I’ve been watching Jane the Virgin on Netflix. It’s a fun show about this young Hispanic woman who was artificially inseminated with sperm from her boss. The whole thing is a spoof on the wildly melodramatic Spanish telenovelas. If watching someone’s pregnancy grow with every episode bothers you, you might not enjoy it.
I liked Jane, but it sent me flashing back to my first marriage, when I often fantasized about being pregnant. Sometimes I’d wear big tops and let people wonder if I was hiding a baby underneath. I’d feel my abdomen and imagine it was getting a little bigger, that I might be pregnant. I’d even sit and stand as if I were carrying a baby. I also crocheted a lot of baby booties. Even though we were using birth control every time, I wanted that feeling. I physically yearned to be pregnant. I also wanted to do what other women my age were doing and get all the extra attention that comes with it.
I used to have dreams about being pregnant. Do you? Sometimes those dreams would be so real, I’d wake up and expect to feel the baby bump and be devastated when I realized it wasn’t real.
Sure, I didn’t long for the pains that come with pregnancy and delivery or the sleepless nights that come with a newborn, but I wanted to be pregnant. It was the ‘70s. I was 20-something and married. Everyone, including me, assumed we’d be having children.
Then my period would come, cramps would tear me apart, and my belly would feel flat and useless. For 40 years, I suffered through painful periods and PMS as my body prepared for pregnancies that didn’t happen. What a waste.
Maybe women who never wanted to have children don’t experience these feelings. Maybe their baby dreams are nightmares. There were certainly years between marriages when I did not want to get pregnant. I was busy working, and my parents would disown me. Now that pregnancy is impossible, when my belly feels big, I think I shouldn’t have eaten so many French fries. But in those early years, sometimes I could convince myself that it was really happening.
Men who might be reading this, I don’t think you can possibly understand how this feels. Women’s bodies are made for baby-making. Dramatic things happen inside for that purpose. All you have to do is provide sperm. So when your mate starts whining about wanting to have babies, be aware that their bodies are nagging them as much as they’re nagging you.
I tried to find a link for you to read more about pregnancy fantasies and came up with porn sites about guys who get off on pregnant bellies. Not what I was looking for, but I guess that’s a thing. I also found several sites that show how you fake being pregnant. Honest to God, there’s www.fakeababy.com. They think it’s funny. Not so much for us, is it?
What do you think about all this? Male and female, I’d love to read your comments.
Childless by Marriage 
Sue,
I have known women who went through this very thing. For whatever reason they never had children. It has recently left me feeling empty and useless. I see Candy is sniping at my remarks. Yet she expresses the same feelings as me. C’est la vie ! I can’t take it and I normally ignore it.
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You mean you “can” take it, right?
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I always dreamt of what I would be like as a mother. It never happened, my husband didn’t want children. I try to imagine sometimes that I have a baby and try to think of what that would be like. It’s heartbreaking. I feel such sadness and worry about getting older. I have an older sister with three young children. I used to spend school holidays with them. Sometimes people thought they were mine. I imagine having Christmas Eve with them and being there to see Santa has been. My brother-in-law put a stop to that by announcing in my presence that Christmas tree trimming is for family when my niece said “Aunty and I will put the tree up “(aunts are not family to him). He doesn’t like me being so close to them (I live interstate) so he has stopped my niece from iMessaging me on her iPad. We used to iMessage every day. My sister said they didn’t have room for my husband and me at Christmas. In a four-bedroom home with two bathrooms. Not having kids really sucks 😞
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Is it okay if I hate your brother-in-law? Come on, dude, having a loving aunt is a great thing for a kid. I’m sorry this happened to you.
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I’m with Sue. I will hate him too!!! The good thing is, being under his controlling thumb is only temporary for her. She will grow up and you can have this amazing relationship with her.
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I don’t remember fantasizing about being pregnant, but I often dreamed about my toddlers playing on the lounge room floor or my kids running around the back yard. I was never a clucky woman, but I did expect to have some of my own kids in my future.
I too suffered painful PMS and periods. It would knock me out for a day or three. Being a teen back in the ’70s, you only went to the GP for serious health issues. When I did finally go to get it seen to, he mentioned that the first birth would usually settle the hormones and the cramps would likely ease off or disappear. Haha, bittersweet advice, never to see the light of day. Nowadays, thank goodness for ibuprofen!
I couldn’t understand how, since I wasn’t overly invested in having kids (it would happen one day I thought). The grief and hurt I felt when I realised it would never happen was so raw and deep. As you say, it’s our bodies nagging us as much as our brains.
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My doctor told me the same thing. Of course, no babies materialised, so… When I hit menopause, I was quite bitter about it – all that discomfort and pain for nothing.
I used to have baby dreams – I would dream I’d had a baby.
Once, I dreamt I had a gorgeous little girl – she looked about six years old. When I woke up, I realised that my (very early) miscarriage would have resulted in a child of about that age.
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While I think it’s natural to desire kids, the desire often crosses into a mental illness. I recall a movie on Lifetime once where a woman pretends to be pregnant, perhaps after a miscarriage. I know in one scene the husband says, “I’m not taking you to the hospital.” She pretends to be a nurse and takes a patient’s baby. I want to say it’s “Empty Cradle.” Fantasizing seems innocent, but as I said it can have a dark side. I point fingers at the pressure put on women, plus the controversy over whether there’s such a thing as pregnancy addiction. I guess wanting babies is seen as natural and not something that can become sinister.
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At one point, I avoided cooing over strange babies, in case their mothers thought I was some weirdo who might want to kidnap them!
And – being honest – looking at other women’s babies just hurt too much a lot of the time. It’s not quite so bad now, so maybe hormones were involved.
I think I’ve reached the age now where I’m just considered to be grandmotherly.
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I can so relate to your article! I used to dream of being pregnant, too. One of the worst times during all of the infertility treatments I went through so many years ago was when I was approached by more than one person asking if I FINALLY got pregnant. I hadn’t; I just blew up like a puffer fish during an IVF cycle.
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