Male Broodiness

I've generally assumed, though never had it verified, that there are men out there as desparate to be a parent as I am, I've just never spoken to someone who admitted it, which is why I was fascinated to come across this article

In particular, I love the description: "The only thing I can compare it to is lower back pain: a constant, subcutaneous ache that can be momentarily paralysing".

I was concerned to be reminded of the male timeframe - Husbit is older than I am and used to smoke so as well as my fears over my own fertility (based purely on fear), I worry that by the time he's ready, his sperm will have given up. I know one of the reasons he gives not to have babies is that he doesn't think he could cope if we had a disabled child and, as cruel as it sounds, I applaud his honesty there. The problem is, of coures, the longer we wait the greater the 'risk' in a sense.

I found it sad to be reminded that men feel they can't play with other people's children without being accused of being a paedophile. The song Thou Shalt Always Kill by Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip is a song I love anyway, but the line "Thou shalt not think any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a peadophile, some people are just nice" has especial resonance here. I love to see my Husbit playing with my friend's children, but then it happens so rarely.

He feels that he can't talk about his broodiness without being perceived as less than manly. This is, surely, the same sort of attitude that the feminist movement is about reducing. Also, a man who wants to pass on his genes sounds like an evolutionarily sensible partner (thus very manly) to me!

The Other Side of the Coin

I said I'd do a proper post on my issues with other people's children. I suppose I should start by making it clear that they are MY issues. I rarely find children annoying (though I can often be irritated by parenting styles). I used to love being around kids, any age, and any demeanour. In the past couple of years that has been changing. I didn't notice it at first, but slowly I realised I'd stopped playing with friends kids, I was avoiding meetings with friends who had kids... I couldn't quite work out why. The next time I went to see some friends with kids I sat there and tried to analyse my feelings. I felt empty. I didn't even have an "awwwww isn't s/he cute".I felt nothing... it terrified me.


So how did it happen? In my more lucid moments I think it is a self-defence mechanism. I'm slowly but surely closing myself off from the thing that I want most of all for myself. In my less lucid moments it means something else entirely. 


It means I'm not ready any more. It means I've lost that ability to be a good mother and career. Or it means I've missed the gap. In my darkest moments it means I've missed that fertile time. I'm 24. That's highly unlikely. It doesn't make any difference to how I feel.          


When you're young and you tell people you feel like this they tell you to babysit - That'll teach you. If you google "curing broodiness" the link at the top of the list is Yahoo Answers. I can't say I find her grammar or use of English brilliant, but I do understand what she is going through, and to me the answer "Chosen by Voters" is awful. I've partially coped the answer below - 


"you're 21? you've got your whole life ahead of you, why on earth would you want to give it all up for a screaming brat at this age?

Look after someone else's kids for a couple of days - when my boyfriend's niece and nephew toddlers stayed I didnt even have time for a bath in 2 days - it put me off children for LIFE"

Society feels this is a *good* answer to the question "Is there a cure for broodiness?". I can tell you right now it is not. For starters broodiness is not something you choose to feel. The fact that the questioner is only 21 means NOTHING. I've had feelings of actual broodiness (not just enjoying kids and liking baby dolls) since I was 13 years old. The fact is this woman, and many like her (like us) know full well we have our whole lives ahead of us. The question asked was for a cure to stop her feeling like this. She knows she can't have a baby right now, she's being sensible. MAKING OUT WE ARE STUPID FOR WANTING THIS IS NOT HELPING. "Why on earth would we want to give it all up"? Simple. It is all we think about, it hits us, usually at least once a day, that we do not have children. The only thing we would be "giving up" is that. I know that I'm not a party girl, I'm not someone who wants to be at every social event and every party. What I want is to be at home with my family. Secondly looking after other people's children is no substitute for having your own. I babysat for many years, I worked in a nursery, a primary school and I am a Secondary school teacher. None of these experiences has diminished or quashed my broodiness. It is not a simple case of "wanting children", the broodiness I feel is for the WHOLE package. I want to experience everything, I imagine the late nights and the screaming. I consider what I would do, I consider how I would react to situations. For example if I knew I needed a bath and I had two small children to care for I would make sure they had a bedtime routine that gave me time once they were in bed for a wash. Or if they were young enough and I had a big enough bath I would share a bath with them. Or, more likely, I'd nip in the shower for 5 mins just before I went to bed and sleep with wet hair (not exactly unusual for me anyway!). Essentially the only thing that answer has done is show me that the writer has never experienced broodiness. 

However none of this gets us any closer to the issue of curing broodiness. I don't believe it can be "cured" per se. None of us on this blog have had children, but on the famous Netmums website there is a thread populated by women who have 1, 2 or more children searching for an answer to broodiness- Netmum's thread. But even here the offers of help are limited to reminding yourself that now is not the time (a reminder we give ourselves daily) and expressions of relief that they are not the only ones. 

So what do we do to live with broodiness? What techniques or strategies have we developed to get through the day? 

