It's NOT my fault that I 行方不明になるd the chance to become a mother
Modern women are often 非難するd for leaving motherhood too late. But here one author who is grieving for the baby she'll never have says the truth is far more painful
Unlucky in love: Megan hasn't met the 権利 man to have a child with
My five-year-old niece, Freya, beamed at me as she played in the 有望な 日光 on a summer’s day, throwing herself into a lop-味方するd somersault across the grass.
I 手配中の，お尋ね者 to smile in 激励, but instead 設立する myself breaking 負かす／撃墜する in sobs that seemed to have come from nowhere. My sadness was so raw it took my breath away, and my older sister Ceri put her 武器 around me. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
I 簡単に shook my 長，率いる, because I couldn’t bring myself to articulate the truth ― that, at the age of 38, I realised I’d probably never watch my own child doing somersaults on a summer’s day.
It was at that moment, in 2010, that I began to grieve for the children I will never have. Looking 支援する, I think the 過程 may even have started a few months earlier, when I’d visited South Africa on a work trip. I’d thought for days about a baby boy I’d met in an orphanage, wondering fleetingly if I could give him a home, before telling myself I was 存在 ridiculous.
I wasn’t childless for 医療の 推論する／理由s, or out of choice. The 権利 man had just never come along.
As a writer living in London, with a 実行するing career and a 広大な／多数の／重要な social life, I was a doting aunt to Harry, Jack, Emily and Freya.
But I was also ‘emotionally infertile’ ― a phrase coined to 述べる the growing number of women like me who are childless not by choice or because of 生物学の problems, but by circumst
ance ― often because we don’t have a partner, or we have a partner who doesn’t want children.
A 最近の 調査する by Red magazine 設立する that more than half of the 3,000? women 投票d regarded emotional infertility as just as painful as 医療の infertility.
And it is ― even if, like me, you hadn’t spent your teenage years dreaming of having children. In fact, like many of my friends who grew up with me in Hampshire, I’d dreaded becoming accidentally 妊娠している in young adulthood.
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I’d just assumed I’d 演説（する）／住所 the 支配する of having children when I met the 権利 partner with whom to 直面する it later in life. But I never did.
I lived with a long-称する，呼ぶ／期間／用語 boyfriend throughout my 20s, but we were young, and parenthood seemed a long way away. In my 早期に 30s, I entered into a 関係 that was so 安定性のない, I knew we would never have children.
He was a かかわり合い-phobic poet, and while my friends 勧めるd me to finish the 関係 and find one in which children might be an 選択, I didn’t long for a family enough to give him up.
At 35, I finally 受託するd that we were never going to work out. Other 関係s （機の）カム and went, but 非，不，無 turned into something more 永久の.
'I felt 重さを計るd 負かす／撃墜する by all the judgments - some proffered, some unspoken - about 選び出す／独身 and childless women'
I began to think more about having children when I was in my late 30s, but didn’t start sizing up 可能性のある fathers on first dates because I didn’t want to 急ぐ into having children with someone I wasn’t 確かな about.
Nor did I want to become a 選び出す／独身 parent by choice. I’d seen how hard it was to bring up children even with a partner, thanks to my sisters, and I’d 証言，証人／目撃するd at first 手渡す the struggles of a の近くに friend who had 突然に become a 選び出す／独身 parent.
I just didn’t think I could 堅い it out by myse
lf. I 手配中の，お尋ね者 to 株 parenting, and never dreamed of becoming ‘accidentally’ 妊娠している. I wasn’t going to trick anyone, or short-change myself.
A friend who had been ambivalent about children until she was 39, and became a mother at 41, 警告するd me that I would go through a grieving 過程 if I didn’t become a mother. I laughed it off, but my friend was 権利.
As the months passed after that summer’s day with Freya, it 夜明けd on me that I was 急速な／放蕩な approaching 40 ― the age at which it seemed that if I hadn’t had my own child, I probably never would.? My feelings of panic grew.
I was desperate to care for another human 存在, and felt ますます lonely and 孤立するd from my friends, most of whom had started families.
Feelings of 憤慨 began to build inside me when, in the space of a year, five of my closest girlfriends told me they were 妊娠している. I felt happy for them, and ますます sad for myself.
I tried to hide my feelings. I bought baby gifts and 選ぶd up newborns with a smile 直す／買収する，八百長をするd on my 直面する, even as my heart sank when I thought of the children I might never have.
At parties, I’d listen to women telling me about their 最近の birthing experiences before asking me if I had children and uttering the immortal line: ‘井戸／弁護士席, there’s plenty of time, isn’t there?’ There wasn’t.
Panic flooded over me every time I read a celebrity talking about how their little Petula/Tommy/Isabella was the best thing that had ever happened to them.
Was I going to 行方不明になる my best thing? What was I going to do without it?
Next best thing: Megan may not have children of her own but she can still be maternal with her nieces
I wondered if I could 可決する・採択する a child, but as a self-雇うd writer, my life didn’t seem financially stable enough to commit to childcare costs or taking time off work.
Another friend advised me to have my eggs frozen in 事例／患者 I met someone in the years to come, but I didn’t want to go through fertility 治療 alone.
More and more, I felt 重さを計るd 負かす／撃墜する by all the judgments ― some proffered, some unspoken ― about 選び出す／独身 and childless women. From 存在 too picky to be 満足させるd by a partner, to just too career-orientated and selfish, the judgments are endless. In my experience, they’re 一般に 不確かの, too.
I met plenty of women like me ― women in their late 30s who’d done 井戸／弁護士席 professionally but not to the 除外 of all else; who had built 広大な／多数の／重要な 関係s with friends and family; but for whom the 権利 romantic 関係, and children, remained elusive.
