For weeks, I’ve been debating about whether or not to write about this topic. I’ve been wrestling even longer about whether or not to share it.
It isn’t something I’ve ever heard talked about at all in the loss community – and I’m not sure how it will be received. It’s a deeply personal and vulnerable topic.
However, after my babies died, I made a commitment to live this life as fully, openly, and honestly as I can – and that means honoring all aspects of my journey. Besides, if there is even a chance that one other grieving parent has had a similar experience and thinks they are the only one, well, I want them to know that they are not alone.
Here’s my truth: My babies died and I don’t want to have more children.
I was never one of those girls who longed for children. I wasn’t a woman who always knew that she was meant to be a mother. Having children was something I was fairly ambivalent about. It’s not that I was opposed to having children necessarily, I simply wasn’t very attached to the idea. Honestly, the few times I really thought about it deeply, the idea of adopting older children had more appeal to me than birthing babies of my own.
Life, however, had different ideas. I found myself engaged at a young age and unexpectedly pregnant very shortly after. In that, there was no ambivalence – our baby was wholly and completely wanted and loved. I was her mother and I wanted that with everything in me.
All the plans I had for life and love and motherhood simply imploded. Over the next 7 years, my fiancé died, our daughter was stillborn, I experienced a very early miscarriage, and the miscarriage of my second daughter.
At 27, I found myself single, childless, and wondering what the ever-loving fuck happened to my life.
It was then that I finally started asking myself, truly asking myself, what I really wanted in life. The 8 years since have been a journey of discovering who I am and who I wanted to be in this life after loss.
And the truth is that while I deeply and absolutely loved my daughters and grieve for them every day of this unexpected life – I don’t want to have more children.
My arms ache to hold my children. The absence of them echoes in my home and makes me want to weep. I long with all of my being to know who they would be at 14 and 7 and constantly wonder what life with them would be like. I miss and grieve for them with every fiber of my being.
But I do not want to provide them with siblings. I do not want to carry another baby in my womb, or birth them, or raise them in this life.
I am driven to nurture, to love, to mother, to comfort, to teach, and to create – but I do so by writing and creating books, creating communities and spaces for those who grieve, by counseling those who hurt, and tending and nurturing family and friends.
Someone asked me once if my lack of desire to have more children came from a place a fear that I wouldn’t be able to. It was a valid question, especially given that my only experiences of pregnancy and birth are that of blood and silence and death. I don’t know that my body would even be able to successfully carry a child through pregnancy into life – it hasn’t been able to do yet.
Perhaps that is part of it, a piece of why I don’t wish to have additional children. I do have a fear of becoming pregnant again because I don’t trust my body to keep any babies safe and alive.
Beyond that, however, is a simple knowing that I have had all my children and they are it for me. I am a mother to two beautiful, much loved daughters. I will continue to nurture and hold my beautiful babies in my heart until the day I leave this earth. I have made my (relative) peace with not having additional children here to raise and nurture.
Not all of us get children here on Earth to raise and nurture and know. Sometimes life makes that decision for us. Sometimes we decide motherhood is not for us. And sometimes it’s a combination of the two.
I am the mother to two beautiful daughters. They don’t get to be here on Earth with me.
And they will be my only children.
(Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash)
Jay says
I am a 35 year old father to two children in heaven..we have no other children. My wife and I miscarried our first child in January 2019 and we lost our 5 week old daughter, Darcy Celestine, to a very rare brain disorder in June. I want to thank you so much for posting this and sharing so openly and bravely…although I am a man and did not physically carry my children…the pain of my loss and the weight of my grief is equally immeasurable. With Darcy, we brought our beautiful infant daughter home on hospice care, knowing there was nothing we could do for her, but love and care for her until she had to go away from us. So much of what you said is how I feel…I live for my children and I know that the lifetime of all I had in store for them is still ready to be shared with those around me…I just don’t believe that I will be a father to children here on Earth again. It seems nearly impossible to find any sort of validation for feeling this way, though. I am ok with feeling this way, but its not something my wife and I agree on which is just incredibly tough…just something we are going to have to find our way through…Thank you again for your words.
EG says
Thank you for sharing this. I had a miscarriage at 7 weeks and then what was supposed to be my rainbow baby was a stillbirth at 38 weeks. I am gutted by both losses. I was never the kind of woman that desperately wanted to be a mother before my first pregnancy but I do wonder if it’s in the cards for me. I love my daughter and my first baby so much and it hurts every day not having them, but I’m not sure I want to carry on down this road. My husband already has two kids from a previous marriage but wants more because they don’t live with us, and he says that he feels like children are something missing from his life. I wonder if he didn’t want any more children, if I would bother entertaining the idea of having more. It’s a tough question and I feel a bit bad for thinking this way, like I’m giving up or being a coward, but I also think that if anything, it takes real ovaries to face that question and say maybe I don’t want more children, maybe I’m just done. I will continue to give myself time to figure it out, and in a way be completely selfish about the decision, mainly because it’s totally different for the woman. After all, I am the only one carrying the baby and dealing with the physical, emotional, hormonal, and mental issues associated with another pregnancy and the recovery.