BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Just feeling sorry for myself!

Ok, so I just narrowly missed being forced to listen to one of those horror birth stories...you know...the part about birth that the "books don't tell you about." I was, however stuck staring at an infant for an hour or so while women passed him around, all in awe of him whining and yes, barfing.

I am just so upset right now! Who knew that because I am a woman, I will be forced to spend my adult life drowning in stories of conception, pregnancy, and birth. It's like the second the men leave, the women group together to hear what the birth was really like. Can men not handle the gory details? Once people become parents and gather in groups....the men and women always divide! I know I've complained about this before, I'm sorry...I'm just done with it. I mean, women in Africa squat down, give birth, and go back to work. But here, it's the biggest ordeal ever....requiring gifts and showers and endless attention.

I just feel like this phase of my life has been so unpleasant and I don't see an end in sight. Babies are everywhere. Friends sharing pictures of their "baby bump". And then there's me. Listening to their stories and staring at their children with a fake smile plastered on my face. I can't even carry on a normal phone conversation...there's always children in the background, yelling, crying, getting into messes.

Sooo...that's why i am sitting here, feeling sorry for myself =-)

Sorry to hear this is bothering you at the moment. I've been there also all too many times. The best thing I can think to say is that if all of your friends are "mommy" friends at this point, make an effort to spend the most time with those that are willing to share more with you than "her awesome birth and baby story". Most of my friends are also mothers -- the majority of the new moms are 100% absorbed in baby fever, but I do have a few that seem to genuinely care about my feelings and don't make the extra effort to drown me in their baby joy.

Another good piece of advice: If you are in the position to do so, find some good friends in the 50s and 60s age group. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much middle-agers and CF couples have in common! There are no kids at home anymore, but they are still young enough to hang around with you and have some fun! Plus, they are mature enough to not harass you about your CF status.

Thank you, beth! There is a woman in my bunco group who is in her 50s and always a hoot...maybe I should see if she wants to hang out outside of bunco!

i hear ya! i just read my family's history, and one of my great great grandmothers birthed 13 children. she said she had no doctors. didn't need them. just gave birth on the kitchen table like every other woman she knew. she didn't make a big deal of it, and she didn't ask for attention. the only reason she got attention in this book is that she lived to be 106 and remembers union soldiers eating her out of house and home in alabama during the "big war."

i look at women around me who are pregnant and who have dr visits every other day it seems and who have sonogram after sonogram, and i think about what that does to them. all those visits are expensive. all those sonograms just bring radiation to that child, right? maybe i'm wrong. maybe they're perfectly safe. but i don't know. but i look at my great great grandma riggs and i wonder why more women aren't like her. and then i remember. great great grandma riggs just did what she did because she had to. she didn't ask for attention. she didn't walk around saying motherhood was hard. she even stated in an article the newspaper printed about her that she didn't understand why women thought they were so busy nowadays. she said she raised 13 children and never felt too busy or too overwhelmed. she came from sturdy stock, and i admire her. i even changed my name after my divorce to her name because she was so awesome.

i don't want to be a mother to 13, but i do want to be a woman of grace and strength. and that is what she was. it's VERY hard to find women like that nowadays. we're all so delicate now.

Wonderfully said, a woman of grace and strength, yes....couldn't we all be that, yes, but that's a decision too. I have two boys, 25 and 14 and my sister just had a baby. This isn't a baby story by the way simply, I have 2 kids. So please read on

I have friends that don't have children and some that are grandparents but my relationship with each of them is it's own, unique and special. One of the things I personally draw strength on from my CF friends and associates is the new beginning of certain areas of my life when my youngest goes off on his own and I am excited about the journey and glad to have others remind to see the fullness in myself, just Sue, and the woman that I am. I love my kids without a doubt but being respected for the choices we make is important, with children or without.

It's too bad that people often make judments that aren't there's to make. We all have a purpose in life, with or without children and all of our roles are important in the grand scheme of life. I think you're right that things are sooo much different than our grandparents days (gosh that could be a whole political topic too!)

