Side-eyeing the void 

My daughter is due to start school next September. I treasure this fact as someone who knows how precious it is to watch your child grow, to be their main support when facing new challenges, to share in their joy, to guide and support them through those anxious firsts.  

Every milestone I get to share with her is a privilege.  

In parallel with the knowledge that she’ll soon be at school, I side-eye a void opening up beside me. I am inching my way back towards acceptance that we are and always will be a family of three. My plans and hopes that this void may be filled by another child with their milestones and first remain unfulfilled. This is highly unlikely to change. And so instead of allowing that void to be an empty space of longing, I feel determined for it to become a place for potential new experiences, growth, change. A fertile landscape of opportunity and new horizons.  

Stepping back to acceptance 

Before my last miscarriage I had got as close as I thought I could to closure. I had started clearing space. I sold some nursery furniture. I gifted baby clothes and toys to friends and neighbours. Slowly and carefully I began to dismantle the infrastructure around me that would suggest the arrival of a sibling for my daughter. I had started to look towards that new horizon, to feel the glow of opportunity on my face. I was excited about the prospect of doing a Masters, moving house, taking my family of three on a new adventure.  

I read a lot about one-child families (I detest the term ‘only child’; it’s so laden with judgement, lack, disappointment). I focused on all the good things that can come from being a family of three and I thought about all the bad things about having another baby. It’s not all soft-focused perfection. The moments cradling the soft, gentle lightness of a peaceful baby are fleeting. Wonderful when they come, but as light and as fleeting as a breath.  

Another baby would, I had begun to accept, set me back several more years in terms of changing careers. My long-held desire to write would have remained a fiction in my head. Perhaps indefinitely given the reality of the workload of parenting more than one child.  

And then I found out I was pregnant and it felt like none of the things I wanted mattered because my desire for another baby far exceeded any other ambition I had played with.  

And then I had a miscarriage. And now I’m having to re-trace my steps towards acceptance.  

Because, because, because 

I am a pathological procrastinator. I loathe this part of myself and I am in a fierce battle right now to overcome that. And by not being able to consciously ‘complete’ my family, I have gained a golden ticket to perpetual procrastination.  

‘Maybe I should keep the cot just in case. I can’t look for another job or retrain because you never know. We can’t look at moving house or relocating in case the next unexpected pregnancy goes a different way. There’s no point applying for a Masters in case I get pregnant and can’t do the course. I ought to be careful with my body because because because ….’ 

Look for the choices you do have 

In truth, nature has decided that I will never be able to draw my own line under my child-bearing years. Instead a blurry, smudgy fog of its-probably-all-over now exists where my intention should have resided had life dealt me different cards. I recognise that my choice to have more than one child is engulfed in that grey smog. So what do I do?  

What I have done to date is allow that lack of choice to interfere with every other choice in my life. What I’ve done is allow that to override any control over how I live my life and what I do with my time. What I’ve done is allow that to become my excuse for inaction.  

And how much, I wonder, is my unfulfilled desire for another baby actually symbolic of something else. Am I just looking for more distraction, another excuse not to pursue anything that might resemble a fulfilling life? Am I really just scared of change and need an excuse to keep everything the same as it is? 

Change 

What I know and what I need to embrace is one simple fact. Life is change. Change is constant. If I can’t embrace change, then I can’t embrace life. And I want, so much, to grab life with both hands because fuck knows we don’t have forever, we only have now. 

All the good things 

So here is just a brief snapshot of what I have right now: 

I have a beautiful little girl who makes me smile every day. 

I have choices because we have the financial freedom that means I can study a Masters if I want to. 

I can choose to move the remaining baby furniture and clothes along so I can create space in my house for other things.

Giving life to ideas

Not having another baby doesn’t mean I can’t have the life I want. Perhaps not having another baby has given me a second chance to be who I want to be. Maybe pouring these words out and onto the page will conceive something else and the thoughts and ideas I have for stories and creativity will be the result.

Maybe writing my way out of this pain and grief will give birth to something other than a child. Creativity. Change.

The me I always wanted to be.