The different life lived: 20 years on

Infertility and pregnancy loss and childlessness bring a lot of anniversaries. I have the positive test anniversaries, the loss anniversaries - when the losses began, and ended, when I was hospitalised, and had different procedures - the date I knew I'd never have children, and many more. It's a lot. I've heard people say pick a point and grieve. That doesn't work for me. As the year moves on, as the weather and trees change, flowers bloom, there are so many reminders. That's loss. Anyone who has experienced it in any way will recognise the way it can stay with you. Of course, the last year I've had a lot of 20th anniversaries, and there are a few more to come. The ones with the zero seem more obvious, and they hurt a little more.

This last week it was the 20^th anniversary of my second ectopic expected due date, 31 August. I knew by January that the pregnancy was being lost. Later, I also knew that a good friend from the Ectopic Pregnancy online group was due to have her baby, and we shared the same due date. She had her child, and I never resented it, even though I had expected I might. I am grateful for that. The truth was that I mourned the loss of MY baby, and her baby was not mine. In fact, I felt a connection to that baby (and met her a few years later). Some years the date creeps up on me, and I barely notice it. Most years I’m fine with it, acknowledging what never was, and time passing.

This year though, I have known it was coming. I've felt it more. Perhaps it is the significance of the 20^th anniversary. The acknowledgement of that baby's 20th birthday. Perhaps it is the knowledge that I’m the only person in the world who thinks about it. (My husband doesn’t remember the date, and I don’t like to bring him down by reminding him. It's bad enough that tomorrow is Father's Day here, and he's acutely aware of that.) Perhaps it’s the thought of the childhood completely lost as they would have left their teens this year. It's always the loss of the adult life never even started. Perhaps of course it is also the life never lived by his/her parents – the life we never got to live. It's all made it a little harder this year.

We lived a different life. It has been a good life. Filled with adventures and experiences and friendships I would never have had otherwise. With many more years yet, and many more good things to come, I hope! But every so often, I need to acknowledge what has been lost, and the passing of time. And so today, I do that.

Major Life Events

In my 2020 Healing Project post talking about the importance of Experience in our lives, I promised to come back with a list of Major Life Events, that are specific to me, both pre-infertility and post-infertility. Rather belatedly, today is the day!

I have wanted to do this ever since I read a blogger feel sad that, after the birth of her last child, she would have no more major life events to eagerly anticipate. Rather, the life events she had to look forward to were now ones of loss – children leaving home, deaths etc. I could have pointed out that the children leaving home can both be a loss and a wonderful beginning (I’ve seen friends experience this, rapidly turning their children’s bedrooms into their offices, begin to travel, etc), that there may be weddings, new homes, , maybe grandchildren, retirement, travel etc in her future. But I understood her feelings at the time were full of the loss with the ending of her family-building efforts, even as I resented the implication that the only major life events that are eagerly anticipated are around young people – marriage, and giving birth, for example.

In the No Kidding community too, others have also talked about milestones, including Loribeth here, and she links to other discussions on the issue. She listed celebrations she did and did not get to have, and suggested a menopause parade, which I would be love!

So I wondered, what were/are my major life events?

NZers don’t have a big graduation ceremony when we leave high school, though we have an end-of-year  prize-giving (at which I would probably have spoken) except that I was off in Thailand on my AFS year. That was a major life event, perhaps one of my most major, in that it was my first time overseas, and really changed my life in many ways. (Though I also think my life may have been similar without it, given my interests).

I threw my own 20^th birthday party, which was more significant for us than a 21^st at the time.

Graduation from university was not a big deal. I attended my BA graduation, and my parents and sister were there, but none of my friends were really there or at the graduation ball, so it was all a bit of a wash-out. Except that we saw a shooting star on the way home! I didn’t even attend a graduation for my Masters degree, as I was living in a different city at the time. I got my degree certificate in the mail.

Rather than graduation, moving city, starting work and my first official pay packet was more of a major event for me.

I had a wedding, but it was different than the one I might have thrown even five years later, with even different friends and attendees. And so many years later, I can confidently say that the wedding was pretty much irrelevant, given all the living we have done together in our marriage. (It’s a good thing we – and my parents – didn’t spend a fortune on it!)