When I analysed the 推論する／理由s why they and I were in this position, I （機の）カム to one 結論: bad luck, bad choices or bad タイミング. Not selfishness.
' When I analysed the 推論する／理由s why they and I were in this position, I （機の）カム to one 結論: bad luck, bad choices or bad タイミング. Not selfishness'
If you ask a mother to explain the sensation she experiences when her child is in danger, she’d be hard 押し進めるd to put it into words. It’s primal ― just like my emotions when I realised I’d never have children.
Of course, I’m not alone. 最新の 統計（学） 明らかにする／漏らす that one in five women in the UK turned 45 in 2010 without having children ― that’s 二塁打 the number of a 世代 before.
It can be a lonely 傾向 to be part of, and 専門家s 確認する that people 取引，協定ing with emotional infertility are often marginalised.
‘Today motherhood is sold as the answer to all our problems, and many women 苦しむing from emotional infertility feel a sense of shame because they 港／避難所’t 後継するd in the 注目する，もくろむs of society,’ says Jody Day, 創立者 of Gateway Women, a website 申し込む／申し出ing support to childless women.
‘But we’re the shock-absorber 世代 for the 性の 革命, in that we’re working through the 衝撃 of those changes on a daily basis.
‘One of them is that more and more women are childless through circumstance. They are grieving for something few people 認める they have the 権利 to grieve for, and many of them don’t even realise that’s what’s happening to them.
‘Some of them are losing some of the most powerful and 生産力のある years of their lives as they get stuck in their grief.’
I was 決定するd not to lose some of the best years of my life in this way. I’d written eight 調書をとる／予約するs, had a life 十分な of friends and family, and yet I felt like a 失敗. I had to do something.
So I did. I bought a 計画（する） ticket to Marrakesh in Morocco ― a place I’d visited just once for a
long 週末.
I knew no one there except the people whose hotel I’d stayed in, but when I 接触するd them again to ask how I would go about renting a flat for a few months, they 申し込む／申し出d me a studio in the garden of their house. They were 事実上の strangers, but I said I’d rent the studio.
Not to be: Megan has sought to 打ち勝つ her grief at never becoming a mother (提起する／ポーズをとるd by model)
I 手配中の，お尋ね者 my life to change just as my friends’ lives had changed when they became mothers.
If I wasn’t going to have the rhythms and 責任／義務s of parenthood, I could make the most of my freedom.
Marrakesh, exotic and foreign, seemed like the perfect place to find adventure. So I arrived there in February 2011, and started 診察するing my feelings.
I felt a visceral sadness I had never known before, and its sharpness could be breathtaking. 涙／ほころびs （機の）カム frequently and 突然に, and I’d wonder what on earth I was crying about.
But as I wandered the streets, sat in cafes and learned a smattering of Arabic, I also learned my first important lesson: that not 存在 able to explain my sense of sadness at my emotional infertility was 罰金.
So I cried when I felt like it, for long enough to dull the 苦痛 ― before giving myself a kick up the backside.
I soon started to understand what had led me t
o where I was. Part of my sadness was a sense of loss that I would never love or be loved with the fierceness that 存在するs between mother and child.
I wouldn’t experience all the challenges that motherhood brings, and the better person I think it makes some women ― more 患者, いっそう少なく self-centred, calmer.
But a 重要な part of how I felt was 簡単に about 存在 an 部外者 now that my friends’ and sisters’ lives had moved on to different places.
If they hadn’t, I would probably never have felt as I did about whether I was going to get left behind, the woman-child who never grew up.
I was going to have to (1)偽造する／(2)徐々に進む a different path. So, while there were moments when I looked 支援する and wondered if I’d wasted years on the wrong 関係s, I knew there was nothing I could do to change the past. All I could do was を取り引きする my feelings today.
世界保健機構 KNEW?
The 普通の／平均（する） 30-year-old woman has just 12 per cent of her eggs left
I’d spent months thinking that motherhood was the answer, but I now began to realise that it wasn’t an instant パスポート to growth. Just look at the one-跡をつける minds some mothers have about their children.
You have to be open to change, and that’s possible with or without 存在 a mother. Each 味方する of the coin loses and 伸び（る）s.
For all I’d envied about the lives of mothers I knew, they’d envied what I had ― freedom, time and the ability to 養育する other 関係s in a way I never would if I was a parent.
I have taken my 70-something mother backpacking around Thailand, and could also spend long periods with her during her 治療 for breast 癌 because I didn’t have to do the school run or make packed lunches.
While my girlfriends who are mothers 認める that some friendships are based on whether their children play 井戸／弁護士席 together, 地雷 are still 治める／統治するd by one simple fact: we like each other.
More importantly, I realised I wasn’t childless. I had my sisters’ children, my godchildren and a gaggle of girlfriends who were all generous with theirs.
I could be maternal に向かって all of them even if I wasn’t their mother; I could love and 保護する them, teach and listen to them.
I might not be a parent, but I could be important in their lives: someone to talk to, rely on, 信用 and have fun with.
When I celebrated my 40th birthday this year, I realised I’d 設立する a new way to be ― just as other women who don’t fit the mould have done. Another has just returned from living in Mumbai.
For now I am splitting my time between England and Morocco, enjoying the best of both worlds. I no longer feel 重さを計るd 負かす／撃墜する in England, just happy to visit.
I love Marrakesh for the warmth of its people, fascinating culture, endless 日光, and the adventures with friends who, like me, aren’t living ordinary lives. We might not be mothers, but we all have children in our lives.
And while our lives might be different to the ones we 想像するd when we were young, they are just as 完全にする.