I think also with new mothers that their lives change so much in so many ways that unfortunately that focus of baby becomes everything to everyone and everything (in their eyes) and becomes there world. So perhaps with your close friends you could let them know that your happy for them but perhaps you could share the bond of just being friends and women also. I think mothers sometimes loose sight of simply being a women filled with beauty and love as well as a mom. Maybe your friendship is the perfect way to remind them of that in simple ways like a weekly hour luncheon, bike ride, walk, guy talk, spa hour...remind each other if even for a little bit about the special bonds of womanhood. Hey I'm a mom and love to include my kids but I know I need what my CF friends have to offer too....actually, we all have something to offer each other if we're open to it :)So where is the acceptance of who we are and who we want to become, it should be there in true friendships....love and respect go hand in hand.

So do smile and be a beautiful woman of strength and grace...because you are

Wow, I'm so sorry you're going through this. It's normal to feel alienated, I do at times. Fortunately the baby conversation rarely comes up with my family. But I understand your frustration. Whenever I'm asked, "When are you going to have a baby?" It's like nails on a chalkboard for me. Like Beth suggested, maybe it's time to find some new people in your life. It happens to everyone. People sometimes outgrow each other or grow apart for different reasons. I became distant and eventually grew apart from my old friends simply because our lives were now so different. If you can avoid certain parties, then do so. Don't submit yourself to the torture. Personally, I don't know how you were able to remain there. I would've made up some lame excuse and left lol.

I don't know... I have found myself in those "fake smile" situations... quite frankly, I am done with them. I reckon if I have to "fake smile" more times than I am actually enjoying this relationship... then I guess the friendship has served its purpose. I think we've all had relationships that strayed for one reason or another.. distance, change of school, job.....having babies. I think it important for a relationship to be mutually gratifying...but if I sitting aroud... and as a friend once did to me(as I was sitting around inocently trying to forge that smile... she unleashed her jug... I could swear it had 5litres of something... at the least... the beast just sat there glaring at me...and I nearly died...it was soo scarey... I can still see it) thats when I knew it was over. I have since taken her pizza one night. I'll sms every now and again, in response to her sms's but otherwise that relationship is O.V.E.R... catch you later hon'

I always lost gradually contact with friends who had children. As Andso? put it, if you spend more time faking a smile than enjoying the relationship, it is really not worthy. It is not like you can do fun things (movies, eating out, having a nice coffee, let alone a beer somewhere nice...)with most of these women. I never cut off the relationship completely though, because they were people I used to like. I just minimized contact as much as possible without being rude. I moved out of the country, so it hasn't been that hard, lol. When my friends of college got kids I made new ones. And those are the ones I call when I go back to my hometown.
Now I have a child, live in a new country and I haven't made a move to contact other women with kids. I do not have anything in common with them in this matter. I suffered from post dramatic stress after birth, and I haven't been able to see my breasts as sexual objects since I had to sit through all the breast-feeding going around me in the hospital (and the pressure to be part of it) So I dislike gory birth stories and women exposing their breast to nurse as much as anyone here, probably more, lol.

It doesn't sound like these women are friends if you can't tell them how you feel, and also the fact that they're not picking up on how you feel. If one of my friends was smiling fakely, I'd know in an instant. You sound like you need to be around other people who have the same interests as you. It sounds like in the USA, women are obsessed with babies LOL. Over here in the UK, we don't have baby showers etc - why would you? Oh, someone decided to have a baby of their own free will - lets all buy them presents - why??? I don't understand it. It's like that episode of Sex and the city where Carrie loses her designer shoes at a shower and the mother makes her feel bad about it. But like she said, did she ever buy her gifts for getting through a year as a single, independent woman?? No.
Anyways, if they were really you're friends, personally, I feel you should get one aside, who you trust the most and explain how you're feeling. Women don't share the gory details with men, because men pull no punches in saying that they don't care or don't want to hear it. You should do the same. All the best

Holles, I just have to say, that is an awesome story about your great-great grandmother. My grandmother, who raised her family in rural Alabama (starting in her teens), told me the same type of story about her childhood family and her own family. Birth control pills weren't around, so having children was a fact of life -- you just put up and shut up. She even told me hundreds of times as a teenager to use birth control faithfully until you're financially/emotionally ready to have children.

It makes me sick how all of my friends talk about problems such as breast-feeding and make them sound tragic, like no one else in the world is suffering like them. Hello, they should be thanking God that they aren't in poverty or have a terminal illness!! There ARE WORSE PROBLEMS!