What if I am never able to have kids? What happens to my life then?
These are questions I have contemplated frequently in recent months since my second angel baby gained his wings.
The world becomes a scary place when something you have unknowingly been planning for since you were a child suddenly seems so far out of reach. The party becomes lonely when you see your lifelong friends lovingly tending to their small children and you are left behind with only the ashes of your children and the imagination of what they would have become.
Throughout my entire life, I have unconsciously been preparing for motherhood.
When I was a child, I imagined baking cookies with my own children at holidays the same way I rolled sugar cookies with my mother and sister. It was a tradition that I was eager to pass down to future generations. When I was in high school and my parents disciplined me in a way that I found unfair, I would say, “I’m never going to treat my kids like that!” When I started dating my husband, I saw how great he was with kids. I imagined how wonderful he would be when we had a family of our own.
I wanted to provide a good life for my children, so I completed college and found a job that I enjoyed. When I began teaching, I took mental notes on children whose personality and behavior that I longed for in my own offspring. I paid careful attention to strategies parents and other teachers used with children to produce desirable results. Finally, when I turned 30, my husband and I decided that we were ready to embark on the next adventure of our lives — we were ready to become parents. It seemed like a natural next step that we were eager to take.
But parenthood has not evolved into the journey that I imagined.
Instead of engaging in annual traditions and enforcing strict guidelines with our children at home, Steve and I have cradled the un-moving body of our son, and planned his funeral. We did not have crying babies to keep us awake at night; only our own tears stream down our faces in the dark dead of the night. For me, parenthood has become an inner turmoil, a chaos, a rethinking of my entire life.
Do I want to continue experiencing heartbreak?
Do I have the energy to endure a third loss?
Would my heart be able to handle it?
Should my husband and I keep trying for living babies?
How many more children will we lose?
When does it reach the point that we give up on the dream of raising offspring?
While it would be so, so lovely to have a living child, I know that in reality, it is far from certain. And if we are not able to have living children, what does my life mean?
What purpose does my life serve?
How will I redefine myself?
When they are young, children need their parents to guide them, to teach them. As they grow, children secure jobs and accomplish feats that make their parents proud. When they are adults, children help to care for their ailing, aging parents. Children serve as a guarantee that their parents will be remembered after they are gone. But without living children, all of this is gone.
Life seems so different when living children are not guaranteed. I hope that one day I will get to teach my children how to talk. I hope that I will get to watch my child march across the stage at high school graduation. I hope that I will get to celebrate a job offer with my child. I hope that I will get to watch my child become a responsible adult who contributes to society. But if none of that happens, I hope that I find a different purpose in life. I hope that I will find another meaning for my existence. I hope I will find a way to impact someone else’s life the way my own parents have mine.
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Kelly Isaacs is a special education teacher working who works with middle school students in Massachusetts. She is eternally grateful for the gift of writing, which she finds extremely therapeutic. Finding the right words to verbalize does not always come easily for her, so blogging has become a source of comfort and relief.Kelly lives in Nashua, New Hampshire, with her husband, Stephen, their dog, Sadie, and their two cats, Sam and Sully. She relishes time spent with friends and family, exercising, reading and learning as much as she can.
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