Why Isn’t My Biological Clock Ticking (Louder)?
Posted by on December 12, 2009 at 2:26 pm in Other Top StoriesBy Emma Gilbey Keller
Some girls start making lists of their children’s names when they’re still kids themselves. And some girls don’t. Some of us graduate from college and spend our 20s and 30s living life to the full with no interest in babies. For some, that lack of interest lasts a lifetime. Because some women just don’t want to be mothers. And that’s OK. But often that choice is judged negatively, as if not being a mother means you are not a real woman. If the reaction isn’t negative it can be patronising, as if it hasn’t been a real choice and you’ll change your mind. Why can’t we be more respectful of this decision? Hillary Fields tackles the subject in today’s piece.
It begins when, during my annual exam, I tell my GP that I’ve just gotten married. “Oh,” she says, “You’d better start having your babies now. You only have two or three years.”
A-whah?
When I’m finished doing my double take, I am able to focus in on the tiny, earnest woman who is still talking at me. “Now that you’re married, you can start to have children. But since you’re 32, you should start now. Women over 35 have a much harder time conceiving and carrying healthy babies.”
I haven’t been living under a rock for the past three decades, so this is not news to me. “I hate to break it to you, doc,” I say, “but I was capable of bearing children before I wed. And you didn’t bring up the subject then.”
She smiles as though this is a very funny joke, and then gets serious again. “No, really. Start thinking about your family right away, or you will regret it.”
“Dr. ___,”I say, “I’m really not sure I want to have kids.”
This does not appear to be information of great import to my physician. “Even so, you should do it now. You don’t want to wait until it’s too late, and you find out you haven’t any eggs left.”
Demurring as politely as I can under duress, I reply, “I’m not going to have children just in case I might someday want them. That doesn’t sound like a smart idea.” I figure this will be the end of the subject, and we can turn to more important things, like my ludicrously high cholesterol or the mole on my back I’m not sure I’ve always had.
But no.
“I’m serious,” she stresses with the air of a woman who wants to be 100 percent diligent about discharging her duty. “You should know that if you delay now, you may regret it later. I’m just giving you the facts.”
This is a bit pushy, even for me as a native New Yorker used to dealing with pushy people.
“I get it, Dr. ____. I’m just not in a position to bring a child into my life at this juncture. Financially, we’re not set up for it. We’d have to string the kid from a hammock on our studio apartment’s ceiling to make room for it.” Time for a new topic now, surely.
Nope.
“People have children all the time when they’re not secure financially,” she presses.
“Do those kids go to college?” I shoot back.
Finally the exam (or cross-exam) is over and I’m back on the street. I find myself fuming mad, but also … ashamed.
Because the truth is, I’m not sure I’ll ever want kids, and apparently, this is unnatural.
What’s wrong with me? I’ve got oodles of awwws for puppies and kittens. I melt over baby pandas and bunnies and such. But human offspring? Not only do they all resemble Winston Churchill to me, they elicit no such admiration as did the great man. They drool, they squawk, they poop all over themselves—when they’re not vomiting, sneezing, or coughing up a tiny, itty-bitty lung.
Oh, I’ve heard the reassurances. “It’s different when they’re your own.” This pap doesn’t reassure me, however. What if it’s not different? And, hey, what if I simply don’t have a maternal bone in my body?
I’m not sure what makes me more uncomfortable. Seeming unfeeling—and unfeminine—to society at large, or wondering if, later in life, I will regret it if I don’t have children. Will my life seem empty? Will I wrestle daily with what-ifs? Do people like my doctor know something about life I don’t know?
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve sworn up and down I’d never have children of my own. Unless I were visited by the Ghost of Kiddies Future, begging me to bear them, I’ve always felt it’s … I don’t know … presumptuous to bring a life into the world without permission. Perhaps this is because, until I was in my late 20s, I myself wasn’t particularly glad to be on the planet. I suffered from major depression (among other things) and had a difficult childhood raised by parents who, it was clear, would have been better off not being parents. I was always loved, but love was an odd thing sometimes. And my mother was no great model of maternal mushiness. She was (and is) a great woman, but she simply didn’t do Donna Reed.
But wait … what about hubby? I married a man as emotionally connected as I am detached, a fella who coos “boojie boojie boo” at every tot who happens to occupy a high chair at a nearby restaurant table, a man so sweet, so full of love that I just know he’d be the best papa ever in the world. Does he secretly long for a little girl or boy? A little. But he knew the drill when he married me. I told him I might never get to a place where I wanted rug-rats.
