A blog for the people who aren’t sure they want kids — and are tired of pretending they do.
So here’s a thing about pregnancy tests and miscarriages that nobody really tells you upfront: most women cry at the first one, most women cry at the second one too,
But I managed to do both while discovering that only one of those cries actually made any sense to me at the time.
Because the second cry, the miscarriage one? That one was a ‘relief.’
Now honestly, relief is the most confusing emotion a person can have in a situation like this, because it doesn’t follow the playbook you’ve been handed since you were old enough to hold a doll.
Ok, let me back up a bit, because context matters here and I spent years trying to untangle all of this in my own head before I could even write it down.
I wasn’t childfree in any official, flag-waving way, and I definitely wasn’t a “baby person” who melted every time a stroller rolled past. So I just sort of existed in this weird middle zone where nobody had ever told me a fence was even an option to sit on.
Grow up, get married, have kids- that’s the whole script, and nobody ever pauses to ask whether you actually want any of it, they just assume the wanting will arrive on schedule like a package you forgot you ordered. So you don’t really answer the question at all, you just walk forward and trust that the feeling will show up eventually.
Well, what if it doesn’t?
I once nearly married a man who was absolutely, unshakably certain he never wanted children, which on paper should have been a deal-breaker either way. But instead it just froze me solid because he had something I didn’t — actual conviction. What if I agreed with him and then changed my mind in ten years, or what if I didn’t agree and regretted it forever, and my elegant little solution to all this unbearable uncertainty was just to tell myself that maybe I’d know later?
Dear reader, I did not know later.
Watching my sister become a mother made me nervous about having children myself. We often talk about how painful childbirth can be, but what about everything that comes afterward?
I saw how much her life changed. Her time was no longer entirely hers. She had to put her own needs aside, plan everything around her children, and give up the freedom to do what she wanted, whenever she wanted.
The baby is the easy part to love, but the permanence is the hard part. This sentence, you’re not supposed to say out loud.
The baby grows up, but you never stop being a parent, and you don’t clock out when it turns eighteen, you just trade one set of worries for a whole new one. So if you’ve felt that same quiet dread, here’s your permission slip: you’re not broken, you’re just paying attention.
Then I got pregnant by surprise, and everyone was thrilled, so I joined in and was genuinely happy. Looking back I still wonder how much of that happiness was actually mine and how much was borrowed from the room around me. That’s not fake, that’s just how humans work, because when everyone treats news as wonderful their joy becomes part of yours and there’s no clean line between the two. But there’s a very specific loneliness in being surrounded by celebration while a small private question just sits there in your chest.
The night before my miscarriage, at seven weeks pregnant with my husband asleep, I walked into the bathroom, caught my own reflection, and the tears just came with two thoughts on loop: my life is ruined, and I’ll never be the same person again. I even pressed my stomach lightly (not hard) just enough to remind it that I remembered it was there and resented it a little.
Well, the next day, I miscarried.
Then came the most surprising part: the relief. While the physical side was brutal, the hospital was worse than it should have been, emotionally I felt this huge, almost embarrassing weight lift off my chest. I’d seen a hundred movie miscarriages where the woman is always heartbroken, so I waited for that feeling like a bus that never came, and instead of devastated or empty or mourning a lost baby, I was just relieved.
But now, you’d think that would settle it, question answered, case closed. Nope, it absolutely did not, because I went right back to trying to have a baby for three more years.
Nobody was forcing me, not my parents, not my husband, not his parents. The pressure was entirely inside my own head telling me that we’re married, married people have kids, therefore we should be trying, with another quieter voice underneath saying that I didn’t think I was that person. I didn’t know how to hold both at once, so I did the human thing and kept moving. Three years and two countries and doctor after doctor later, IVF entered the conversation. Both of us had the exact same gut reaction, which was no. It wasn’t the money, it was the medication and the procedures and the uncertainty, putting my body and mind through a rollercoaster with no guaranteed ending.
Here’s the question that reaction should have raised but didn’t: if you wanted this so badly, why was your first instinct to run?
When I spoke to my father about it, I expected him to pressure me to have children. Instead, he surprised me by asking, “If it isn’t happening naturally, why force it?” It was a question that moved me.
If you’re in the middle of trying right now, borrow his question and ask yourself why you’re forcing it, because the answer might genuinely surprise you.
Then COVID happened, and everything came to a halt. We had been stuck in the same routine for years: trying for a baby, waiting, visiting doctors, and trying again. COVID gave us a break from all of that. For the first time in years, we had time to think about why we were trying so hard in the first place.
The real twist came one day when my husband said we needed to decide whether to have kids or not. He casually mentioned that he was fine either way, which floored me because he’d always wanted children. That was what I’d believed all along.
Then he told me that after watching me go through the miscarriage, he’d started questioning whether he wanted children too. He’d been leaning towards being childfree for a while but assumed I still wanted a baby, so he never said anything. Meanwhile, I’d spent years trying because I thought he wanted one. We had both been protecting each other from losing something neither of us was actually sure we wanted anymore. Honestly, the person sitting next to you right now may be waiting for you to say the exact thing you’re waiting for them to say.
Becoming childfree wasn’t a spur of the moment decision for us. It was a slow thaw with no sitcom high-five and no lightbulb. Just a lot of talking and thinking and circling the same scary questions about what happens when we’re old, whether we’ll regret it, whether our friends will vanish once they have kids, and whether I’ll have anything in common with women whose lives revolve around motherhood.
What helped was finding the childfree community online, not to convince me but to hand me language, letting me hear people say out loud the things I’d only ever thought without shame and showing me this life wasn’t some empty void outside adulthood. Because there are other people in the world who were actually living it. When I finally said to my husband, “I am childfree,” it felt like exhaling after holding my breath for a decade.
Being childfree doesn’t mean you hate kids. Sometimes I see families spending time together and think it looks nice. Other times, I see a kid screaming in a restaurant and think, thank God I don’t have to deal with that. Both feelings are completely normal. Kids don’t have to be awful for me to be happy with my choice.
You just need to know you don’t want the whole package, and here’s the part that took me years: ten years ago my answer was maybe, today it’s a clear no, and neither version of me was lying.
You’re allowed to not know, you’re allowed to change, and you’re allowed to stop forcing something just because everyone else is doing it. The only real mistake here is deciding by default. So ask yourself the only question that matters, which isn’t should you have children but whether you actually want to raise them. If the answer is no, you’re not broken and you’re not missing out, you’re just finally telling the truth.
If this felt like your story, stick around — this is the first of many.
Disclaimer: The views shared in this article are based on my personal experiences and opinions. I respect that everyone’s journey and choices are different. My intention is simply to share my perspective, without judging anyone else’s choices or causing offense.