I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a mother. This had a lot to do with watching my own mother struggle under the weight of an abusive marriage, anxiety disorder, and the unending work of raising four kids practically by herself.
Around the time I became engaged to the man I would marry, at 35, a shift occurred. I missed a period and felt the same panic as always, but a few days later, when it finally came, I noticed for the first time a trace of sadness, a trace of desire. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to send my fiancé and I to premarital counseling, because he’d never wanted kids. Long story short, after several months of talking, the counselor advised us to go forward with the wedding, since we’d been together ten years, were deeply in love, and neither of us had any idea whether my stray maternal rumbling would ever bloom into full-blown urge. If it did, he assured us, he believed my husband would come around.
What to Expect When You're NOT Expecting
But wouldn’t you know it, the therapist was wrong (it happens). With each year, my longing to have a baby did indeed grow, while my husband’s desire to remain childless strengthened, so that by the time I was 39, we were having regular arguments that left me with a growing sense of frustration and despair.
Some friends told me to leave him and find a new baby daddy, but that felt wildly impractical —not to mention emotionally devoid. (“So,” I could imagine myself saying on the third date, as I looked down at my watch, “being as though I’m 40, and my divorce is almost final, want to talk marriage? You want kids, right? Chop chop!”)
Others advised me to simply trick him, furtively take the birth control away. One, who was herself undergoing fertility treatments with her husband, handed me a paper bag full of sterile semen collection cups, advising that all I need do was get his sperm to the doctor’s office within 30 minutes. When I looked at her questioningly, she said, “They can separate out saliva from the sperm.”
My best friend, who was single, went to a sperm bank, got pregnant, and began the arduous process of birthing and raising a baby alone while working full-time. While I supported and admired her, I held no illusions of ever being capable of what she was doing.
The bottom line was that I wanted to have a kid with my husband, the man I loved and in whom I had already invested sixteen years of my life. Not alone, not by trickery, not with some unknown man. I didn’t want a baby as an end in itself. I wanted the process, with him.
It didn’t happen. He eventually told me he wanted to get a vasectomy, to finally put the issue to rest. I gave up and agreed. I rebelled and channeled the maternal urge into finding scores of new lovers (the energy of sexual longing isn’t that far off from that of maternal longing). Afterward, I wrote a book about it all, and now, at 50, I see that I wasn’t meant to have children. I’m at peace with it.
So here’s the question. Did I really want a baby? Yes, for a while, I did. Did I want it badly enough? No. I wanted it, but not at all costs. Sometimes maternal desire isn’t all-or-nothing. Sometimes it falls in the grey area. And perhaps—since we’re talking about making the biggest possible commitment to a new and entirely fragile human being—if I didn’t want it at all costs, it’s best I didn’t get it.
Robin Rinaldi is the author of The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost
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