A recent newsletter taking a deeper dive into my own story around fertility anxiety…
In the last newsletter I asked, “What worries did/do you you have before having kids”? Guess who responds to my newsletters– my mom! A life-long environmentalist, expert in forest management, hiking enthusiast, and mother of three, here’s what she had to say:
[In] the years before we decided to have children, I was driving around the state with my dear friend Alice - talking to any group: conservation commissions, girl and boy scouts, church groups, garden clubs, rotary clubs etc that would invite us to talk about ACID RAIN. Sometimes driving a half hour, sometimes two hours each way, but the topic in our car was always "should we even think about having children". We were in the midst of a serious debate around nuclear weapons (nuclear freeze movement) and in the shadow of a near meltdown of a nuclear power plant ( three mile island in Pennsylvania), environmental catastrophes (acid rain, Love Canal), Iranian Hostage, population explosion etc. We didn't think we could imagine bringing a new life into the world as it was, nor justify adding another human being to what we thought could be responsible for taking the world beyond the tipping point (see Donella Meadows "The Limits of Growth", "Thinking in Systems" and "Beyond the Limits". We concluded that there was no logical reason to have children.
As you know logic did not prevail - clearly biology overcame our prescient analytics, as we concluded a year or two later that we both wanted children and that we would work to make the world a better place for our children…. As a woman (and I admit I have been very lucky with a supportive partner and co-parent and the means to raise children in a safe and comfortable habitat), being pregnant and giving birth (accompanied by the powerful option of choice and self-determination) and raising children have been without exception THE MOST AMAZING, EMPOWERING, and SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. It is through those experiences I have felt most keenly the process of "reweaving" with the natural world.
For those tempted to tune out because fertility care and babies feel irrelevant to you, or because conception is in your past, give me a chance to explain why I’ve been so consumed by these ideas. Let me tell you why this is relevant for every human, regardless of childbearing capacity or desire.
For me, having babies is a massive question mark. As a doula, I love birth, and I love babies, and I love pregnancy, but if it isn’t obvious enough already, there’s a lot about this world and my current life that makes the prospect of having kids terrifying. The last years have been full of thoughts like,
“Well, I certainly couldn’t have a baby without being equipped to cook at home a whole lot more,”, and
“Postpartum would require family and friends close by to support me,”
“I definitely can’t have kids without a proper field and forest nearby”,
“TV consumption would have to go wayyyy down,” and,
“My work has to groove in harmony with parenting”
the list goes on…
The more I thought about these ‘ideals’ for a ‘good life’ for my theoretical kid, the more I found myself asking, “If I need all that for a child… shouldn’t I need that for myself?” If I would want a field for my kids to play in, maybe its high time for me to play in a field myself! Isn’t planning a good future for a child something we, even as adults, are deserving of as well?
All the things I talk about with fertility clients- sleeping more, eating more and better, self massage, restructuring work to be less ‘stressful’, reducing caffeine, prioritizing fresh air- are supportive of fertility because they are supportive of human- mammalian- health.
Fertility care is actually just radical self care. It’s community development. Reparenting, yourself, and treating yourself, your body, your environment like a beautiful, new baby. A practice of identifying your values, your human needs, and the pieces of a life to gather for true prosperity.
