Never having a family.
I didn't post this in the family planning forum because this is just more of a vent post.
I just read an article on the birth of the first baby created from immature egg cells that had been harvested from ovarian tissue and matured in the lab. I'm very happy for the woman involved but at the same time, it kind of depressed me.
My grandmother just passed away and my mother is elderly and I'm getting to that point in life where more of the relatives from my childhood are no longer present and my family group is shrinking. Most people marry, and have kids so by the time the time they reach my age their coffers are full. They are not going home to empty houses and they have the same family events of their childhood to look forward to with their own children.
I had just gotten some hormone problems under control shortly before my cancer was diagnosed, and though I was in my late 30s, still likely had a number of years of fertility left. Though it might have been a long shot, those years gave me some optimisim about starting a family in the future, so all was not lost.
When I was first diagnosed, I had looked in to egg freezing but my insurance did not cover it, and honestly my cancer was growing too fast for me to have felt comfortable delaying treatment or dosing myself with estrogen with a grade 3 ER+ cancer in me that had been growing for at least two years.
I had made an appointment with a fertility specialist to discuss other options; I had not known about it at the time and am unsure if insurance would have covered it but I would have been interested in having some of my ovarian tissue frozen. Things just didn't work out though. I ended up in the hospital and the fertility specialist had an emergency, leaving us both in the position of having to cancel, and I could not get another appointment within a time frame I felt comfortable with.
People suggest adopting, and honestly, I would love to, but I saw my aunt and uncle go through the adoption process, and when all was said and done, it took nearly 7 years, and they were a conventional, healthy, upper middle class couple, so I feel that even in a healthier state, that is really a process that I would have had to have started in my early 30s.
I don't regret doing the chemotherapy. I'm thankful it worked so well. I think it would have been horrible to have delayed or foregone it to have children only to have the cancer return as metastatic cancer during their childhood, or to have lost my life on a gamble with no returns, but I've been side lined a lot in life and have missed out on many of the conventional experiences and life milestones that I, like others, had looked forward to, and that most people take for granted, and it does get to me.
When I have expressed this in past, the natural response of others is often to minimize. "It's not that great. You are not missing out on much," but these are inevitably people who have always had the privilege and benefit of these experiences. These are the people who have never had to walk my walk, nor do they really understand the cumulative impact missing out on multiple life milestones can really have on a person.
Anyway, a family was kind of the last life milestone I had to look forward to and I just wish I had had the same options as some of these other women I have read about.
Comments
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WC3,
Vent away! Cancer sucks for everyone, but it really did a number on you. For that, I am truly sorry. I know you said you didn't want to adopt, but have you ever thought of becoming a foster parent? Sometimes that leads to adoption; sometimes it doesn't. But, I know that in my state (OK), we have a shortage of foster homes, especially since the opioid epidemic got under way. ((Hugs)) to you. I wish you the best.
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ElaineTherese:
I am open to adoption. I just don't think it's practical for me.
I don't know about fostering. I have a lot of misgivings about the current foster system in the U.S. While I was never in foster care myself, I did not grow up with much stability and I don't really want to be a party to a system that prevents me from providing a child with a permanent home. I hear cases of young children being removed from loving foster families who have raised them from birth, either to be returned to their birth parents or adopted out, and I think that must always be very traumatic for the child and I think they should be permitted to stay with the foster family.
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WC, I can relate to your situation. I became infertile with my first cancer dx and treatment in my late 20's. It was the most devastating loss in my life and it took a long time to finally complete the grieving process. I decided to become a very involved aunt w my nieces and nephews and this was rewarding when they were small but it is even more rewarding now they are adults w their own families and I am treated like an extra grandma. They also often come to me to discuss things they don't want to worry their parents with. I also was very devoted to my profession and had the luxury of developing a very lucrative business that would have been impossible with children (certainly not a trade I would have made otherwise). I have a stepson I adore and only wish I had met his dad while son was still a child. Ultimately, I grieved and decided to be happy and grateful for the children in my life. As lousy as it was to go through, I knew there would little else that would ever be that painful.....and at 68, it's still at the top of the list but does not haunt me. I don’t feel “unfulfilled” and friends who have adult children with “challenges” (drugs, alcohol, still at home @40 etc) have envied my situation.
I am so, so sorry for your situation. Take good care of yourself and know that you will get through this.
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WC vent all you want. I can't even imagine how you are feeling. It's not fair that we are dealt a BC diagnosis let alone all the side effects that come with it (both emotional and physical). I come from a very big family and I'm one of the very few that are single with no children. This diagnosis has put an additional stressor on me and made me think about the what ifs (recurrence is always in the back of your mind), the future, and feeling like I need to find someone very soon as I'm already 34. I wonder will I ever have children? I would be devastated if I didn't. So although I am not in your exact situation I can relate.
Life is not fair and I'm sorry that you are going through this. It's so true that it's so easy for people who haven't been in your situation to easily just brush it off and not understand. They don't know how you truly feel and you have every right to feel that way. I hope you find happiness and become a mother one way or another if that is what you truly desire. Wishing you the best.
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ElaineTherese, Yogatyme, LiveLaughLove2020:
Thanks for the replies. It means a lot to me.
Yogatyme:
I have nieces and nephews, but unfortunately (much to my sister's dismay), they are more than a few minutes away.
I wouldn't mind being a step mother but the man in my life does not have children.
Maybe at some point I will adopt an older child or take a disadvantaged teen in.
