WHEN CHILDLESS ISN’T A CHOICE

Author Lorna Gibb shares how her life shifted when she was told she’d never be able to become pregnant

Sometimes in life, we all have to get used to things that aren’t exactly what we would choose. When I was growing up, I had to accept that I wouldn’t have the brother or sister I wanted. Childish longings followed by mature realisations on a multitude of issues were about coming to terms with my world.

Yet I never imagined that I would have to accept that my life would be a childless one. When I met my husband, Alan, we agreed early on that there would be children, probably two. But, in retrospect, I wasn’t a good bet. By 35, I’d had severe endometriosis for almost a decade. I had four lots of surgery before we finally knew that we would never be able to have a biological child of our own.

Realisation didn’t bring acceptance. It brought sadness at the unfairness of it all, anger at the doctors who had wasted time dismissing my agonising period pain, guilt that my husband – who was so great with children – would never be a dad because of me. Alan shrugged it all off, saying he almost wished that he was infertile so I would stop blaming myself. There was a sad camaraderie in our predicament, and a lot of love.

Everyone presumed we would have children, and I played along while we had hope. But the assumption irked me when I realised we could not. My then workplace also had a family-friendly policy, so I rarely got to choose our holiday times, and always had to work late to fit in with other people’s childcare. Occasionally, it felt like I was being punished for not having children.

I was unsettled and unhappy. The house we had bought just over a year before – an ex-council place with an extra, hopeful bedroom – seemed too empty. The plans we had made seemed obsolete and I had no enthusiasm for the alternatives. We got a cat, called him Ivanhoe, and I doted on him. We decided to travel, taking Ivanhoe with us to a job I’d been offered as an associate professor at Qatar University. In the Middle East, I looked for other women like me as I thought of how I might write about the experience of being childless in different cultures.

From Doha, we moved to the French-italian border so that Alan could take a job in Monaco. For the first time ever, I found it hard to make friends. Italian social groups centred around families. I tried to seek out childless women. The role of faith and its outward manifestations in those Ligurian women who refused to give up hope became more stories to tell, more voices. Alongside the Arabic wives whose husbands had taken a second spouse because they couldn’t have children, there was the Indian woman who told me of her infertile daughter’s suicide. I was fortunate. Had I been born in Bangladesh, I might have been cast out from my community as a harbinger of bad luck. Yet, despite the differences in suffering, commonality existed. Understanding of our shared involuntary childlessness brought me kindness from women in other countries, whose lives were far more difficult than mine.

With time, Alan and I gradually took up a different life. Odd things happened. One close friend fell away – my infertility made her feel awkward. She wasn’t sure if her baby photos and toy-strewn living room would upset me, so she stayed away. I wrapped baby clothes and sent them as gifts, but received no acknowledgement. Some childless women find the sight of other people’s children painful, but I didn’t. I wished she had asked me, rather than assumed. Normally a stoical person, I was hurt by media reports and discussions that began with the words, ‘As a parent…’ I felt excluded – in some cases, even insulted – when the rest of the sentence told us how caring that status made the speaker. Phrases such as, ‘As a parent, I understand how upsetting it would be to lose a child…’ I’m not a mother, but surely I can be empathetic.

Not having children marked us, even in our supposedly progressive society. There was a global assumption that we were less compassionate. The Turkish Prime Minister, Erdogan, announced that childless women were ‘giving up on humanity’. Pope Francis said that not having children was selfish. The UK media debated whether a childless woman could make as good a politician as one who was a parent. It didn’t make sense. Even though

I was involuntarily childless, I could see that a woman working tirelessly for others in her profession might be just as altruistic as a woman who devoted her time to her offspring, or someone who shared her time between her kids and career. Phrases beloved of politicians, such as ‘hard-working families’, pervaded the media. Was a couple still a family? What about a single person? Did I have to have children to be represented by anyone at all? And all too often policy assumed that the burden of care in old age would lie with daughters and sons, with little to no contingency in place for those without them.

And yet, my life is not without children. Close friends of my husband asked me to name their newborn son. I called him John, after my late dad, because I felt it was the best way of honouring both our families. This year, John’s elder sister, Christina, became my newest goddaughter, and my dearest university friend, Michael, made me the godmother to his daughter, Hannah.

Tentatively, I tried to build relationships with these children; I’d been gifted a share in their lives. My husband is great with kids and knows how to make them laugh. I was oddly bashful, afraid that they would dislike me – perhaps my awkwardness indicated that I wouldn’t have made a good mother anyway. But children are forgiving, generous and wise. Christina, Hannah and John were oblivious to my insecurities and loved me regardless.

After five years abroad, we returned to Britain. Now, free from the pain of endometriosis following an early menopause, I wanted a career again. We would be nearer to my mum and our friends. It was then my acceptance began. I wasn’t restless any more, the underlying note of loss that had been playing in the background for four years became a quiet hum, then fell silent. My husband’s steadfastness had brought me to a place where I knew that he loved my brokenness because that was a part of me.

Now I have a job I love, teaching university students. We might be a childless couple but our married life isn’t childfree: Hannah, John and Christina are an important part of it. We will never know the experience of having offspring of our own, but the lives we have made despite this are fulfilled and happy, blessed by the kindness of others.

It wasn’t just those closest to us who instigated my calm reconciliation. Listening to the stories of women in societies where infertility was a curse that could see you shamed, divorced and shunned taught me how fortunate I am. Helping their voices to be heard in a book became something I could do for myself as well as for them. The other night, I asked Alan if he still felt sorrow that we didn’t have a child, and he said, ‘Not any more. The life we’ve made makes me happy. I wouldn’t want to wish it away for something that might have been.’

‘I KNEW THAT MY HUSBAND LOVED MY BROKENNESS BECAUSE THAT WAS ALSO A PART OF ME’