We’re Childless — And Thrilled About It!
Why my SO and I are grateful that we don’t have any children
It’s a Sunday afternoon. As I sit at my desk gazing out onto the small, beautiful, garden below our first-floor floor apartment, I am grateful for the life I have: my career, my relationship, the love, the contentment — the freedom.
Lazy Sunday
This morning, I woke up at 10am, made a cup of coffee and read for an hour and a half. Then my mother and I went grocery shopping for two and a half hours while my SO (significant other) lazed on the couch catching up on the sports highlights.
Now we are deciding what to do for the rest of the day. We may meet up with friends for a few late afternoon drinks and watch the football with them, or we might stay in, watch a movie, and just chill. This is the story of our weekends: we do whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it.
How? I’ll tell you how: we don’t have any children — and we love it.
‘Our’ children
Don’t get me wrong — my gorgeous SO and I both really like children. In fact, we absolutely love and adore all our nieces and nephews (and there are a lot of them). We spend quite a bit of time with most of them (unfortunately, some of them live overseas).
Being from large Italian/South African families there are always reasons for family get-togethers: birthdays, Easter, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day — and many, many family lunches throughout the year, just so that we can spend quality time together.
We love all the family functions because we get to catch up with the older boys and we ask them about school and university, and sports events and girlfriends.
And we get to spend time chatting and playing with the younger ones and listening to incredible stories about the new friends they have made at “big school” and all the latest videos that they have been watching on YouTube.
Our youngest nephews are 7 and 8 years old, and they can literally talk the tail-end off a donkey. They both love asking questions (about everything) and we sit for hours listening to them describe the adventures of their days.
Our youngest niece is 5 years old, and she loves dancing and singing for the whole family and her laugh is just the cutest thing ever.
They are all very loving and affectionate, and they love spending time with us. We baby-sit the two youngest ones quite often and we cherish every moment with them! It’s great to feel like ‘parents’ for the few hours we are with them, making them dinner, bathing them, watching movies, and reading bedtime stories before we tuck them in and kiss them goodnight.
And then — we get to give them back to their parents and get on with our care-free lives.
I wanted to be a mother
Growing up I always wanted children of my own, in fact, in my mind there was no doubt that I would have them one day. All I ever (thought) I wanted to be was a loving wife and mother.
So, when I got married at 32 years old, it didn’t take me long to flush my contraceptive pill down the toilet and start buying every baby magazine I could find.
My then-husband and I both wanted to have children and we were very excited to start a family. Weeks past, months past and then 5 years past — still no children.
I tried to be a mother
We eventually went for IVF treatment, which was unsuccessful.
It started putting a strain on our marriage — along with other issues we were going through — and as time went on, I slowly started realizing that: a) I wasn’t sure if I wanted to have children anymore, as by that stage I was about 36 years old, and b) I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay married to my then-husband, let alone have children with him.
I finally fell pregnant
So, in September 2016, when I did a random pregnancy test (for the hundredth time), and it came back with two faint (but very distinct) lines my heart dropped. Certain that it was a false positive, I raced to the pharmacy to buy a digital pregnancy test.
My heart was pounding so hard that I didn’t even wait to get home — I asked the pharmacy if I could use their staff bathroom (to pee on the stick) and within seconds, in big bold letters: PREGNANT / 3–4 weeks.
Still not convinced (because I’d been trying for 5 years dammit!), I drove 10 km to our nearest hospital to get a blood test done: I was pregnant.
I wasn’t sure what I felt at that moment. I remember my head and my heart being filled with joy, fear, excitement, dread, and utter disbelief. My marriage was not in a good place and after more than years of trying to fall pregnant, there couldn’t have been a worse time to find out that I had finally conceived.
I was going to be a mother
After the initial shock had worn off, I decided that having the baby that we always wanted was the best thing for our crumbling marriage and every emotion I was feeling was replaced with pure happiness!
I immediately drove to the nearest shop that sold baby clothes and I bought a plain white baby-grow, a little white beanie, a card, and a gift bag. When I got home, I put everything neatly in the bag, together with the positive pregnancy test, and wrote in the card: “Dear Daddy. I can’t wait to meet you!”.
I decided that letting my then-husband open the ‘strange’ gift and read a card from his newly-conceived child would be a far more exciting way to tell him than just blurting it out over dinner. So, that’s what I did. And he was just as shocked as I was.
We shared the news
Too excited to keep it to ourselves, we shared the news with our immediate families. My aunt gave me the baby duvet that she’d bought for me years before, my mother bought me things and I started shopping around for prams with my mother-in-law.
I started planning the design of the nursery and I was obsessed with looking at all the cute baby clothes at the mall. I even stood up in church and gave testimony to the miracle baby that God had blessed us with after all the years of trying.
