It will take time to come to terms with the idea of a future without children. If you've always expected to have a family, it involves a huge change in your hopes and expectations about your life. There may be times when you feel very angry about your situation, and the fact that fertility treatment didn't work for you. We all read in our newspapers about the latest advances in assisted conception, and about women in their sixties getting pregnant, so it is hardly surprising that there is a general assumption that treatment is a cure for infertility. There is far less attention to the relatively low success rates, and having your own biological child is often thought to be a simple matter of going to the right clinic or having the right treatment.
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| Dealing With Infertility |
You may feel as if there is a gaping hole in your life at first, and it can seem that there will always be that sense of something missing. It is only when you gradually start to re-build your life again, and to re-adjust your perspective, which has probably been tightly focused on treatment, that this will start to ebb away. It is never going to be easy when other women announce their pregnancies, and you may always feel some envy, and a sense of loss. These are natural emotions in the circumstances, and if you can accept that, it will be much easier to cope with them.
You may find that your confidence is very low, especially if you have suffered the raised hopes and dashed emotions of fertility treatment for some years. You may have suffered depression and deep sadness, which has colored the rest of your life. Many women say they feel they have let themselves and their families down when they cannot have children. You may know that your parents are sad not to have had the opportunity to be grandparents to your child, and that your siblings were longing for a niece or nephew. It can take time to build up your self-esteem, and to come to terms with the fact that you are not to blame for what has happened. Your life may not be the way you had expected or wanted it to be, but that doesn't mean it can't be rich and rewarding.
Living without children
'Every day in almost everything that you do, there is a reminder that it hasn't worked out, and that you are not part of normal society. You do feel separate all the time.' Heather, 48
You may find that your life is very different from the lives of your friends and family, who may all have their own children. Although some of them will try to include you in their family life, others may assume that you would rather not be involved if they know your circumstances.
Some women find that spending time with children is painful and upsetting, but others may enjoy having the opportunity to be around other people's children. It is important to make sure your friends and family know how you feel about this, as it will make things much easier for everyone concerned. Certain social events, and indeed certain times of the year, such as Christmas, can be particularly difficult. If you know you are going to find an occasion painful, you may want to avoid it altogether.
You will inevitably have to deal with other people's insensibilities at some point. Try to remember that they are not deliberately setting out to be hurtful, but they may not have the least understanding of how you feel. Some women who have decided to come to terms with a life without children do find it hard to cope with the way our society seems to assume that women automatically become more empathetic and caring once they give birth, and that childless women are somehow harder and colder. You may well find yourself faced with these stereotypes at some point, and it is not always easy to ignore them.
Many women feel lonely and isolated when they are trying to come to terms with childlessness, and it can be difficult if you have built up close friendships with other women going through fertility treatment who go on to have children of their own. It may help to seek out people who are in the same situation, and you might want to join a support group or Internet forum for couples who don't have children. It is not easy to talk to strangers about your most intimate feelings, but it can help normalize an experience that may feel very far from usual in the world outside. Counseling can be beneficial too, as it will give you a chance to work through your emotions, and to work out some strategies to deal with them.
Many couples discover they start enjoying their lives again once they have stopped trying to conceive. You may be able to appreciate the good things in your life for the first time for many years. You no longer have to worry about your biological clock, or saving money to pay for more treatment, and you no longer need to wait to make decisions or to change your life. This may give you a new lease of life, a new energy and confidence to be able to go forward and achieve some of the other things you've always wanted. You have freedom, you have opportunities to make the kind of life-changing decisions others may not feel able to take and to discover what you find truly fulfilling. It is not an easy path, and there will be hard times along the way, but most couples do find that, with time, they manage to move on and to enjoy all the other things they have in their lives.
'I'd love to say I am completely fine with it, but there is always going to be an element of me, I think forever, that wishes I had children, but it's more in proportion now. There are so many things in our lives I am happy about that wouldn't have happened if we'd had children. It was a catalyst for our lives completely changing.' Isla, 35. To find out more, you can check out Dealing With Infertility.
