they spent several years trying to have children, were in despair and then miraculously got pregnant aren't really answering the OP's question. in fact, quite the opposite because what solved their despair was becoming pregnant. It's those posts that seem to be taking the thread off track.

One thing infertility makes you explore is just how much you actually want to be a parent.
Very much so.
Many people I know conceived with in a few months of trying. Although they have thought it through, have they considered it as much as someone who has tried for years.
We really sat and talked about why we wanted children.

Not to say that people don't think about it, but possibly not as much as someone contemplating IVF.

Would love to hear any positive thoughts on a child free life, especially if you really wanted children at one point.

This is from the OP. She doesn't want to hear yet another miracle baby. She doesn't want to hear 'relax'. She wants to hear that happiness is possible.
And it so is op.
We now talk about not having had children as a bullet we have dodged. Whenever we see people with a tantruming child, or paying a fortune for college or weddings, not being able to do things we remember all the stuff we don't have to deal with.

Thread title

"To ask how you cope if you can't have children"

About living a childless life

About how you find meaning when you are excluded from a world where you are outside the norm

Where you desperately want to be a part of the parents club but can't

Where you are having to come to terms with the pain of never

m.youtube.com/watch?v=5OEDYZ19EuE

I'm not sure I understand how 'my miracle baby's stories or 'I could 'only have one child' stories answer the question posed about how to cope with a childless life

We tried for 5 years but that didn't work. Tried IVF twice which was a dismal failure - so dismal in fact, that my husband didn't get the chance to do "his bit" - much to his disappointment. We would have needed ICSI too which would reduce our chances even more. we were extremely relieved to get away from the IVF.

So we decided to try adoption and if that didn't work, then move on. However we have now adopted twice and it's certainly challenging especially as they both have issues, but it was worth it.

We tried for five years to get pregnant. I have health problems and had always thought I would probably not have children because of that, and my husband was never bothered about having children anyway. However, when I was about 36 a number of things made us decide to try get pregnant. During this time I was found to have hormonal problems that were then treated, I had a laparoscopy, a small procedure to open the uterus, four lots of IUI and two lots of IVF where we had twin embryos put back both times, nothing worked. In the end the specialists felt that my health problems were stopping my body getting pregnant and they wanted to fill me full of steroids and try again with my final two frozen embryos.

By this time I was forty and had spent four years living my life against a background of infertility issues. I had quite a lot of childfree friends and the friends we had who did have children had teenage children by now so if we had got pregnant we would have been the only people we knew in our age group with tiny babies. So, while they were all enjoying their freedom again, we would have been starting at the very beginning with sleepless nights etc.

Something just clicked and we decided to just get off the merry-go-round and enjoy our life. We kept two embryos in storage for a further seven years but this year we finally decided not to store them anymore as we really don't want children now.

I think we are very lucky in that we are very, very happily married and, if anything, the IVF treatment only brought us closer. I realised how much my husband loves me, how we are a team and how lucky we are to feel the way we do about each other. We have built a lovely life, we have a business that we run together which is totally absorbing and interesting, we travel and do things when we want. We eat and get up when it suits us, spend our money on ourselves, socialise a lot with friends and have a much easier and less stressful life than we would have had had we had children - and the older I get the more I appreciate it. I listen to friends stress about packed lunches, school uniforms, unsuitable suitors, difficult behaviour, play dates and university fees and now just think how lucky I am not to have to worry about those things. We can also take more risks as we are only responsible for ourselves.

The thing is, I learnt years ago when I became ill that life is what you make of it and you only have a very brief time here. You may not be a parent, but you will still be part of a family. I am still a daughter, a granddaughter, a daughter-in-law, an auntie, a cousin, a sister and a wife, and all of those roles are worthy and important. I look at myself as a cog in a huge family that has been going on for centuries and will go on for many more hopefully. I don't need to have to have my own direct descendants to feel part of something bigger.

"Anyone desperately wanting a child has the same feelings for the duration of that experience whether they eventually have a baby or not."

Absolutely undoubtedly true. But this thread is about the time after that, when people realise they will never have a biological child. Which is something that someone who has had a baby, by definition, has not been through.

How is this hard to understand? And why is it so hard for some people to leave space for those of us who are childless involuntarily to talk about how we felt, as a different kind of experience from infertility ending in a baby? I am genuinely interested in why it is so difficult for some people to recognise that the experience is different. Is it because it's just unimaginable to those with families? But lots of things are unimaginable - why is this, in particular, so difficult to leave space for other to speak about?

