What Child Free Means to Me

I wrote a blog post for We're {Not} Having A Baby earlier this week. That is a child free website. The people who run it, Lance and Amy, are fantastic and supportive people. You can read my post here.

I got some VERY negative comments on that post from some members of the child free community. Some were downright nasty and cruel. It was so bad that Lance and Amy wrote this follow-up post. Their follow-up post was wonderful. I think it raises some great points.

I would like to thank all of the people who commented who were kind and those who disagreed with me in a civil manner.

I got a really sweet message from my hardcore child free sister-in-law after she read the post. She said something that I absolutely love -

"I tend to think of being child free as living life for me, not for my progeny. It means making yourself a Limited Edition Model vs. an assembly line item." 

This is the best definition I've ever seen of what child free living is. And this is exactly what I am doing - living my life for me and for my husband. To me, child free doesn't mean you hate kids. It doesn't mean that you think "breeders" are awful. It doesn't mean that you never, ever, ever wanted to have children. To me, child free means that you are choosing to live an amazing life without children.

It's funny, since we decided to stop fertility treatments I have started really appreciating my childless life. I have a job that I absolutely love and I work hours that wouldn't work if I had a kid. My husband and I are planning trips to go on because we love to travel. (Soon we are going to Niagara Falls!) Travel is just not as fun with littles in tow. 

Right now I honestly don't want to be pregnant. I don't want a child. (I never thought I would utter those words!) That could change in five years, I don't know. I'm leaving my options open because I find it confining and overwhelming to lock myself into a permanent decision right now. I'm only 26 for heavens sake. But for now I am so happy with the family that I have.

Writing that post and reading the responses did teach me something. I do not need the approval of anyone when it comes to how I self-identify. Right now I self-identify as child free. I am not childless or child preferred. Childless implies that I am missing something - I'm not. Child preferred implies that I want to have a baby right now - I don't.

I made a choice and I am happy with it. I am living a life that makes me happy. No negativity can take that away from me.

A Little Fall Of Rain

I wrote this post in December describing my love of the musical Les Miserables and telling how it has related to my journey through infertility. My husband and I are watching it again tonight in the coziness of our home which means that we get to sing along (I was so bummed I couldn't belt out the lyrics in the movie theater).

This movie still means so much to me now that we've decided to live childfree. In my original post I said that if I ever had a daughter I wanted to name her Eponine because out of the rain of this hard time in our life something beautiful would grow - our child.

Well, we now know that a child will not be the flower that comes from this pain. But that doesn't mean that nothing beautiful can come from it. When I hear 'A Little Fall of Rain' now I think of my husband and I clinging to one another, me barely holding on, saying that a little rain can hardly hurt me after all we've gone through. He is comforting me giving me strength to hold on. I see great beauty in this. It is a beautiful love story - Two people clinging to each other during a storm and a war.

Rain still makes flowers grow, even if they were different flowers from what we expected. And they are beautiful.

"A Little Fall of Rain"

[EPONINE]
Don't you fret, M'sieur Marius
I don't feel any pain
A little fall of rain
Can hardly hurt me now
You're here, that's all I need to know
And you will keep me safe
And you will keep me close
And rain will make the flowers grow.

[MARIUS]
But you will live, 'Ponine - dear God above,
If I could heal your wounds with words of love.

[EPONINE]
Just hold me now, and let it be.
Shelter me, comfort me

[MARIUS]
You would live a hundred years
If I could show you how
I won't desert you now...

[EPONINE]
The rain can't hurt me now
This rain will wash away what's past
And you will keep me safe
And you will keep me close
I'll sleep in your embrace at last.

The rain that brings you here
Is Heaven-blessed!
The skies begin to clear
And I'm at rest
A breath away from where you are
I've come home from so far
So don't you fret, M'sieur Marius

I don't feel any pain
A little fall of rain
Can hardly hurt me now

That's all I need to know
And you will keep me safe
And you will keep me close

[MARIUS]
Hush-a-bye, dear Eponine,
You won't feel any pain
A little fall of rain
Can hardly hurt you now
I'm here

I will stay with you
Till you are sleeping

[EPONINE]
And rain...

[MARIUS]
And rain... 

[EPONINE]
Will make the flowers...

[MARIUS]
Will make the flowers... grow...