Disrupted plans

I started blogging here when I was at least seven years past learning I would never ever have children. I'd done a lot of grieving, expressed some of my feelings online with friends in a restricted space. I've never done the full emotional download onto my blog that some others have done. And now I know my blog is connected to my own, real name - as connected as I feel to Mali, who has been my online persona since 2006.

I remember some years ago seeing someone say (online, not one of my beloved bloggers) that their plan for their childless old age was to stay healthy. At the time I remember thinking (and writing here) that that wasn't a plan, it was just putting their head in the sand. My parents lived fit and healthy lives, but the ends of their lives were difficult. Genes and cancer had other ideas. Looking at them, I knew I needed to plan. I know now how right I was.

I just thought I'd have a few more years before they were necessary. My husband and I are going through some pretty serious health stuff right now. It's caused me to realise that even my relatively cautious plans have now been blown out of the water. I'm going to take a step back from No Kidding in NZ. I'll still blog, but just not every week. Because there's a lot going on in my head at the moment, and I don't want to write it all down for public consumption. And it's hard thinking of topics to write about when my every thought is about another issue. 

But living in the moment helps. Finding joy in a lovely day, good food, a joke. I wrote about it in my 2020 Healing series, and Gifts of Infertility under Mindfulness. It helps each day pass. I don't apologise for the repetition.

 

When friends have to be our family

A friend reminded me a while ago that family isn't everything. She's someone who has stepped up for childless uncles and aunts, and knows my story very well. One of the few IRL friends and family who reads here. We've both had to help parents and in-laws in their old age. And she's starting to downsize for a move towards her own family - not far in distance, but a big change - to fund the retirement lifestyle they want to have. (Again, another reminder for me to clean up here. Yes, the universe is trying to tell me something.)

I made a simple comment about having to ensure we are somewhere safe earlier than most people might have to think about it. People with children that is. And she reminded me that when family aren't around - either because of geographical (or emotional) distance or their non-existence -  that friends are there to help. And even friends kids. She pointed out that we've been friends for almost 30 years, and her kids have always known we are part of the fabric of her life, even if we don't know those children well now (they're grown and in their 30s themselves). She's sure they'd be around for us even if she or her husband couldn't be. And I've been reminded too that others feel the same way. 

Family doesn't have to be focused on only parent-child relationships. It can have a much wider definition. Blood, or not blood. Related, and not related. We need to remember that.

Vulnerability

Further to my post last week, maybe a renewed sense of vulnerability can encourage me to make some changes/put in precautions. Things happen. Little things. Big things. But we can't stay with our head in the sand thinking that "things won't happen until we are old." Because "things" don't always wait!

I know that those who are childless are not the only ones who feel vulnerable at times. Those who have children who aren't close - either geographically, or emotionally - must feel the same vulnerabilities. Those living alone must have a heightened sense of their own vulnerability. It is yet another example where the saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" doesn't work. It also reminds us we're not immune from bad luck. Ignorance truly is bliss. But I'm not sure I'd like to go back to the ignorance, despite everything. 

Sending out love to anyone who is feeling vulnerable at the moment. You are not alone.

 

Ageing without children: Self-motivation needed

I have been thinking a lot about ageing without children recently.So far, I've talked a good game, but haven't done very much. I need to work on my to-do list. I'm still young enough that I don't have to have done anything major just yet, but a recent conversation has inspired me to get cracking! Here's an update on previous posts:

Making a Will that I am relaxed about with still hasn't eventuated. We made Wills before our trip to Europe last year, and they are okay. We changed quite a few things, and had a number of deep conversations and made different decisions than ten years earlier. But it still feels a bit piecemeal. We really need to settle on something we can live with (or, more accurately, die with) for the next five or ten years. It's really hard when some members of our family don't need any money, and one or two others do. It's difficult too when we actually want to make a difference in the wider community, and in the medical research community, but can't really decide where or how. A quandary.

I know I need to think about a Power of Attorney. But aside from the Husband, I don't really want anyone else making decisions about me! I know that's not realistic, and I know I could write something like a living Will. But how likely is it that people will follow it? Sigh. Chalk it up as still on the list.

Downsizing our lives is much higher on my list now than it was a few years ago. There are a lot of things to do before we move - we have major maintenance to do, and want to finish off a few other jobs around the place. But it is something I'm much more aware of. I need to look around for where we might live, get an idea how we can downsize. Our current place is three-four bedrooms, and quite large. We've lived here since the 1990s, and whilst we've cleaned out quite a lot of things over the years that we no longer need or want (eg university papers, etc), there's a lot more that needs to be done. I did some decluttering last year, and felt good about it. So I'm hoping I can get into that some more this year too. But the frugality I was raised with, and my resultant need to keep things that might be useful in the future, means that I struggle a little with this.

