In ‘Notes To Self‘ by Emilie Pine, the author describes her efforts to conceive a child in her late thirties. As usual I flick to the end of the chapter to see if she is successful. I simply can’t engage if the story ends with a mother gazing at her baby in awe, as if she’s avoided a fate worse than death. It doesn’t.
But it does end with Pine counting her blessings, in a way that I found relevant and touching.
In her essay ‘From the Baby Years‘, Pine talks about craving the seemingly unique kind of love that flows between parent and child. Of new parents she says:
I saw the shock on their faces, the tiredness in their eyes, the extraordinary range of emotions provoked by the new person they had made. And I saw the love.
She values the lack of chaos in her life, having the time and space to devote to reading and writing. However, when she observes the pure rush of emotional connection that children seem to inspire, all ambivalence is removed and she has an epiphany:
The love undoes me and all my protests about peace and quiet and calm. I want this love.
Personally I never felt this way when I looked at children, but I was certainly informed of the phenomenon often enough: “You don’t know love until you become a parent”; “Everything else just pales in comparison”; “Partners come and go but your children will always be there” … When I found out I’d never have kids, these statements started to give me the heebie-jeebies when older parents casually dropped them into conversation.
There’s always someone eager to tell non-parents that they don’t know what they’re missing.
Honestly, I’ve seen so many dysfunctional parent-child relationships that I take it all with a pinch of sea salt. I often get a rush of love and protectiveness when I look at my husband, although I don’t go around telling people about it.
Emilie Pine is wrung through the infertility mangle, suffers loss, and feels the usual raw and shameful emotions. She writes very well about the rabbit hole of misinformation and agony that is trying and failing to conceive. Eventually, she realises that if things continue the way they are, “there may be no baby, and there may be no relationship either“.
… I can no longer avoid the fear that I will lose what I have in the pursuit of what I may never have.
The decision to stop trying is as empowering for her as it was for me. Everything immediately feels better when the pressure is off. Although, at the same time, it can seem that the universe is conspiring to rattle your composure: all the articles about advances in IVF; all the super-successful acquaintances who manage to raise children on the side; the fact that everyone around you has kids. Insensitive remarks can still lacerate.
I am never going to have a baby. I am anxious about this fact. And I am grieving.
And I am happy.
The note that she ends on is joyful and life-affirming. She spends time with her nephew and discovers that fabled emotion that she was looking for. Her heart explodes when he waves back at her for the first time. There it is, that love. Because parents don’t have the monopoly on oxytocin and dopamine, whatever they might say.
The last two paragraphs of this essay, about her partner and their shared life, are magical. She observes him raking the garden:
And it hit me. We are growing old together.
This is what it will be like as we watch each other age, as our partnership ages.
She looks ahead to their life together and she finds it: the joy.
I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve been present when a parent has chosen to say something like “It’s the only thing in life that matters!“, or “It’s the most important thing you can ever do!” to a pregnant colleague or the new dad in my office.
For you, maybe. (Also, what’s wrong with a simple ‘Congratulations!’?)
Daily companionship, obligation-free, that’s the most important thing in my life now. It will protect me from loneliness and empty days as I age, if I’m lucky. It’s partners that do that, offspring aren’t generally the best at it.
I think that, but I don’t say it.
Notes To Self by Emilie Pine:
I love your post. I love the way you write, with a bit of cynical humour.
Offspring aren’t generally the best at it / exactly, I think the same. And I also don’t say that.
And I love Emilie’s quotes.
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Thank you Klara! Greetings to you
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When in Florida, we had an elderly couple who lived next door to us. They had four grown children and had raised two foster children. They were missionaries at one point when their kids were little. I lived next door to them for 20 years and I only saw one of their four grown kids visit them one time. I heard they visited a few other times, but only a few in twenty years is not a lot with a hand full of grown kids out there. The wife was a really, really, really difficult woman, and I could see they must’ve had a lot of trouble with their mom.
What I’m trying to say is that I agree, having kids doesn’t mean they’ll be around as we age. They’re supposed to leave the nest and live their own lives.
After grieving and accepting my fate, I have found my own joy. I just posted about spending Halloween with my nephews. However, if I’m being honest, I think I will always wonder what it would’ve been like to have that relationship mentioned in this post.