I'm kind of at a crossroads concerning my profession but I'm working on it. Hopefully something will come if it.
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WC,
Not being able to have kids is a painful loss that should never be minimized. Good that you have a place to vent with people who can understand it.
I have another idea about bringing small children into your life. Do you have any friends with babies? I have a younger friend with two babies and very little support. When the 2nd one was an infant, I offered to come over once a week to hang out, help, give the kids a walk, etc... mostly so they could get to know me with her present, figuring that then, once they knew me, that would enable me to pinch hit in an emergency. I started doing this shortly before my diagnosis. Then when i was diagnosed, it occurred to me that these babies might be my one chance to have a grandmother experience as my kids are not 'there' yet.... so I kept on going. Straight through chemo. (BTW kids do not care if you are bald, tired, etc so long as you will play playdoh or read books, or watch them jump on the bed... it was the most "normal" feeling I had each week!)
Now it's been about 2 years of going one afternoon or evening a week. OMG, I love these kids so much! And they love me. They literally jump up and down when I walk in. It has been a fantastic experience for me, very rich and beautiful. And of course a big help to my friend.
I guarantee that no new mother will turn down the offer of another set of hands!
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santabarbarian:
I do not know anyone with babies, but thanks for the suggestion.
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You're welcome. I'm fortunate and thankful to have a big family and have nieces and nephews who I get to see all the time. So it's nice if you have that. But at the same time you also want that for yourself.
I'm glad we have this place to vent and understand one another!
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I feel like I could have written your post myself. I was just diagnosed, a couple of weeks before I turned 42. I had been thinking that maybe I would have a last-minute baby miracle but cancer has dashed any such hopes. Like you, I've missed out on the husband, the house, the kids, the career. Most people don't know the right things to say to you. It must be too hard to sit with you in your pain. Just know that there are other women out here like you, and we do get it.
Hugs to you.
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Thanks Danee:
I'm sorry you have to be in this boat with me.
I saw your other post about your upcoming surgery and if it helps to know, when I had my BMX with immediate expander placement, I did not have a sensation of drifting off nor did I look or feel like I didn't have breasts afterwards.
I went from having a mask placed over my face to waking up in the recovery room with my chest feeling and looking no different than when I walked in to the hospital. My first thought was they had to abort the surgery for some reason and it took a while for me to realize the surgery had actually been completed. My BMX was skin sparing but not nipple sparing. The incision was covered by gauze pads though so after the surgery, with the bra off, I just looked like I had nice A/B cups with pasties.
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Vent away! There are a lot of us in this boat. When I was first diagnosed, I went through fertility preservation and harvested a ridiculous number of eggs. Fast forward a few years, I received a stage iv diagnosis. At that point, I made the extremely difficult decision to have them destroyed. It was not a decision I made lightly or one that was easy. It was a serious punch in the gut. I’ve always wanted a family of my own, but now, that dream is just one more thing cancer stole from me. Know that you are not alkne
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WC3 I am 69 and still grieving the loss of family. Guess I never got over it. my ca diagnosis brought it up to me again sadly
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w...please feel free to vent...your brutal honesty could have knocked me over with a feather. You have me thinking about a Pedro Almodovar film that I recently rewatched, All About My Mother. I had seen it years ago but decided to see it again having watched his most recent film, Pain and Glory. After watching Pain and Glory, I viewed a Special Features interview with him. During the interview he touched on All About My Mother. He spoke about his homosexuality and how he knew at a young age he would never have children. He then decided to try to understand motherhood. One of the bridging topics of both films has to do with the complex nature of motherhood. In Pain and Glory, we get a glimpse of the painful relationship Almodovar had with his own mother. Soooo....where am I going with all of this....what Almodovar discovered is motherhood was not about being a mother. It was about mothering. Similar to what the philosopher Erich Fromm wrote about in his book, The Art of Loving, Love, he said shouldn't be described as a noun. It should be a verb, to love. Love, he believed required action. This philosophy is what Almodovar uses in his films. He shows us all the different ways mothering occurs. I am the mother to three children, but I have two extended family members that I mother. So I mother five individuals. It's a lot of work. Taking that to the next level, one might say that the family should also be perceived as a verb. It requires work too. A lot. Which brings me to....what is a mother and a family? I guess Fromm and Almovodar would say it is things that we cobble together and work on. Thinking back to the community where I grew up, there were many Holocaust survivors. Having lost many loved ones, so many of the survivors had to cobble together new families. They had survived and needed to learn how to thrive. So much work....
so you too have lost so much, but like others before you, you have so much work ahead....perhaps you need to redefine the definitions of mother and family. And then, realizing they are verbs, you can take action...you never know where, then, you can go....
i do wish you peace and strength on your journey... -
voracious reader, Yes: as the mom of one 'step' and two 'bio' kids, I agree that it's the verb part. 100%. No difference to me, between the three. That's why my faux-grandchildren are so rewarding too. It's the tender love I feel for them.
Another way of having deep input into a kid is as a CASA (court appointed special advocate). I am a CASA to a former foster youth whom I met as a suicidal 16 year old -- who is now 21, a junior in college, and no longer depressed. That has been a source of much joy too.
The mothering impulse is the desire to protect, nurture, teach, and love a needy being. To prioritize them and lift them up. To model "sure belief" trustworthiness, presence, and empathy.
WC3 if you have this impulse in you, keep your eyes open and you will find a place to put it one of these days. We need a lot of healing in this world, a lot of nurture, and a lot of 'mothering.' All hands on deck.
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