Of all the things I lost when I got divorced – and I lost a lot – the immediate possibility of a second child and a sibling for E was perhaps the hardest to get over. At the time that I’d always thought I would be planning my next pregnancy, I was separating from my husband. As my peers in new motherhood were achieving that coveted family-of-four status, I was meeting with lawyers, negotiating parenting time and division of assets, and plotting my re-entry to the workforce.
I always wanted two kids. After my pregnancy I packed all my maternity clothes away for future use, and as E outgrew her onesies I saved those, too. Even after divorce threw my plans into question, I held onto those clothes. I even remember one emotionally-charged trip to Target when I purchased a trio of newborn-sized onesies as a promise to myself that, some day, I would bring another child into the world.
I can tell you now, more than five years into this journey, that what I experienced was nothing short of grief. The loss of the family and the life I thought I would have was just that – a loss, and I grieved it.
For years.
I remember the phrase “growing family” (as in, “Congratulations on your growing family!” in the Facebook comments of a pregnancy announcement) being especially cutting, because what was my family doing – shrinking? Did I even have a “family” anymore?
For a long time, I felt like the answer to that last question was no. But perhaps the reason for that is the toxic language we use to describe families who have gone through divorce.
“Broken family.”
“Broken home.”
Well. It’s no wonder I felt like shit. I wish we would eradicate these phrases from our vocabulary, because they imply just that – that a parent and their child(ren) are not a real family, and that their home is dysfunctional and in need of fixing. Let me tell you, my family was more broken when we all lived under one roof. E’s dad and I get along much better now than we ever did before, and I have watched E transform from a shy, cautious baby/toddler into an extroverted, adventurous, social little human. There is nothing “broken” about her family. She just has two homes, each headed by a parent who loves her more than anything.
Gradually, my “new normal” became just “normal.” I realized I had been a single mother longer than I had been a married mother and then, it happened: I was lying in bed alone on a week night, waiting for sleep to come, not long before E’s third birthday and my second anniversary of single motherhood, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t want another baby anymore. It startled me, like finding a photo of yourself you hadn’t known was taken. For two years I’d thought my only hesitation in having another baby was the fear of watching another fledgling family fail, but this was just a deep, calm knowledge that I simply didn’t want to. I didn’t want to do the long nights, the nursing, the diapers, or the potty training.
But more importantly, I actually liked my life.
Just as it was.
I liked my work, and I loved the relationship that was growing between me and E. We were becoming quite the little team by that point, and I wanted to keep nurturing that.
We weren’t broken. I didn’t need a spouse and we didn’t need four people to make a family. We were a family – just a super tiny one. That was the moment my grief ended, and I started making choices.
About six months after that night, I donated all of those old clothes, and the never-worn onesies, too. I gave myself a moment to cry, to feel, and found I didn’t really need to. I had gently laid those old dreams to rest, and I was ready to chase some new ones.
Mother of Merchild 