Anonymous wrote:So many selfish, pathetic women on this thread. As somebody's kid, it's nice to know that I'm only here to fill some void in my mother's life because she couldn't find anything meaningful to do. Maybe that's why the rest of life seems "trivial" to you... You never actually tried.
Anonymous wrote:I relate to how you feel about this - we were much more on the fence, and the only "feeling" we ever had that led us to have our child was a fairly logic-based feeling that 40 more years of the DINK thing we were doing might get boring and leave us out of some life experiences that would help us connect to other people.
Anonymous wrote:I think it's odd for OP to be asking this question at this stage (post fertile) of her life. That ship sailed a while ago.
Why don't you ask your parents why they wanted you?
Anonymous wrote:So many selfish, pathetic women on this thread. As somebody's kid, it's nice to know that I'm only here to fill some void in my mother's life because she couldn't find anything meaningful to do. Maybe that's why the rest of life seems "trivial" to you... You never actually tried.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:If you need to ask this question, you’re not meant to be a parent. You would have made sure there were kids in your life already.
This is OP - and don't worry, I am not struggling with this decision for myself. I am just curious what this feels like for other people. I know that wanting kids is a powerful urge - I've never experienced it WRT kids, so I just wanted to hear from others what it was like. (you know, to try to understand the human experience a little better!)
I think I would love having grandkids but I don't want kids enough to do it just for that sake.
OP, have you ever met a childfree person???
I'm not OP but I don't understand your question. OP isn't questioning anything about their life, they are curious about a topic and asking for experiences. They aren't asking us to solve any problem for them, they are just curious.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:If you need to ask this question, you’re not meant to be a parent. You would have made sure there were kids in your life already.
This is OP - and don't worry, I am not struggling with this decision for myself. I am just curious what this feels like for other people. I know that wanting kids is a powerful urge - I've never experienced it WRT kids, so I just wanted to hear from others what it was like. (you know, to try to understand the human experience a little better!)
I think I would love having grandkids but I don't want kids enough to do it just for that sake.
OP, have you ever met a childfree person???
Anonymous wrote:I didn't want kids, ever. I chose a very kid-unfriendly career and climbed the ladder quickly, and I was in a longterm relationship with a man who also did not want children. We'd created a good life together--house, car, travel, and careers. When friends started having kids, we were just happy to continue our lifestyle of nice restaurants, weekends away, etc.
Around age 34, I started getting physical symptoms when I would see a newborn--I am not exaggerating when I say my heart hurt. I spent over a year ignoring and pushing those feelings away. I had invested too much into my childless life and, really, could not imagine fitting a child in. It was just that horrible heartache that kept coming back.
Long story short, I got to the point where I couldn't ignore those feelings anymore. I had to change basically everything about my life, including letting go of the relationship. That was tough--it was perfect in every way except for our disagreement about kids. But eventually, I became a mother, and I knew immediately that I'd taken the right path for me.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:If you need to ask this question, you’re not meant to be a parent. You would have made sure there were kids in your life already.
This is OP - and don't worry, I am not struggling with this decision for myself. I am just curious what this feels like for other people. I know that wanting kids is a powerful urge - I've never experienced it WRT kids, so I just wanted to hear from others what it was like. (you know, to try to understand the human experience a little better!)
I think I would love having grandkids but I don't want kids enough to do it just for that sake.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:If you need to ask this question, you’re not meant to be a parent. You would have made sure there were kids in your life already.
This isn't true and unfair. I wasn't sure I wanted to be a mom, but I didn't want to wake up one day (like OP at 45) and wish I'd had kids. I think 45 is too late...especially if your partner doesn't want children. Even when I was pregnant I wasn't excited, I was full of nerve. But now that my daughter is a few years older, I am so happy I took the leap of faith and became a mom. She is my life. It's not the same until it's your own child.
This is OP again: to be clear, I still don't want kids. I want to understand and appreciate what the feeling of wanting kids is like. I do not have that feeling myself. Curious about your experience - not trying to decide anything for myself.
(I think it is possible I will one day wake up and want grandkids. But, as I said above, I don't think that it would have been right to have kids only in order to increase the odds of having grandkids later. What if I had kids like me, who didn't want kids?)
If you one day want grandkids, I encourage you to develop a grandparently relationship with a friends kids or grandkids. I so long for a bigger "family" community. I'm the only one of my siblings to have kids, and no one in my biological family really has developed a warm relationship with them and my husband's family is overseas (and also not warm.) I long for more loving adults in their lives, but we have moved to often to have developed those kinds of relationships as a family.
Anonymous wrote:I've been at both ends of the spectrum about this. Got married young-ish at 25. DH really wanted kids and I was very ambivalent. I wanted to enjoy my 20s and did not feel ready for motherhood at all. He agreed to wait until we were 30 so that we could both finish grad school. At 30 he was really ready and I was still very ambivalent. I liked our lifestyle and couldn't imagine myself as a Mom. I also didn't have a strong desire towards motherhood. I didn't know anything about motherhood because I myself am an only child, never grew up with cousins, didn't have any friends with kids, etc. He, on the other hand, could not imagine his life without a child/children.
He insisted that we start trying and we had many tearful conversations about it because I was so ambivalent, but leaning toward being childfree. I still kept putting it off until I was 33. Then I finally agreed to start TTC. Low and behold we got pregnant on the first try and I was terrified. Scared out of my mind because I thought I'd have a few months to get used to the idea of being pregnant. My pregnancy was anxiety-filled because I was anxious about motherhood.
My pregnancy was super easy though and I had an easy, natural delivery and happy and healthy baby.
It turned out that I loved being a mom and this time we were both eager to have a second. This time I had an intense longing to have another child and expand our family because I knew how wonderful motherhood was. We started TTC #2 when I was 35 and my son was 1 year old. Sadly I was soon to learn that my fertility had gone out the window by that time and I had severe decreased ovarian reserve. I was in the infertility clinic at 35 and they gave me less than a 10% chance of ever being pregnant again. In fact a few REs said I probably had severe infertility problems all along but just got lucky by getting pregnant on the first try.
We have now been TTC #2 for 5 years and zero pregnancies. Now that I'm 40 I feel that it is really hopeless now. I feel so sad that I waited so long because maybe if I had started earlier I'd be able to have two kids by now.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:If you need to ask this question, you’re not meant to be a parent. You would have made sure there were kids in your life already.
This isn't true and unfair. I wasn't sure I wanted to be a mom, but I didn't want to wake up one day (like OP at 45) and wish I'd had kids. I think 45 is too late...especially if your partner doesn't want children. Even when I was pregnant I wasn't excited, I was full of nerve. But now that my daughter is a few years older, I am so happy I took the leap of faith and became a mom. She is my life. It's not the same until it's your own child.
This is OP again: to be clear, I still don't want kids. I want to understand and appreciate what the feeling of wanting kids is like. I do not have that feeling myself. Curious about your experience - not trying to decide anything for myself.
(I think it is possible I will one day wake up and want grandkids. But, as I said above, I don't think that it would have been right to have kids only in order to increase the odds of having grandkids later. What if I had kids like me, who didn't want kids?)