The Secrets She Keeps

by Michael Robotham

I have tried to avoid baby showers, children’s birthday parties, playgrounds, and school gates. It’s not that seeing babies and children makes me unhappy. I love watching them. What makes me sad is listening to mothers sitting around, swapping stories, complaining about their sleepless nights, or teething troubles, or the expenses, or the germs, or the tantrums. How dare they complain? They are blessed. Chosen. Lucky.

My desire for a child is like a missing piece that cannot be substituted or replaced. It hurts, this hollow feeling, this empty womb; this baby-sized hole inside me. I feel it when I glimpse a baby, or read a magazine, or watch TV.

“It’s not just the absence of a child, but everything that goes with it. The rites of parenthood—the mothers’ groups, school-gate chats, Saturday sports on the sidelines, class dinners, school fund-raisers, and speech days. For you, these things are so commonplace you don’t give them a second thought. For me they are everything I’ll never have. I am an outlier. I am the incredible disappearing woman. I am childless. Less of a person. Not in the club. You take those things for granted.”

She says she understands how I feel, but I know that’s not possible. She can sympathize, but not empathize. Few people can truly appreciate what it’s like to give up a child.

I didn’t just give up my newborn. I gave up the one-year-old and the two-year-old and the three-year-old and every other year-old that she became. I surrendered every Christmas morning, every visit from the tooth fairy and school concert, every Mother’s Day, birthday, and kiss good night.