Still, wouldn’t it be a great gift to give the man I love the children that might make his life more complete? Don’t I love him enough to rearrange my world and my expectations and my comforts, change the course of my future so that his will be fulfilled?
Honestly, I don’t know. Two-and-a-half years after that uncomfortable doctor’s appointment, trembling on the verge of statistical ovarian decrepitude, nothing has changed. I’m still child-free, still not feeling a crater of emptiness in my womb or any place else. But will that still be the case in five years, or 10, when it’s just too damn late?
I want some sort of sign to help me decide what to do. And here’s where I curse my sluggish biology. My hormones simply haven’t kicked up a ruckus to help sway me toward being a mother. They aren’t weighing in, making emotional demands, the way I hear they’re supposed to. Legend speaks volumes about the fabled biological clock that starts ticking for women, a haunting toll that begins following you around like Poe’s telltale heart, growing louder and more urgent the longer you wait. For my mom, it was one of the deciding factors in having me and my brother. One day, she says, she started looking at kids in strollers and thinking they were cute, when she had never noticed them before.
Well, they’re still not cute to me. Not yet. I wonder if someone’s smothered my particular alarm clock with a pillow, or unplugged it, or what. Because, if my doctor is to be believed, I’m counting the final seconds off on my fertility countdown, and if I don’t act soon, the option will be off the table.
Perhaps the silence is, in itself, the answer for which I’ve been waiting. Maybe it’s not meant to be, not for me.
I just wish I knew for sure.
One Response to “Why Isn’t My Biological Clock Ticking (Louder)?”
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Well, I hope this helps you Emma. You are not alone. I am in exactly the same situation as you. It’s weird but I feel like I could have written that blog. I didn’t have a doctor telling me I was too old, but everything else was pretty much the same.
My parent’s finally gave up hope that we would have grandchildren. I think my mother finally realized I’m too old to have kids. As she bluntly put it to me one day. I just turned 34, and I don’t feel old. Some days I do emotionally, like an 84 year old woman. I’ve never had too many ailments to lead me to believe I am too old for kids. But what do I know? We do have a friend that had #4 in her 40s. And they weren’t trying. Actresses all the time have kids in their 40s. Their lifestyle would make working and being a mother impossible. And even after a hectic 40 years of their life they eventually want kids and are not “too old”.
I also do not feel that warm fuzzy feeling around other peoples kids. Usually a day with other’s kids does a 360 and steers us far away from kids as humanly possible. Hehe, and these are the good kids mind you! I look at the womb photos of a baby and don’t get it. Same with the first photo after babies are born. I don’t see it. I did have names picked out as a kid, loved to play with my cabbage patch dolls. Always wanted to be a mommy as a kid. But now I don’t. I look at kids much differently now than ever before. I realize how hard kids are, and how much they cost and it doesn’t make sense to me.
Also, I too get the same exact thing about it’s different when it’s your kids. I also wonder the same thing? What if it’s not? I’ve met 2 mothers now that would trade motherhood in for sure. yes, they do love their kids, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s tough to be a mother, and if they had to do it over again they wouldn’t. Also, honestly if you sat down a mother and asked her at some point during motherhood she wishes she had made a different choice. Doesn’t make her a bad mother, just like not wanting kids doesn’t make us bad women. That choice is a tough one, and too many people make it lightly I feel. We need to be giving our kids every opportunity for success. Not having them simply because on day we might change our minds and it would be too late? Seems silly enough of a reason, and there are many equally silly reasons people try to give me for why we should have kids.
I do think too often we are told that we have to be a mother. Why can’t the choice be not to be a mother? Some women “can’t” have kids but I don’t feel the need to burden myself to make it up to them somehow.
If ever you do change your mind, I don’t think it’s ever too late. Aging is completely different today than ever before. Used to be kids got married at 14 and did not generally live past 40. They usually had kids in their 20s. We are now living to be 100 or more, and not even getting married until our 30′s for the first time. Really, if you equate the before times to today, we shouldn’t be having kids until we reach our 40s.
