On being a childless mother
It’s been 4 years since my son died, and I never expected to still be childless.
Having kids was never part of my plan. I said from the time I was little I never wanted biological children, and this is something I stuck to in my growing up years. I’ve heard it said wanting your child and wanting a pregnancy are not the same thing, and I feel this strongly. While I have always had a strong desire to mother and nurture, I’ve never had a strong desire to be pregnant. I know people who are the opposite, who from the time they were little dreamed of being pregnant and having babies, and that was never me. Partly because I knew the reality of my own body, and that even if I did get pregnant it wouldn’t be the idyllic pregnancy one dreams of. I also don’t have the strong attachment to biology and having a child that shared my genetic material that I know other people have.
And then I got pregnant, and I describe it as the biggest shock in the world. Not just because it was unplanned but because being a biological parent wasn’t something I’d ever dreamed of. And while I wanted my son, I also knew the reality of what pregnancy would do and was doing to my body, and to him. Being Paris’ mom is the greatest gift in the world, and that didn’t change when he died. I still have a pregnancy story, a birth story, I’m still a mother. And his life and death opened me up to a whole new side of motherhood I didn’t even know existed. Being a mother doesn’t stop when there is no living child to mother.
This last week, I attended a childless summit. People who were childless by choice, or by circumstance, in conversations tailored to those without living children. The grief, the joy, the reality of existing in a world where parenting and the traditional framing of parenthood is held up as the ideal. And I realized sitting in those discussions, listening to other people share their stories about not having children or pursuing motherhood in the bioloical sense, that I needed to hear these stories. I needed to acknowledge again, the fact that I thought I would have a living child by now, and that even though I don’t I’m still a mother.
When you’re handed an infertility diagnosis, or a pregnancy loss, society seems to approach it as “Oh you got pregnant once, you’ll do it again.” ‘At least you have your other kids.” “You could just adopt.”
None of these are helpful (and this post isn’t even going to begin getting into the misguided idea that adoption is a solution for infertility). I’ve come to the conclusion that society wants people to get pregnant again after loss, they want them to “just adopt” and it has to do with the fact that we are so uncomfortable with grief. And this grief, it overlaps with what most consider one of the most joyous times in a person’s life.
A friend announced her pregnancy a few months ago, and I hid in the bathroom and sobbed. Not because I wasn’t happy for her, but because I was sad for me.
4 years ago Paris was born, and ripped wide open everything I thought I knew about motherhood. It’s not as black and white as it once seemed. I thought I couldn’t survive the first year without trying for a living baby, but I did. I survived, and I kept surviving. The ache in my chest of missing my son will never go away. I am proud to be Paris’ mom.
So I didn’t expect I’d still be without a living child at this point. Not having a living child in no way makes me less of a mother. And not having a child at home doesn’t mean I live any less of a full life, that I know any less love.