 My overseas trips have almost all been major life events. I can name most of my trips by year. Or I identify years by where we went, and what happened around them. The timing of some smaller or repeat trips are blurry – Bintan/Singapore, miscellaneous Aussie trips, Fiji – but name a big trip and I can instantly tell you which year. And I remember my husband’s birthday with a zero in South Africa more than I remember our 25^th Wedding Anniversary trip a few months earlier to Sydney.

My one and only diplomatic posting to Thailand was a major life event, for both me and my husband. It lasted three years, and was a highlight for us both, which I guess does make it pretty major!

I hosted a small dinner party for my 40^th. But it was in the midst of infertility, so I would not call it a major life event. In fact, my 41^st birthday, when I learned that my tubes were blocked after further IVF was ruled out by my fertility specialist, is more memorable, in both a negative, heart-breaking sense, and in hindsight, the beginning of a period of healing and revelation.

I left full-time work, and learned a new contentment with my life. I got clients, and travelled for work. I met online friends in real life in London and Slovenia, travelled with a diplomat friend, volunteered for a charity, and as a result attended a celebration at the House of Commons in London.

I celebrated my 50^th birthday in South Africa, but it was really “just another” very special overseas trip. I was perhaps more impressed with being brave enough to go up in a balloon in Turkey a year earlier, or the first cruise we took in the Aegean and Adriatic on the same trip. Or the five months we travelled together the year after. The milestone of my birthday was the least important or memorable of those events. (Though the degustation menu of nine courses at an amazing restaurant – ranked Africa’s best around that time – was a memorable birthday dinner.)

I blogged, met amazing people, realised I was capable of writing things people wanted to read, was published and quoted in magazines and other websites. They're all major milestones for me.

Then we get into the negative “major life events.” Positive pregnancy tests that turned into ectopics, hospitalisations, the end of our fertility efforts, my father’s death, my husband’s loss of job, my mother’s death, and then the deaths of my parents-in-law. Earthquakes and a pandemic. None of these were eagerly anticipated. They all brought both negative feelings and events and changes into my life. But they taught me a lot too, and often had positive results. Ectopics brought me life-long international friends and brought me to blogging. A hysterectomy and menopause brought me the freedom of being an elderwoman (as Jody Day likes to say, which is so much better than the term crone). Infertility brought me so many gifts I wrote a 25 post series about them.

But there are still major milestones to anticipate. Resuming travel post-pandemic is one, and hopefully spending a lot more time in either Europe or North America, or both. Moving house (as will be inevitable as I age) is another. It could and should be exciting, rather than a loss. Qualifying for our government superannuation (pension) as we turn 65 (or is it 67 these days, I’m not 100% sure?). (Still years away, I point out!)

What these milestones and events – positive and negative, past and future – have all taught me, and what life has taught me more generally, is that major life events aren’t really that important. I’m so glad I’m not limited by judging my life on a few major life events around children I did or did not have. What happens in between so-called milestones or life events is real life; life that is wonderful and sad and happy and broad and amazing and scary but all so worth it. 

With or without children. I’m glad you’re with me here as I continue to navigate through the years.

Accurate thinking

 I was just listening to an interview on our national radio station. It was aimed at how to help anxious children (and parents) but there were many points that were equally relevant to us. My favourite point, though, was:

"Don't teach positive thinking. Teach accurate thinking."

Isn't that perfect? (And not only because it has given me a topic for today! lol)

I'm not overly negative or cynical (despite being told by a colleague once that I was "quite cynical for one so young" when I made a comment that he agreed with) but I'm also not someone with a glass-half-full attitude all the time either. I like to think I'm realistic. (Though once again, this comment is tempered by remembering friends of friends on Fbk who think that they are politically objective, then spew all sorts of hate. Sigh!) Perhaps all these qualifications about who I am or am not just back me up. I hope I'm realistic. I think I was realistic when I saw the infertility and loss statistics for and against my age and my history (first after one ectopic, then after a second) and the evidence we (me, my husband, and my fertility guy) were faced with during IVF cycles, and assessed these without emotion (or rather, with emotion put aside) to determine what if any our next steps might or might not be. It doesn't mean that I didn't have hope. But hope - and for a while, despair - were tempered by evidence, science, and brutal (from each of us at different times) honesty.

I think this is what we ask for when we ask that the "think positive never give up" brigade understand our positions. We don't want our positions dismissed, or the evidence to be ignored. We just want people to understand or at least, to accept our situations. 

