Being a Doula without Children

Folks have often asked me how am I a doula without having had a child or asked when do I plan to have one—including my family who are always asking when am I going to give them a grandchild. Let’s be honest, the dating scene is terrible and I’m actually enjoying being a single cat lady and a dual major and casually dating here and there. I also know that the statistic of having a nuclear family with both parents in the household is dwindling. Do I want to have a child and have a husband one day? Maybe but look at the statistics of divorce and remarrying and I know how paranoid I am of being married and having to relinquish control and submit to a man who I have to pray and hope is a good man and stays a good man.

As a child who was adopted into a family that wasn’t my own blood, I never wondered where my parents were because they gave me away and even though my birth parents were somewhat active in my life, I had to BEG for them to be there. I watched my mom and sister hustle to make sure I had everything I needed and showed me love unconditionally in ways my own birth parents couldn’t.

While I may have all my life to find love, fertility is NOT the same way. There is a time clock on having kids before the egg quality diminishes and risks of genetic diseases increase. Believe it or not, infertility is a big issue that affects even women my age and knowing that I have multiple risk factors that could hinder my ability to become a mother, I’ve already planned my fertility options. I’ve been to multiple fertility seminars as a single woman and I’ve always been happy to find other single women who are career driven and going into medicine and know that the chances of having a baby 🤰usually is low if we love the career field we are in and are brand new and don’t want to risk losing opportunities because of pregnancy.

I’ve seen how women get treated when they get pregnant and have to go on maternity leave. They often lose their jobs or get reduced to part time because of the demands of motherhood. Im choosing to be selfish in my mid 20s and focus on me before bringing in a child to the world who will already have odds against him or her with being a black child. Women still have to fight for their rights to be heard and recognized and are still trying to battle having access to equal pay at the same level of their male counterparts. Black mothers are at a higher risk of dying in the U.S. because of implicit bias and racism in the healthcare system. I think about these things everyday and ask myself do I really want to have a child in this country that barely values women, let alone black and brown women.

I know that choosing to freeze my eggs and having some fertilized with donor sperm and the others unfertilized is planning for the future so I don’t risk losing my dream of being a mother because I don’t have a boyfriend or husband there. As a survivor of multiple rapes and abuse, I know that trauma changes the environment of the uterus and can make conceiving a baby hard which is why I’ve put off having kids so I can work on healing. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a mother without a man in the picture.

There’s more to life than just relationships and having a man and putting the dreams of motherhood on hold because society says you should have a husband before having a child. I am a rebel and I follow the beat of my own drum. I know that when that time comes I’ll have the option of being a single mother by choice, adopting a baby or child from foster care, or having a baby with someone who loves me and will stick around to raise our child together.

Either way, my dream to motherhood is planned out so I don’t have to stress in my mid 30s as a nurse midwife when there’s no husband or partner in the picture and a biological clock on the quality of my eggs for reproduction ticking. My future child will be loved unconditionally even if he or she doesn’t have a father in the picture because it took a VILLAGE to raise me and I blossomed into a beautiful, sweet, and intelligent woman and I know the same will be true for my own future children. That’s the circle of life and motherhood and I will say my experiences working in labor and delivery and being a doula for the past two years has made me more cognizant about my own fertility journey and goals for parenthood.