Growing up I worked with kids all the time. I volunteered to teach swimming and was a counsellor at day camps. I worked with kids from age 4-18 for over a decade. During that time I never wanted to have kids.
After graduating high school and then university I watched ALL of my friends have children. Some were planned, some were not. Some got married, some didn’t. I watched them struggle and I watched the love. And still, I never desired to have children.
I’m 48 years old and have never wanted children. Never got the urge. The biological clock never ticked for me. And no one ever believed me. I was told “you’ll want them, just wait and see” and “you’ll regret it if you don’t…’. I never wanted them and I don’t regret it.
I begged my doctor to remove my uterus. From my teen years until now I’ve always asked her, on every visit to remove it. That uterus gave me more and more problems. I went through 2 surgeries to try and fix the problems before the doctor finally agreed to take the damn thing out. Decades of pain but no, the doctors wouldn’t remove it. Apparently, they thought they knew me better than I knew myself. All the doctors were assuming that my desire to not have kids was just a phase I was going through. They were wrong. They were wrong for over 30 years.
Now my friends are all parents and becoming grand-parents. Still doesn’t bother me that I’m not a mom.
When I was 30 I was diagnosed with a mental illness. That just confirmed my decision to not have children. No way was I going to have a child when there was a strong chance they’d inherit my illness.
Through lots of therapy and medications I’m loving my life as it is. Child free.