In exactly the same way, it is not accurate to assume that a life without children will be never-ending gloom, loss, or sadness. Neither is it accurate to say it will be perfectly happy, and that everything we've all been through will be forgotten. Of course not! It is accurate to say that our lives can and most likely will be good, happy, with some wonderful experiences. Looking on the bright side, embracing the good things we have already, or have because we don't have children, is not blindly optimistic. It is simply realistic. Life is full of balances, trade-offs, pros and cons. The joy is there if we look for it. That's accurate. And I'm not kidding!

700

This is my 700^th post on No Kidding in NZ, and only a few weeks shy of my ten year anniversary here. I started blogging when I had already come to terms with my No Kidding situation. It had been seven years since the day all avenues were closed to me. Those seven years saw me grieve, saw me question myself and my value, and saw me grapple with a lot of issues about myself and my place in society. But they also saw me embrace my lifestyle without children, expand into new career ventures, develop new coping skills, and finally feel a contentment that I’d been looking for over many years.

I wasn’t grieving any longer. I felt acceptance and clarity. But I felt alone too, in my post-grieving No Kidding world, and wanted a community that would understand. And I felt I had been through a lot, and through my volunteer work on a pregnancy loss messageboard, knew that my experience could help others, and I didn’t want to keep those hard-won lessons to myself.

And here I am 700 posts later, and ten years later. The blog is part of me now. I’m sure some people wonder why I still blog on this topic. Do I still have things to say? Most weeks. Though I struggle from time to time! Do I still find comfort knowing that there are people who get it, who get me? Yes, definitely. Do I know that I still help people from time to time? Yes. Every so often there is a comment or email that makes it so very worthwhile. So am I sticking around? Yes, for a while at least! Thanks for sticking around with me.

Painful pandemic reminders

I was “chatting” with some other No Kidding bloggers the other day. We were all, to various extents, struggling with the lockdown. In general, I’ve been finding it okay, but that is probably because I’m in NZ, where our risk has been limited by very quick movement into a lockdown. We are still in a period of uncertainty, but I’m not seeing cases of COVID19 rise exponentially around us, as some of you have been, and that has made life in lockdown much easier. On the down side, I haven’t had a coffee for three weeks! (I don’t make coffee at home because a) I make terrible coffee, b) my husband hates the smell of coffee, so it’s best NOT to make it at home, and c) I’ve always been able to use it as an excuse to pop out and get a nice flat white - until now!)

What is hard, though, and what some of the other No Kidding bloggers were also struggling with, is to turn my mind away from the pandemic that has the world in its grip, and write something here for those of us who didn’t have the choice not to have children. But even in a pandemic, reminders are still everywhere. Discussions on-line about parents struggling with home-schooling, or with bored children, or with the noise of a full house are everywhere. Fun videos families have made together are swamping social media. The Prime Minister designated the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny as essential workers in her press conference, and talked about the Teddy Bear project to put bears and soft toys in your house windows to provide amusements for children when they go on walks. Yes, even when we escape the house to go for a walk, we are constantly reminded that we don’t have children. If this is still painful for you, my heart goes out to you. It’s never easy to be reminded of what we have lost.

And even though it’s not painful for me any longer – or rarely, at least – and even though I have taken some delight in a house up the hill from me, that has posed and dressed their teddy bear in different ways over the last two weeks (so far I’ve seen their bear playing cricket, going skiing, dressed in the national soccer/football uniform, being a chef, and working on a laptop!), it still reminds me that my house is quiet, that I have no children to delight in dressing a bear or decorating trees with Easter eggs cutouts, or do some baking with me (as my niece did with my sister a day or two ago). Or, as I did yesterday, make homemade marshmallow (a NZ specialty)eggs with me. I brush these things off these days. But they still cause little pinpricks in my psyche.

And you know, that’s okay. It’s okay because everyone is feeling a little vulnerable right now. So if you’re feeling a bit more vulnerable or sensitive than you are usually, then that’s okay too. It’s one of the lessons I learned best during infertility and when recovering from it. That it’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to feel sad. Remember, we’re all with you, doing the same thing. We’ll get through this together.

Arohanui. (With love.)

Timely resources

I'm taking a break from my project today, simply because my mind won't turn to it. NZ has just announced a lockdown for four weeks, and I'm just getting my head around it. I'm glad we're doing it now, rather than when it is too late. If lockdowns work, then it will have been well worthwhile. But this news reminded me that now is not the time to go quiet on everyone in our much-loved No Kidding circles. Or wider.

