Family knows how to push your buttons. I'm thankful that everyone in my family doesn't make a conscious effort to push mine.
It seems that after almost 27 years of being on this planet, I should know that my mother won't let me have peace until she is dead. I'm sure that deep down in the depths of her soul she really does want happiness for me. I just wish I could make her understand that saying things along the lines of "Why do you need a support group for something like that (meaning infertility)? Why don't these people (meaning the infertile) just adopt one of the many unwanted children that are already out there?".
I explained to her that adoption isn't as easy as picking a child out of a lineup. People wait years and spend thousands of dollars trying to adopt. There are couples who are denied everyday. Not to mention the pain of letting go of the idea and natural assumption that you will have children with your own genetics.
You know what she said? That she doesn't know why people care so much whether or not the child has their genes. That it's no different than using a donor. Then she reverted to her statement about adopting all of the unwanted children.
I tried educating her. I really did. But you can only try to talk to a closed-minded individual before you realize that it's pointless.
I asked her how she would feel if she had been told that she would never conceive? How would she cope knowing that she'd never feel the joy and excitement of a BFP? What if she couldn't tell me where I got my eyes or my smile, my laugh or my disposition?
As someone who has never struggled with infertility, as someone who conceived and carried 4 children to healthy delivery, as someone who got pregnant - twice - simply by missing a couple of pills, how dare she judge other women who want to experience the same joy, excitement and wonder that she was given simply for being a clutz?
She said that I was being unfair and I said that she was being insensitive. I told her that being able to carry life is a gift that so many women, herself included, take for granted everyday. I told her that other women shouldn't be judged in a negative light just because they want the same gift.
She looked at me and I'm sure she knew what I was thinking. That I count myself among the ranks of the infertile even though I've not yet had it medically verified. But all she said was, "You don't have to worry about that. You'll have your own baby".
I wish that she'd said nothing at all.
Your mother sounds so much like my mother. At one point, my mother told me that if it doesn't happen (i.e. get married & have baby--in that order) then it wasn't meant to be. I asked her how would she feel if she never had a child, and she responded, "Happy." It was a pointless conversation because she is not the "motherly" type. In her generation, women married and had children because that's just what you do.
ReplyDeleteIt is impossible for her to understand the desire to have children simply for the joy of nurturing a life in your womb and for the wonder of molding and shaping little person to become, hopefully, a good person. I missed so much in own childhood as so much of my mother's parenting felt like it was motivated out of duty. I never felt that she enjoyed raising me.
In someways, I'm a little grateful for my upbringing because it made me conscious of the lack of joy, and thus, more committed to raising the bar for my own children.
I know it must be so hard to hear your mother be so flippant about your reproductive hopes and fears, not understanding how deeply they mean to you. I sincerely hope that she can arrive at a place where she is simply happy in whatever makes you happy...that she shares in your dreams and hopes as "we" do.
Jendo --
ReplyDeleteThanks for understanding. My mom has always been so career driven that, at one point, my sister and I lived with our grandmother. She left us to go work on a cruise line, then she left to live with this guy, and I've been told outright that she wonders what her life would be like if she hadn't had me.
I'm over how she raised me but I'm having a hard time grasping that she cannot understand how different my desires are from hers. She found her happiness on a corporate ladder. I looked there and there was nothing I wanted.
Jen, that is truly terrible. No mother should ever say that to their child. I'm sorry you ever had to hear that. I do understand the hurt it can cause. My mother wasn't a career woman but, to this day, often laments what she could have accomplished if she hadn't married and had kids. Like your mother, I suspect, she genuinely doesn't understand my craving for children when I can "live it up as a single". But, I suspect a lot of her self-absorbed speculations runs along the meaning as the poem, "Dream Deferred." Nothing gets as stuck as thwarted ambition.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I believe no career could ever measure up to the prospect of being a mother.