A different kind of grief

I first heard of Gillian Guthrie's forthcoming book, Childless: Reflections on Life's Longing for Itself, a little while back, and I've been very keen to read it for its expression of a different kind of grief. The grief Guthrie chronicles in this book, through interviews with hundreds of women, is that of the childless woman.

Of course, the idea of having children is not for everyone. There are many women who choose to remain childless and feel no grief at their decision. However, Guthrie focuses on those women who, for reasons of health or circumstance, were not able to have the babies they very much desired. She talks about how they have had to come to terms with the reality of a life so different to the one they had imagined and hoped for.

How those women manage the grief caused by their childlessness is a question I'm really interested in. Like our very own Prime Minister has, I imagine they sometimes suffer the judgement of others because they are childless women. Those who are parents sometimes think the childless among us can't understand the complexities of family life; that our lives are less rich and fulfilling, or even that we've got it easy. What is often overlooked in the expression of this sentiment is that for many, remaining childless is not a choice, but a regrettable circumstance - a side effect of not having met someone to settle down with, or a consequence of infertility, stillbirth, or neonatal death, or of having a lifestyle or career that is incompatible with the getting, or raising of a child.

As we've gotten older, many of the people I know have felt the deepening divide between their friends who have children and those who don't. I've noticed this myself, in a few cases, though I have been fortunate that most of those friendships which could have drifted apart as paths diverged have instead adapted into different kinds of friendships - not lesser ones, but ones that have evolved and changed nonetheless, that I get different things from, perhaps, but no less valuable things.

I have such great empathy for women, like those in Guthrie's book, who go about the world whilst trying to come to terms with their losses, for I now know what it is like to grieve not just for a baby I had, but for the living baby I might never be lucky enough to have in the future.

Over the last few months, in every cafe I visit, every supermarket I frequent, I see nothing but the pregnant and the newborn. This is extremely painful for me, but how much moreso must it be for those who don't even have hope that they might one day in the future experience motherhood too?

Tests have revealed that I have no real reason, apart from fear, that I might not eventually bring home the baby I so desperately desire. That hope keeps me going. But what if I had no hope? What if I found out I was no too old to conceive, or that there was a larger, underlying physical problem that would prevent a successful pregnancy, or if mine and Leslie's relationship had gone awry after Max's death, as commonly happens? I would be then be in these women's shoes. Navigating the world with the absence of hope must be so much worse than navigating it the way I currently do. And I can't imagine that. It's far, far too painful.

So, lately, when I've felt the blow that inevitably comes when I see what seems like every single person in the world walking around with a baby, I've been thinking of those struggling with infertility or childlessness, and how much worse it must be for them to see the pregnancies and the babies. If I am fortunate to have another pregnancy, I can imagine the guilt I will feel that there might be other women looking at me as if this time I am the enemy. They won't know my grief, or my experience of childlessness - to them I'll just be another pregnant woman put on earth to cause them pain. And I like to think I'll better understand their anger at the injustice of my pregnancy for having felt it so often myself.

Thinking of things in this way has helped me look at pregnant women and new mothers in a more compassionate light over the last few months. Though I still feel occasional bouts of anger because seeing them with something I lost hurts so much, its not as all-encompassing as it once was. I realise I don't know the stories of how they got to that point. I don't know the individual pains they suffered to bring a healthy child into the world any more than they are able to know mine. Having Max has made me much less quick to judge and so much more compassionate towards the silent and invisible grief so many of us carry behind our smiles.

Review of Childless: Reflections on Life's Longing for Itself, and interview with the author at The Age.
http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/life/grieving-for-a-child-she-never-had-20120411-1wpwz.html