So right now I'm going to flag some posts others in our community have written recently:

You might have been hiding under a rock if you haven't seen posts from many other No Kidding bloggers about Jody Day's update of her book, Living the Life Unexpected, in her Global Blogtour. If you're feeling alone right now, this is a great resource, and so are the blogs of all those included in the blogtour, so it's worth checking out these wonderful blogs. You'll have seen some of these posts appear in my blogroll of favourite No Kidding blogs. I wasn't involved in this blogtour because of other projects, so I'm really pleased all those other amazing people have been writing about it.

Jody has also written a great post about Mother's Day (as it has just ended in the UK) in the current situation, and that might give you some comfort too, I hope.

Infertile Phoenix wrote a lovely post here about using the tools she developed during and post-infertility, and it is worth checking out, as it's a very good reminder..

This community online has always been so supportive of each other, and I've always been proud of that. It's something we can continue to rely on, especially if we are isolated from our normal support networks. And it is a model we can use to support our family and friends as they are isolated too.

I'm going to try to follow my own advice:

• Learn how to calm myself
• Don't think about the what-ifs
• Feel joy and gratitude
• Connect
• Be kind (as our Prime Minister always reminds us all) - to myself and others.
• And breathe. As I often say to others, but say to myself just as often, I must remember to breathe!

Take care. I'm Not Kidding. And Arohanui to all.


And here are some flowers to brighten your day:

2018: The year in review

Loribeth recently wrote a year in review post for her blog, reminding me that I try to do this too, in lieu of the missing Creme de la Creme that Mel used to run. The idea is to choose your favourite posts of the year, so that your readers can enjoy them again, or see them if they missed them in the first place.

I will freely confess that 2018 wasn't my best blogging year here on No Kidding. I blogged my heart out on x365 Take Two, where I blogged daily for the entire year, had lots of fun in months where we covered themes like Food and Travel or Objects, but found it quite stressful in months when we covered Horror/Suspense or other scary things, and Whining/Negativity. Both these months were hard, and made harder in some ways because I concentrated on the negative, rather than looked for the positive. That experience reinforced for me that my choice here to look at the positive - where possible - is right for me. (This is almost encroaching on thoughts about blogging for another post, so I'll stop there.)

I can see that I started last year as I started this one, by thinking and writing about ageing without children, with three posts on the topic last January! It's an issue that has been top of mind the last few years, with my mother's death then intensive periods of caring for the elderly in-laws during and after illnesses, followed by my MIL's death and now all the relevant FIL-care issues.

Ageing without children (again)
https://nokiddinginnz.blogspot.com/2018/01/ageing-without-children-plan.html
Another (3 this month) on ageing without children

February and March were busy months, but by April I can see I had a resurgence, thinking about the positives of life without children, or simply how it gets better, even when we can't imagine that might be possible. I also had more thoughts about my belief that the No Kidding or childless are also success stories, given the mountains we've had to climb, and continue to climb in our post-infertile lives.

Childless Success Stories Revisited


As autumn and winter wore on, I finally finished my Gifts of Infertility series (woo hoo!), and thought about:
Acceptance,
That Question,
and being Worthy.

I think my favourite post though was where I thought about the resilience skills I'd learnt as I came to grips with living a No Kidding life, and was able to apply that to a stressful situation here.

Redirecting No Kidding Resilience

Oh, and I produced a little book - No Kidding in Brief.
And that was 2018 here on No Kidding in NZ.

The Book: No Kidding in Brief - Selected Quotes from the Blog

I’ve gone and done it, and produced a little book of memes! Unfortunately I couldn’t produce a flipbook (not many self-publishing apps offer this option) in the time frame. Likewise, I could have done a calendar, but as I won’t be here to organise postage and delivery pre-Christmas/New Year, it wasn’t really an option until next year.

What I have done is produce a small book, with full pages of the photographs and quotes, lists etc that I have used on the blog, with one or two new ones. I thought a full page per photo might be nice, in case someone wants to take one and frame it. You can get it in different formats, but I designed it to be a small, softcover book, trying to keep the costs down, though not very successfully (for the record, I’m only covering costs). I haven't even seen the hard copy myself, as shipping to NZ will take about three weeks!

Blurb was by far the easiest option for me, in the short time frame, and I’m thrilled their site was so easy to use. You can see a preview of a few selected pages below, and you can click here to buy it, or here for the e-book.

Note: Edited to include a link to the e-book.