To me, it’s the same way we grieve for a loved one who passed away. Once we get through the initial grief and move on with our lives, it doesn’t mean that we will never miss them again. We still will, but we just move forward and love the life that was waiting for us.
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I’ve seen a lot of absent offspring in my time and it’s made me very cynical. I’ll be interested to see how it goes with the modern, clingier generation of helicopter parents now in their 40s and early 50s, the ones that had their kids from the 1990s onwards and raised them to say ‘love you!’ every second sentence and tried to be their kids’ best friend… Maybe things will be different, we’ll see.
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Amen. I must say that one I still thought I had the chance of being a parent I was never too thrilled with watching how 90% of the people I knew parents at their kids in the way you just described… A lot of brats who expect their parents to stop for anything and everything – these are the same parents who you can’t have a conversation with on the phone because they allow their children to interrupt them at every step (and I’m not talking about babies but kids who are old enough to know better). So when my husband and I got married we only allowed one couple with children to come to our wedding and everyone else was asked to leave em at home! 😁 (Oh yes that definitely pissed a couple of people off…)
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Ha respect to you for your almost kid-free wedding! Yes I’ll be interested to see how the generation of super-entitled kids brought up by those modern uber-childcentric parents turn out, and how they raise their own kids (maybe there’ll be a backlash?). Interesting times
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Will totally check that out and I definitely do the same thing with any story about someone who went through infertility treatments. even watching this is us where the daughter just went through IVF and got pregnant on the first try, I find myself cynical….
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I gave up on This Is Us after the first series, I loved it at first but it got too rambling.. Oh yeah they wouldn’t have failed IVF on it, it’s too mushy for that. Disappointing…
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I like your last sentence. There’s much that I don’t say. Though I say more than I used to, when I think it is appropriate. My MIL just died, and she and my FIL had been married 63 years. Their last child left home about 35 years ago. So it has been their partnership that has been the predominant feature of their lives. And that is no different from us. We’re lucky to have that partnership.
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I’m sorry to hear your MIL has just died Mali…. Yes I really do think that such partnerships are the predominant features of people’s lives – parents and non-parents alike are perennially looking for this companionship in life
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I absolutely agree with your sentence: “It’s partners that do that, offspring aren’t generally the best at it”.
And I do the same as you when I hear about a new book or movie about infertility / childlessness: I make sure I’m not going to waste my time with another miracle baby story perpetuating the illusion of a “controllable fertility”, giving the impression that a “childless ending” is not acceptable and that it is not possible, on the long term, to find a new meaning in life.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one flicking to the end to see what happens!
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Thanks for the book recommendation! As you noted, it’s so seldom to read an infertility story that doesn’t end in the traditionally happily-ever-after way with a baby. It’s entirely possible to have a happy ending without a baby, even if that’s what you originally wanted.
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I agree. This essay was very life-affirming, I found
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I love this post, so much. I feel like Emilie has quotes that are what I felt — I realized in continuing to strive for something that just didn’t come, I could lose the life I had. And the life I have now is lovely. I agree that parents don’t have the monopoly on love for children and the joy that can bring, whether they are relatives, or friends’ kids, or students. And amen to making Congratulations a nice, simple way to respond to a pregnancy announcement. This is a book I will stalk!
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It’s definitely worth a read Jess, for an insight into a partnered, 40-something working woman’s life without children – in a very child-centric society (Ireland…)
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There are distinct growing pains at all stages of life, but like you, I’m now at the point where I love all aspects of my life and value my partnership and the joy it brings each day above all else.
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Thanks Pamela it’s so good to hear statements like that: it’s what I sought out at the beginning when I thought my life would be inferior to those with families
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I just stumbled across your blog and love this post. Although I have not yet come to the point in my journey where I am willing to move on from my desire to be a parent it does inspire the future thinking in me that Hubby and I will be ok if it turns out that we ultimately can’t – given we’ve been trying for 12 years now this is a very distinct possibility (I’m just not willing to admit it yet 😳). thank you for a great read and recommendation on what sounds like a book i should absolutely have a read of.
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Thank you Janelleope!
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