On the bright side though, I'm not really acquiring new things, unless they are replacements. I'm wearing a T-shirt today that I just realised is over ten years old, and yet I think of it as relatively new. Sure, I have newer T-shirts. Yes, we want a new TV, and need new armchairs. But I don't feel the need to shop. I find that quite liberating. Yes, I like new things. Yes, I will buy new things if I need them, and get pleasure from that (if I can find something I like). And no, I don't want to be like my MIL who, in her late 60s, told me that at her age she shouldn't buy new things. She lived for another almost 30 years! But I'm not establishing myself or my house either. So I can be much more picky about what I spend money on, and what takes up space in my house. I like that. 

I think we will need an interim place - somewhere without stairs, and more manageable than a section on a hill with lots of greenery - for the next ten years. I'm starting to think about where that might be, and how we might live. We survived for three months in one bedroom apartments, but I think we need something slightly bigger. But we don't need a house this size. And we need to clean it out long before it becomes too hard. 

Ultimately, the plan is maybe to move into an assisted living facility. I've read some No Kidding bloggers who are horrified at the prospect. I'm not. (I think I can see another post coming about this.) Hopefully, we will still be able to afford to do that. Prices are rising rapidly, and our income is not. Trump-induced stock market falls do not help retirement savings! At the same time, we want to continue to travel. So we're being quite frugal in our day to day lives. I like to think that a few dollars saved on my groceries somehow compensates for a three month trip overseas! Yes, I'm delusional!

Finally, building my social network is slow. I'm socialising with friends regularly, but still haven't joined any groups to extend my friendship circle. Yep, like everything else, that's still on my list.

Please forgive the repetition. I think I use these posts as motivation to actually get things done! Let's hope it works.

Childlessness and Pregnancy Loss

I listened to an interesting podcast the other day. Those of you who know me might be surprised - I definitely struggle with podcasts. In fact, I started to write an explanation, but have turned it into a post on A Separate Life this week. But this was one I had to hear. Because Loribeth featured on The Full Stop podcast, in a discussion that is very pertinent to me - Childlessness and Pregnancy Loss. Don't continue if you're not ready for this, or if you have difficult feelings around pregnancy and pregnancy loss. (Though I try to address these at the end.) You'll find the link here via  Loribeth's post about the podcast. And a warning: it's a tear-jerker!

As any regular reading of No Kidding in NZ knows, I had two pregnancy losses in my path to Otherhood, and then spent years participating in and moderating an ectopic pregnancy website, before I even thought of starting this blog. So I was interested to see what angle the discussion might take. Any limited time for four people to discuss a topic is, of necessity, going to limit the discussion itself. (In her post, Loribeth mentioned the "gazillion" things she wished she'd been able to say!)  We understand that. And there were some very interesting points. These are my comments on it.

First, the issue of silencing ourselves was raised. Loribeth has talked about this too, but I was thinking about it from my own perspective. Talking about loss seems to be largely taboo in our society. The whole "don't say you're pregnant until after the first trimester" really says "it doesn't count until you are properly pregnant." (I had someone say, "oh, it's still really early then" as if it didn't count, even though my nausea was very real. I'd announced my pregnancy early only to my family at Christmas, as they would have wanted to know why I wasn't drinking! But it was dismissed.) After a loss, the rule of no early announcement says, "we don't care about early pregnancy losses." People don't want to hear it. It's as if you're "not really pregnant" or, as a friend said to me, "you never had anything so there was nothing really to lose." So even when we have a loss, we are unable to talk about it. We are silenced. 

In ectopic terms, this too is incredibly dangerous, as it means a general lack of awareness by both family and friends, the women themselves, and their doctors. Women's early pregnancy pains or other symptoms are easily dismissed. I was lucky that I had a great GP, who wanted to monitor my HCG levels to ensure I was having a miscarriage. When my levels did not fall, but rose insufficiently, it was clear I was not - it was an ectopic pregnancy, which instantly means "danger." I've since seen many many women - one woman is too many - be told by their doctors not to worry, they're just having a miscarriage, only to end up in hospital with life-saving emergency surgery after internal bleeding, or needing emergency medication. I remember Bamberlamb telling me that, when presenting at hospital with symptoms of her third ectopic pregnancy, she had to ask the nurses/doctors for their names so her husband would know how to name if she died as a result of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. It was only then that she got the help she needed. And it was only because she had been active on the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust Messageboard that she knew all the symptoms and what they meant - and knew them far better than the medical professionals at the emergency department.*