The thing is, I learnt years ago when I became ill that life is what you make of it and you only have a very brief time here. You may not be a parent, but you will still be part of a family. I am still a daughter, a granddaughter, a daughter-in-law, an auntie, a cousin, a sister and a wife, and all of those roles are worthy and important. I look at myself as a cog in a huge family that has been going on for centuries and will go on for many more hopefully. I don't need to have to have my own direct descendants to feel part of something bigger.

This is beautifully expressed, and very true.

Thank you Becky.

A good Friend of mine decided against having kids after a late marriage and I would honestly say she seems really really happy. Her and her partner are not high earners but spend their hard earned cash on days out and pub meals in country pubs. She seems to have an idyllic existence. They just have a better standard of living that they wouldn't otherwise have. They have a great relationship with none of the strains and complications of balancing childcare.

Very well put Becky. My life was greatly enriched by my mother's sister who never had children of her own. She is the lynchpin of the extended family and my grief when she dies will only be next to losing a parent. She is far and away my most important aunt.

I, in turn, have had huge value added to my life by my nephews and niece and they are very much part of that life.

It is very difficult to not leave your imprint behind. It does not necessarily have to be in the form of children and grandchildren. It can be in the way you have touched and changed the lives of others, often without even realising it.

Thanks all for your thoughts. I'll read them properly after work tonight, I jumped to the end to post as this one comment caught my eye from ExConstance

The OP is 38, and has been trying to conceive for 18 months, she and her partner have not yet had any infertility investigations. Firstly this does not indicate that she may not conceive naturally and secondly IVF may not be the only answer. Many of those who have posted have said yes, they went through this anguish for a lengthy period of time but eventually had a child. it would not be a "miracle" if this woman conceived, it may be entirely possible and just taking a little longer than usual.

I didn't want to write loads on my OP just as I wanted some non biased responses to being unable to have children for whatever reason. I mean this with respect Ex but you are wrong.

DH and I (me in particular) have had every test going both on the NHS and privately. This has given us the 'unexplained infertility' diagnosis and advice from doctors to try naturally for a little while longer but then consider IVF.

I know that we have been trying for a relatively short time but age is not on our side. To all who have said keep trying, I know that is an option but the effect on my mental health is awful. I am fighting hard not to become severely depressed. Everyone's threshold is different and maybe mine isn't that high, but at some point I have to put my mental health first and the constant disappointment/living in hope behind me. To frogsgoladidadida who said she was almost sectioned, I feel for you. I have had suicidal thoughts at times as the pain is so horrendous.

DH and I read an IVF leaflet last night and were shocked at just how full on it sounds and all the pressure will be on me. We need to have a serious talk about where we go next but there is a real possibility that we may decide to call it a day soon to preserve my sanity and that is why I was interested in hearing from those who haven't been able to have children and whether they remained child free /adopted/fostered/travelled/etc but mainly I am asking can you be happy as at the moment this is not something I can imagine.

To those with secondary infertility stories, I honestly don't mean to be rude but I see this as a totally separate issue as you do have a child. All we want is one DC and we don't have that! A friend in RL (knowing our struggle) even said to me "Well, you know, we want a second DC soon...and we might struggle...just because you can have one doesn't mean you can have another" I was flabbergasted!

The miracle stories are fine and haven't upset me BUT my main interest is in how couples come to terms with being child free and where they go next.

Thanks all for your lovely comments. The support here has been overwhelming xx

my point is to keep going. Unfortunately keeping going is sometimes the easier option to deal with Coughandsplutter, making the decision to stop and accepting that that treatment just isn't going to work can be the harder decision to make.

The OP asked for how to cope with being child free-its in the thread title. She didn't ask how to cope with having fertility problems or how to cope if treatment is successful or if you eventually get pregnant naturally, she asked how you cope if you can't have children at all.

Infertility is bloody difficult even when treatment is successful, but it's much more difficult to deal with if you go through treatment and there isn't success at the end. That's obviously much more difficult than having a successful pregnancy after infertility. It of course doesn't mean the people with secondary infertility or those with primary infertility who got there in the end didn't suffer, it's just not relevant to this thread.

I think that what people have said about the pressure to be some kind of super-woman if you're childless can be true, and as the main proponent of it on this thread I hold up my hands to it and admit that I laughed out loud about the watching Love Island while eating Doritos and feeling guilty about not changing energy provider.

