Everyone Is Pregnant

*Content Warning – Pregnancy and Loss*

The worst feelings for me have been the feelings I cannot humanly do anything about.  For most of my life the word “someday” always gave me hope. Having been pregnant at least twice but miscarried gave me hope. Being married and living the life I thought God desired for me gave me hope. Having the courage to leave my marriage at age 40 due to the path that it had gone down gave me hope.  If you asked me throughout my life what did I want to do when I grew up? The answer was always “I want to be a mom”, and it gave me hope. 

These last two years at ages 42 and then 43, I realized somewhere along the way that I would never be a mom here on earth.  All 41 years of my life, year after year I would pray that this would be the year. People would constantly tell me it will happen, you’re still young. They told me that till they could not tell me that any more. There are only a few times looking younger has been a bad thing. This particular topic is exactly one of those times. I mean how many times can someone say to me “you still have time” when I reply “I’m 43” and they say “oh.”

Ok before moving on let’s cover the facts. 

• I am 43
• I am very fat
• I have heart health issues 
• I have spinal issues
• I have blood issues
• I have recently stopped having my period (weight gain or age I’m not sure)
• My spouse is 7 years older than I am
• My spouse has two teen boys (13 & 16)
• While I would love to adopt, that is not in my spouse’s plans 
• While I would love to adopt between his health and my health, I think that it would be hard to adopt 
• We do not currently have the room for adoption even if we could be approved. 

Due to all the above reasons, I am now facing the burden of accepting I will never have children of my own. I love my spouse’s boys very much but they have a mother. While I love them, and will always treat them like my own, there will never be the bond I wish for. It’s hard coming into a family with kids. Especially kids that are already of age.. 

Our life together has become something that I look forward to. When the kids aren’t here the house is too quiet and empty. Right now, as I am typing this, I can hear the baby in the kitchen trying to find a late-night snack and the 16-year-old is upstairs practicing his music for band. These are sounds of children. I have always wanted a house full of kids. I love watching shows about big families, and I love the noise and chaos of a large family. 

My fiancé and I are so different in this way. He likes to stay close to home and it doesn’t matter much if he sees his extended family or not. Me on the other hand, I love going to see his mom and I would love to travel and see mine. I want the boys to meet my mom – she has wanted to be a grandmother since the day I got married and when that didn’t work out, she was crushed. I think she would be a good granny although she would hate to be called granny lol… These boys will not know what to do with her when they finally meet. 

In therapy recently my therapist says to me we need to unwrap this topic and start to take care of the pain. My first thought was to scream nooooooo. Let’s just keep it neatly wrapped and safely hidden away. Let me pretend just a bit longer that I in fact will be pregnant one day. Can I keep convincing the mirror image of me that I am younger than I am and in fact can have and carry a baby. Doesn’t help that the holidays are romantic and the time when everyone announces they are expecting. I’m on number 3 for announcements of a 2022 baby – that is coming after 7 closer friends had 2020/21 babies. Everyone is pregnant but me. Why is life just so unfair? 

The holidays make these feelings of not being complete and missing out on a huge part of the natural progression of life even stronger. I want all the holidays as a mom. I want to be able to tell my child of Christmas past, and teach them all the holiday traditions that I once had. Mostly I wish I could tell them about my grandparents and how much they would have been loved by them. I would love to carry the memory of my grandparents on to a new generation. Before you say it, I’ll tell you, yes I know I can tell my spouses’ kids about traditions and my family but these are boys. Boys who have had grandparents and lost both grandfathers on both sides. These kids were 11 years old before I came along. They have made these memories already with the parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents of both parents – they don’t want or need mine.

I don’t want you to think I am writing this for you to feel sorry for me. I have done this to myself. It is even embarrassing for me to admit I still want to be a mother. I didn’t get serious about life till I was about 26. I chose to let my weight go back up, I chose to not leave my husband earlier when I was healthy and could have a child. I chose to love someone that could not possibly love me in the same way. It was me that did these things and here I am now out of luck, feeling sorry for myself. Which is not what I want to do – however, I needed to write it all down. I needed to see what was going on in my heart and head over and over. I needed to feel something other than depression. I needed to read it, and devote real time to getting better, which my therapist is trying to help me with as well.

It’s not just me I feel bad for though. I honestly feel like I have let my grandparents down. I feel like a huge failure when it comes to the “natural progression of life”. My grandparents were people that should be remembered. Their stories should be told. Their love should be known. My mom should get that chance to be a grandmother, maybe finally letting her let go of her grief of how she was as a mom.  Maybe just maybe God has not seen fit to give me children because too much was depending on them. Maybe I would set any child of mine up for failure so it was best not to have any? I mean I expected a child to end the emptiness in me, to cure my loneliness, to relieve me of feeling useless, help my mom to have a new start, bonding me to my spouse etc. etc. What is it that I expected really? A miracle to happen to fix my emotional wellbeing??? Honestly, I would give anything, even if it meant packing away all the crap I thought a baby would solve. To know I had a child I could hold, love, teach, grow, laugh, learn with would be the best gift ever. 

Yet for me it will never be. I share my story because I know it’s not just my story. You are NOT alone out there. Whatever you think you are doing alone, stop because someone else is experiencing it or something similar. That is the thought that gets me through. I am not alone.

xoxo, Evie