Ultimately the decision for me not to want kids was some bad babysitting experiences. I watched a 9 month old for an entire summer for 10 hours every day 3 days a week. It wasn’t one of the bad experiences. She actually was a good kid despite the hour of Barney I had to subject myself to every day. I kept my eye on her literally all 10 hours. She actually was exhausting to me, and I was in shape and in high school. So nap time was a nap time for both of us. It was hard to get her down for a nap, but managed some days successfully with little trouble. I actually had a brilliant plan to lock us up together for nap time one day. I was so exhausted and I needed a nap myself. I figured if we just both layed down it might help. I studied the room thoroughly for any dangerous object and seemed fine. So I turned off the tv in the living room, the lights in the bedroom, and locked the door and fell asleep. I don’t remember how long I was out for, but I came too and she had unlocked the door and was in the other room watching tv. It was still a moment of panic when I realized what happened before I saw that she was okay. I realized at that moment they are in control.
One of the bad experiences, wasn’t even one of the worst, was much like Jimmie from Seinfeld. He was about 10 and not well behaved. If you turned your back on him he didn’t pour OJ in your purse. Though I’m sure if he had thought that one up he would have. But he did like to hit you in the back with various objects from around the house. It was usually something harmless but one day it was metal vacuum attachments. Again he wasn’t the worst.
One set of kids that was pretty much the worst, had a rule of no ice cream after 6pm. Which I thought was an odd rule, until I saw first hand what happens when you give kids ice cream after 6pm. Silly rule, but an even sillier me for not following the rule. Oops. Prying them off the ceiling wasn’t the deal breaker for me. Breaking the 2 apart so they didn’t kill each other or me with steak knives should have been a pretty good warning flag, but it wasn’t. In hindsight it probably should have been. Wasn’t worth the $1.25 hourly I can tell you that for sure. I think the deal break for me had to be when they had brilliant idea that since I didn’t let them do things like jump off the roof of the house into the pool that the solution to a babysitter that didn’t let them do whatever they wanted should be dealt with by handcuffing her to the door. They didn’t by the way, but I do believe that was the point in which I quit.
I did have my alarm clock go off at one point about a year ago. Kids weren’t cute then, and still aren’t. But I think we finally had our first experience around a kid that was well behaved and got us thinking maybe there are good kids out there. But I evaluated the situation and still don’t really want kids. Hubby has wanted kids at one point, but not coinciding with any time that I wanted them. And he still feels we probably won’t have kids, but that if I ever changed my mind he would be open to the idea. He also doesn’t want to do anything that would be too permanent to rule out kids just yet either. My plan right now is when my pills run out I’m going to switch to the Mirena IUD, and when the 5 years is up if I still haven’t changed my mind to go permanent with the decision and have my tubes tied. I figure at 39 I’m not too old to have kids, but it’s a line I’m drawing for myself. I figure I would be about 39.5 before I got pregnant and a little over 40 at time of birth. And that’s assuming all went well and I got pregnant immediately. Me personally, I just don’t want to be in my 40s and started the kid process. To me, 40 just feels like the time you are settling into that great job you always wanted. Not the time to suddenly start motherhood and mass hysteria.
I did notice hubby is changing his view on kids. I’ve tried to see if he wants kids or not. He says he figures we won’t have them, but periodically he does tell me I would be a good mommy, or this year we were Christmas shopping and we walked by a maternity store and he asked if we needed to stop by and if I was planning to suprise him. And the other day we hung out with our friends who have a kid, when the kid was around. He wasn’t feeling well, and I know normally hanging out with a kid wouldn’t be his choice, but we still went by and hung out for a little bit when the kid was there. Which was really suprising to me. Normally he would be telling me to get us out of it. But also he is making sure I’m taking my pill every day so I definately don’t think he wants kids. And I asked him point blank about the weird things he’s been saying and he definately doesn’t see us having kids. I just don’t think he even realized the things he was saying. Or he was hoping for enthusiasm at those times and I wasn’t so he’s kind of dropped it. Hard to say.
Even writing this comment now I don’t feel the need to have kids. But I also know that eventually my body will make the decision permanent for me in the next few years. Which I’m okay with. My periods are already getting lighter now and it’s actually more of a relief to me that I might be menopausal soon. It’s very stressful month after month to be dodging a bullet. I’m actually looking forward to menopause and not having to deal with monthly cycles any more. Not having to worry about taking the pill every day, or getting the shot on time.
on December 22nd, 2009 at 8:05 pm