I miscarried at 9 weeks.
The end of a chapter
That was the beginning of the end of my marriage. I refused to go for another round of IVF and had pretty much decided — and accepted — that having children was not part of God’s plan for my life.
The previous 5 years had been emotionally and mentally exhausting to say the least, and the miscarriage was the most excruciating physical pain that I have ever felt in my life. I just didn’t want to risk going through any of it again.
And — I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay married.
But my then-husband refused to accept that he would never be a father and so the other issues in our marriage just got worse and worse.
Eventually, I just couldn’t take it anymore and I left him (and the life and home that I had spent 8 years ‘building’) in December 2017.
A new chapter
At 37 years old, I started a new life on my own and I knew in my heart that I no longer wanted to have children — with anyone.
It wasn’t long before I met my darling SO — who also doesn’t have children and has never wanted any — and life has never been better! The past few years have been nothing short of amazing!
I met my SO, I started a new job which I absolutely love, he started his own small business, we live in a nice neighbourhood not far from our families, and what we do with our precious time and hard-earned money, is entirely up to us.
The freedom
Darling SO and I live a wonderful life. We both work full-time, so sometimes we’re tired in the evenings (like everyone else is) but the difference is that our evenings and weekends are ours.
He works on Saturdays, so that is my one day a week all to myself, and he is off on Mondays, so that is his day all to himself. Evenings and Sundays are our time together — and we enjoy every single minute.
Whether it’s just having a quiet night in, eating dinner while watching TV, or going out for a meal on a Friday or Saturday night - the only people we need to consider are ourselves.
We have spontaneous braais (barbeques), spontaneous date-nights, and spontaneous nights out with friends. Almost everything we do is spontaneous.
We can go to bed early or we can stay up as late as we want to. On Sundays, we sleep in late, then lay in bed watching TV, maybe go out for lunch somewhere — it all depends on what we’re in the mood to do — or not do.
Life is easy
No playdates or kiddies’ parties to attend (except when it’s one of our nieces’ or nephews’ birthdays — which we thoroughly enjoy), no sports events or dance classes to race to, no nappy bags to pack or kids to dress while they scream and protest.
And we don’t need to find “child-friendly” venues with play areas to entertain the kids while we try to relax - even though we constantly have to keep an eye on them.
Celebrating life
“Selfish people!” I know that’s what a lot of readers are thinking. And that’s okay. But I am not ashamed to say that we are childless and thrilled about it! My life just wouldn’t be the same if I had ended up having a child.
It may sound awful to most people, but instead of mourning the child that I never had, I have chosen to celebrate the life that I am able to have because I am childless.
I have no regrets
I have read countless articles and online threads — posted anonymously, of course — by mothers and fathers all over the world that regret having children.
Some say that they love their children dearly, yet still resent them for “ruining” their lives and taking away their freedom. Other parents outright admit to “hating” their children with every bone in their body and counting down the days or years until the kids are old enough to move out of the house.
I am not the first, and certainly won’t be the last, woman to admit that I am very happy to be child-free.
We are not alone
Google “why I’m glad that I don’t have kids” and you will be met with pages and pages of posts by both men and women who have either never wanted children, or just never ended up having any, but they are very happy and content with their lives.
Many of them mention that, looking at all their friends with children and seeing how miserable they are as parents or how difficult/ungrateful/cheeky/disrespectful/out of control the children are, they are extremely grateful that they never decided or managed to procreate and have children of their own.
Blessing or curse?
I think being a parent must be a wonderful experience for some. I know people that love being parents and look like they were born to raise children because they make it look so easy and their offspring are wonderful.
I also know people who have the most awful creatures for children — they’re lazy, naughty, nasty, annoying little brats that make me pity the parents — and pat myself on the back.
Whether people have children or don’t have children — everyone has the right to make their own choices in life.
Stop judging others
I don’t know if I ever really had a choice — although it absolutely was my choice to stop trying for a baby and to tie my tubes a year ago (just in case) — but I am very happy with the choices I have made and the life that I have created. I have no regrets at all.
I don’t judge anyone for having or wanting children, so I don’t think that anyone should judge women like me for not having or wanting children.
Millions of books and articles have been written about the ‘joys’ of being a parent — so I’m glad that there are finally more and more people writing about the ‘joys’ of not being a parent.
What now?
So, what are we going to do this afternoon? My SO and I have decided to stay in and have a lazy Sunday afternoon at home.
Maybe I’ll take an afternoon nap? Maybe I’ll read for a few hours? Maybe both. Maybe we’ll have dinner, maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll change our minds in an hour and head out for a sundowner after all.
It doesn’t really matter, because we can do whatever we feel like doing, whenever we feel like doing it.