But I can promise the OP that I am truly, genuinely happy today, even though three years ago I was suicidally depressed.

I don't want to be woe is me but I'll answer your specific questions. DP and I tried for years, did IUI and IVF and gave it all up 18 months ago after accepting that the odds were stacked against us.

We didn't adopt. DP has two children already. I love them but they're not mine and they are certainly not encouraged by their Mum to love me (or even like me). Still, we manage to get along reasonably well and I cling to the hope that as they grow older they will begin to value me and my role in their life more. They're not my children though and that comes with a whole load of baggage even without infertility thrown into the mix!

Have I accepted it?
I've accepted it as a fact. Even though I'm still told to 'relax' just stop thinking about it and it'll happen' and all sorts of late in life success stories.

Do you ever really get over it?
I don't think you do. On a very regular basis I am hit with a crippling grief - that physically hurts - this can be triggered by anything and it can come completely out of the blue. It's real grief, not just sadness and every now and then it paralyses me. The hardest thing about this is that no-one understands - if someone has died people expect you to grieve for years but in my case no-one died, life goes on but for me the life that's going on is not what I hoped for and not what I planned.

I don't want to depress you. I am glad we tried. I wish we'd started trying earlier. I have two lovely step children who I try my very hardest to influence positively and with kindness. I have nieces and nephews who love me and who I love dearly. But to be honest I find it quite difficult to have a lot of contact with children and my closest friends these days don't have children (or have children who have grown up and moved out). I work for myself in a job I quite enjoy and I do a bit of voluntary work for the sense of community but also a reminder that on the grand scale of life I am lucky.
I wish you all the best and hope that one day your dreams come true.

Op you can be happy. It might take some time but a life without children does not have to be a life without joy.

My dh and I don't ban ourselves from Christmas, from watching family films, from going to the summer fete.

We enjoy things others might dip out on and are able to do more for others, too, as we have more time.

I indulge myself creatively in my spare time. We daydream not about winning the lottery but about the best possible cause we can leave our wordly goods to (and feel happily bountiful).

You absolutely will feel less bleak.

We decided not to have ivf because we didn't think we would cope with it. I can't say I'm glad I didn't do it but I'm glad I still have my mental health (I am prone to depression) and my physical health. I'm glad that we made our choice together, but I can honestly say it's the hardest choice I have ever, ever had to make.

Indeed I think that's part of the problem. It would have been much easier if ivf had not been an option. Having to decide whether or not to do it was truly awful. I don't know if the fertility industry understands the pressure of this alien decision.

Now it is not an option for us a burden has lifted. Our life has moved on. Not every chat ends up being the "deciding about ivf" talk. We have started to think about the rest of life again. And it has become fun again.

This is a hard time. A bloody hard time. But it will end.

heidi - you express that so powerfully, about the grief. I have very much felt the same.

I feel like there has been a process of making my peace with it, though. At the start, it used to hit me like a tidal wave, this all-consuming, submerging grief that could hit, in an acutely embarrassing way, at the most random of times. It was hard even to know who I was in those moments. But they've become less and less frequent and less and less violent with time. I feel like, more and more, I am at peace with it - I even sometimes have whole hours where I think it's actually going to be a really good thing for me.

One of the hardest things is not having the space, or the understanding from other people to have this grief and deal with it. My parents and sibling haven't offered an iota of comfort or support through the whole thing. My mother seems to be incapable of not talking about babies when she sees me, and I feel almost like she is trying to stimulate an emotional response that I am simply not willing to share with her, precisely because of the aforementioned lack of sympathy. It's difficult to share with friends because it's like a huge shape that only I can see and feel, hidden beneath a cloak of wordlessness, and it's impossible to find the language to express what that shape is like to others. (Sometimes I can barely express it to myself). With other experiences, there is more of a ready-made discourse. I think, in many ways, this has been the hardest thing - the isolation, the feeling of abnormality, even sometimes of defectiveness. This is why I'm so obstinate about creating space for people to try to make sense of it on here (and apologies to anyone whom I've offended in the process). Some things can be easily to articulate amongst strangers.

Anyway, one thing I've really noticed in general culture and many of these posts is the idea that if you don't have children your life can still have meaning if you do something spectacular.

I disagree with this. What most posters are saying - myself included - is that you have to find what matters to you and do that. If that's travelling, do it. If it's kicking ass in your career, do it. If it's sitting around eating doritos and watching Love Island, do it.