Identity

Identity


I had that feeling this week that I noticed many times before I was pregnant. That feeling of discontent over not having children. I noticed it and decided that I was not going to go there. I was not going to go down melancholy lane and think of how miserable my life is without children. It's really not that bad. Honestly, I've got a lot going for me.
Yes, I still do have an irrational desire to have children after my last failure of a pregnancy. I have a lot of mixed emotions about that one, but the one thing I want to do differently this time is to have a different relationship on my desire to have children. My attitude before was, "oh, I'll be so miserable if I don't have my own children, I don't know what I'll do if it doesn't happen!!" I just sound like a pathetic whiny child like this. I can't tell you how many times I had this kind of meltdown.

I feel that this attitude is coming from a place that the children will give something to me. I love kids. I have two stepchildren that I think are great. But the reality is that whatever children I have will want a whole lot from me, and I'm really kidding myself if I'm going to be coming from a whiny child type attitude myself.

Now, when I feel that feeling of impending doom when I ruminate on not having children, I'm stopping to look at the truth of that. It's just a structure that my mind created. It's not really true that I will be miserable if I don't have children. Yes, I will have to go through mourning of the loss, but if I have children, I'll also be mourning at the loss of how my life is now. I'm 42, so I'm pretty used to having control over my life. I have a very satisfying career, I can pretty much do what I want when I want, and my step kids are now old enough that they can pretty much take care of themselves. Having children will really upset my status quo, and I think the older you get, the harder it is to adjust to that.

The question is, how do I want to approach having children? I don't know. I haven't figured that one out yet, but I'm not going to get mired down in gloom and doom. I made that mistake before. I'm not going there again, at least, I'm going to try not to go there. I don't know if I'll have the chance to have my own children in this lifetime. I think I'm going to try again, but I'm not spending so much time obsessing on how my life is so miserable without children. Sounds awfully idealistic? Yeah, but it beats being depressed!!

Guest post from Cross-Pollination.