Here are a few of mine - 

1. Write. Long before I started this blog I kept a diary, and when I stopped writing that regularly I started keeping Word documents on the days I needed to vent. Now I put some of those vents here. Sometimes they go into a folder on my laptop - sometimes they need to be private. But the important thing for me is that I write. I get all those emotions out in black and white and I don't stop until everything is on the page(s). Sometimes I can't type quick enough, then I write in a notebook. I have tens of notebooks with random pages in the middle full of rants and raves and scribbles. But at least it's out; if only for a moment.

2. Walking. Since getting my dog I've had to do a lot more walking. I don't always use this time as a distraction, sometimes I use it as constructive baby crazy time. I give myself the length of the walk to day dream, to focus on it, to really engross myself in all things maternal. Then when I walk back through the door I put all those issues down with the lead on the table. Then they have to stay there until I pick up that lead again. This works better than I expected it to. It also gives me an incentive to walk the dog! 

3. Refocus. This one is easier said than done because it requires something else to be strong enough to break through. When I start to day dream I have to STOP and refocus on something else. If I feel like I'm going to have a bad day I start by making a list. I make it as detailed as possible i.e. rather than "Plan Year 7 Lessons" I will have "1. Plan Starter activity for first Year 7 lesson. 2. Plan main activity for first Year 7 lesson. 3. Plan plenary for first Year 7 lesson" and so on for the entire half term. Broken down like that it means I can tick off lots of things (often all at once as you usually plan a lesson in one go) and I have small, manageable things that I can re-focus on. It doesn't always work. I'm rather good at procrastination.

So those are just a few of mine. I will try and add to my strategies as I think of them and please do add your own in the comments! 

Questions

A few questions for anyone who stumbles across this and my fellow poster:


1. What are the best ways to discuss baby crazy with 


a) Friends?
b) Other half?
c) Other family members?


Or is it best not to discuss it at all?


2. Are you or have you ever met any men that understand or suffer from the baby crazy?

Why isn't there a male pill?

In our relationship, i am ready for a baby. I think in terms of where we're living and our income and where i am, physically and emotionally, we could have a baby. Ok, so i probably couldn't give up my job to be a full time mum and i'm not quite sure how i feel about that but it would be a good time for us to have a child other than that - and i think we could work around that.

In our relationship, my partner is not ready for a baby. As i have mentioned before, he has very good reasons and i do my best to respect them, although i find it hard.

What frustrates me, though, is that despite the fact i want a baby and he doesn't, the greater burden of contraception still falls to me. I had the implanon implant removed after three years last February, because the hormones were making me feel bad and i'd had at least one miscarriage and maybe a couple of 'fake' miscarriages caused by the hormones - either way, not an experience i ever want to go through again. I made the decision to have the implant removed because i was tired of the hormones, so i couldn't very well go onto the pill or the injection (which i've had in the past and not reacted well to). I was therefore offered a coil but (head full of baby crazy) i declined because i couldn't deal with a self-inflicted barren status any longer. I felt like i was stripping away part of my womanhood and killing part of who i am.

I asked at the time whether we couldn't just put my boyfriend on the pill and the lady laughed and said "Would you trust him to remember to take it?" he and i laughed back, but inside I seethed at that throwaway line of sexism. Yes, i would trust my partner to remember to take the pill because he doesn't want babies yet and i do. The lady went on to explain that there was one in development but it was too expensive to be put into general production yet. I can sort of accept that, but feel incredibly frustrated that work hadn't begun on it at the same time as the female pill so that we weren't in this position now.

What really annoyed me was last night, when i sighed about having to use a condom and he turned to me and said "it was your choice". No it bloody well wasn't! As i explained as best i could without destroying the mood, if it was my choice, we'd be doing our utmost to get me pregnant and that would definitely not include condoms! And as he is the one who doesn't want a baby, he should be the one taking responsibility for controlling his fertility. That burden shouldn't be falling to me too.

FKL.

Get a Pet

Something i hear a lot: why don't you get a pet instead?

I would love a pet. I'm always trying to talk the Husbit into letting me have a ferret or a cat or a snake or a guinea pig or something, but he tends to point out the practicalities (he doesn't like snakes, we aren't allowed cats where we are, ferrets and guinea-pigs really require more than a postage stamp garden etc etc).

The point is, though, that i want a pet as well as, not in place of, my children. A pet would (as my herbs currently) give me a bbit of an outlet for my broodiness but they wouldn't solve the issue, nor would i want them too. There are a huge physical aspects to being a mother that i crave - carrying a baby in my womb, breast feeding - that a pet cannot compensate for and that is what people don't seem to accept.

Baby Crazy - Explained pt 2

I, too, am baby crazy. It presents somewhat differently in me, but the basic pain is the same.

I remember being very little, maybe 3 or 4, and being handed someone's baby. I was fascinated by it and I remember my Mum telling me that when I was older I could have one, create one of my own.

I was entranced. I have been broody ever since.


When people find out how desperate I am to be a parent, they don't tell me to have a baby. They tell me I'm young, that I have plenty of time. Even people who think I'm older than I am tell me that and I've learnt to smile and nod and agree but they don't realise that not being a mum makes me feel like I'm dying a little inside, a little more every day and that I feel like I'm running out of time.