But, as the podcasters noted, we also silence ourselves. At first we do it out of self-protection, I think. I found I could talk about the mechanics of my ectopic pregnancies - the reality of the medical treatment, what implanted where, etc - more easily than the fact that I lost the future baby. Anything involving emotions would have set me off - I wasn't much of a crier before loss, but then the floodgates opened! So I preferred not to talk about it, except with a select few, or online, when you can type even when the screen is blurry through the tears. I also felt embarrassed and ashamed. I don't now. Not at all. But at the time, emotions are complicated. Protecting ourselves as we work through them is important self-care.

We also silence ourselves, trying to be sensitive to others. We don't want them to be uncomfortable, so we hide our own emotions and therefore our own experience. We don't want newly pregnant women to worry any more than they might. But in doing that, we are also not being honest about how it affects us, or the significant percentage of women who experience loss or childlessness. I find it interesting that it is often the grieving person who is forced to be the most sensitive to others. (Don't get me started!)

But all this silence is not entirely honest either. When we can cope, when we are ready, talking about loss openly is much more honest, both to our own experiences and our own relationships with others. It must help those who will come after us. Because there are always those who come after us, and knowledge is important, awareness is life-saving, and information is power. That's why I worked in the field (voluntarily) for years, and why I still try to talk about it openly when I feel it is appropriate and/or necessary.

Support, as Lori mentioned on the podcast, is something we take when we can get it. But often that support drops away, especially if people go on to have children and drop off the radar. She found that in her support group, and I found it also at the ectopic messageboards, as more and more of my friends went off and had their families, and disappeared. I didn't really belong there except in the anonymous moderator role. But my presence, like Lori's as a leader of her support group, was important visually, just to let people know we were okay. And then I found blogging, where I do belong, even if I live on the other side of the world from most of you. That's why I love this community so much!

Michael, of the Full Stop podcast, also talked about how "the ghost (of his and his wife's losses) continues to be with us." Their losses are around birthdays and Mother's Day, and that is hard to ignore. I can relate to that. I learned I would never have children at a scan on my birthday, and both my ectopics took place over Christmas and New Year. Others I know remember the dates of their last IVFs, or when they decided not to look at assisted reproduction, or adoptions fell through or they had no choice but to opt out.Though I'd like to give some hope. After over 20 years, I can think of those dates and losses with love and compassion for the woman I was, but largely without the pain. (Although I admit that the Mother's Day reminder is an unkind double whammy.) I've written about this here, and here, amongst other places.

His perspective on how a man grieves, whilst at the same time wanting to help his wife, is complicated too. He had nowhere to find support. I remember my husband saying that his GP asked "if his wife was over it yet." I don't recall him saying the GP asked how HE was handling it. And I remember how, when I was feeling better recovered and stronger, that my husband felt he could finally open up to me more about his feelings. 

Finally, there was a really interesting discussion around envy amongst the childless community. Even though we are all living lives without children now, the speakers felt the envy of those who never got the joy of that positive pregnancy test, or who felt the losses of the children they never had but don't feel they can talk them as losses, or those who never had their losses recognised, or those who never named their losses or had those names recognised by family and friends, or those who never held their lost babies, or those who never saw them take a breath, etc. And those who are envied might also envy - it's only natural, I think. They might envy those who never felt the fear of an emergency hospital intervention, who never felt the grief of a late-term or full-term loss, who never had to take medication or have a D&C to end an incomplete miscarriage, who never had to tell family/friends/colleagues of their loss. 

Envy is, of course, for what the other person had, not what they lost. It's a blindness, and is only about the loss felt by the envious person (eg. the lack of a pregnancy positive, or a good scan, or heartbeat, etc). And that is real. But we also need to know the existence of that envy can feel like we are negating what the subject of that envy has lost. That the magnitude of their loss feels cancelled out by the moments they had that we might not have. 

That's where compassion comes in. And sometimes, compassion can only come with time, when we are less self-centred, and our envy can morph into true compassion and empathy for another's loss. I think, I hope, that the childless community is good at that, ultimately. Most of us recognise that everyone's grief is different, and there's no better or worse.

* I know all this is wordy and perhaps repetitive. If one woman finds this information about ectopic pregnancy, and it helps her or someone she knows, it is worth noting.