My biggest problem is that my partner does not want children. He has very good reasons which may be the topic for another post but he hides them behind pathetic reasons which makes me hurt all the more. It takes two to make a baby and I very much want him to be the other part of it, which means I have to wait.

My biggest symptoms are:

1. A huge feeling of failure when my period begins. I can usually tell in advance that one is coming but I 'pretend' to myself that it isn't and then it arrives anyway and I feel like I'm the biggest failure in the world. It is not dissimilar to either depression or normal menstrual upset, but it does feel markedly different.

2. Dreams and daydreams about being pregnant or having my own children, which can leave me feeling almost bereaved when they end.

3. Problems with friends - I can find it difficult to react around friends with small children or pregnant bellies. I'm most comfortable after the child has been born if I'm allowed to look after the child - I'll quite happily go shopping with someone else's child on my hip, for instance - but then people will tell me how natural I look with the child and I want to cry because of course I look natural with children because this is what I was born to do! And then comes that horrible moment when I have to give the child back. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to keep their child, I want to give birth myself but in the meantime the best I can have is borrowing another small person for a while.

There's also difficulty in relating to people who use social networks to complain or boast about their children. I find it frustrating to hear parents whining about behaviour which I know to be normal, I feel like screaming at them and then remember that as a non-parent I'm not entitled to offer an opinion on raising children because I don't know what it's like. And then I remember that I don't know what it's like and maybe it really is as awful as some people seem to think and then someone else will go on about how blessed they are to be a parent and I want to cry.

4. Inability to focus on anything but babies. As I've said, my partner, whom I affectionately call "The Husbit", isn't broody in the least and this can be a big problem when the only thought on my brain is "baby baby baby baby baby". I can risk missing stops on trains or buses, completely blank out the world around me, so focussed am I on my maternal day dream.

And this frightens me because the more time I spend dreaming about it the more afraid I am that I won't be much of a parent when my babies do come along because what if it's nothing like I think? And of course it won't be as I've imagined because all children are different so what if I turn out to be a terrible mother becuase I've put the idea of motherhood on a pedastool? Though I look at other parents out there and I think I'll be ok. I just need the baby.

Baby Crazy - Explained

This is my story. I am one person, and I know others who have dealt with similar, but each person is affected differently.

I suffer, currently daily, with an issue that is so easy to solve, but I can't.

I want a baby. It seems like such a simple statement but the reality of it is not. 

Many people, including health professionals, have told me I should simply have a baby. But there are a couple of flaws with that argument:

1. I'm not the only one involved in the process, just because I'm ready doesn't mean my other half is.
2. I am at a crucial point in my career, if I don't complete the next year in full I would have to re-train.

The truth is I could live without the job, but I won't do this with out my other half's support. I'm simply not able to do that to him. So until he is ready, I have to wait.

So what is life like living with constant, and often-times overwhelming, broodiness? 


In simple terms - horrible. But that doesn't really tell you much. So I'll let you in on a few of the "symptoms" (for want of a better word). 


1. Dreams - oddly vivid dreams of hearing, holding, playing with and feeding babies. Those kinds of dreams are actually fairly easy to deal with - you wake up, reality comes back fairly quickly. Then there are the other dreams - feeling a child move inside you, feeling the beginnings of a bump, dreams of that first moment when you *know*. Those are harder to wake up from. The feelings linger. Too many times I've woken up and had to put my hands on my stomach just to make sure... 


2. Hearing them - I'm sure you've caught a glimpse of something in the corner of your eye and when you've turned around it's not there. Now imagine that same sensation except with something you've heard. A child's cry, sometimes a child's laugh. It's not always a baby, sometimes a toddler, occasionally older - and I can hear them. As though they were just in the next room. I always know it's not real (how could it be), but sometimes, I admit, it makes me smile and I allow myself to indulge, just for a moment. 


3. Imagining them - I *see* them (my children) in many different places. In the back of the car is a fairly common one,  in the garden, in playgrounds. 


4. Issues with other people's children - This is an interesting one. For many years I could go and babysit or visit friends with children and I'd come away happier, sated almost, for a little while. But as the years have passed it is becoming harder and harder to cope with. I don't feel any inclination to keep the child for myself, it's not my child so why would I? My problem is the green eyed monster - why do these people get to have the one thing I want more than anything else? It is especially hard when I know they did not want the child initially, or appear to have little or no maternal or paternal instincts. I think I'll actually give this issue it's own post as I have a number of additional issues that have developed from it. 


5. Menstrual depression - This is depression of mood (not clinical depression) due to actually seeing and experiencing your period. Seeing that blood each month gives me a sense of failure - failure as a woman and failure to have given life. I have never experienced a miscarriage and I know that what I experience cannot compare to it, but I will admit that in my darkest moments I have felt bereft and broken from the mere act of having my period and in my own mind I have compared it to a miscarriage. I am not proud of that fact, and each month I feel incredibly guilty for feeling that way. 


So those are some of the issues I face, there are others I'm sure, but I can't think of them at the moment! I'll add to the list if I do. 


I hope that helps to explain some of the issues that broodiness can create when essentially "left untreated". It really can become debilitating.