Mama's Without Kids ~NEW~ 2009 Thread

[BurtsGirl]

The Mama's without Kids Tribe is a group of women who have found themselves at MDC for various reasons who do not and have no plans to have children. We're part of the MDC community, too, and have particular issues that have, in part, to do with carving out a place that's about mothering for women who don't think that they will mother.

Share with other women without children and who don't see them in the future. We discuss our lives, loves, careers, hobbies, partners, travels, and on goings. We also discuss issues and topics related to not having children and what impact that has on our lives.

Feel free to check out our 2008 thread here.

For those planning children or waiting to TTC there is a Not Mama's Yet tribe here.

[BurtsGirl]

For those that might be new maybe we can start by introducing ourselves again. If your comfortable share you situation on why you're not having or aren't planning to have children.

I'm Rachel and turned 30 a couple of weeks ago. I'm married to Terri, 34, and we have a beautiful good boy named Rascal. I work in marketing and Terri is a production manager at a small sign company.

We started TTC in 2007 and after much investment made the decision to stop and to move forward without children. It's been a difficult but very good decision for us. After that decision it left me in confusion as to how I would fit into this community. I decided to carve out a tribe for women like me and was surprised there were others. We've all shared so much in the last year and I hope we'll continue to grow, learn, and embrace each other as women as well as add some new tribe members.

[jlutgendorf]

Hi Rachel! :

Thanks for starting a new thread! I'm Julia, married to Robert. We have 2 dogs, three cats, 2 birds and 8 guinea pigs. I'm a graphic designer and he's a photographer/web designer.

I'm in a different place than Rachel, in that I'm 100% undecided on whether I WANT kids. Robert has said he does, but I can't make up my mind. One moment I do, the next I see someone with their screaming toddler and I don't. I'd like to get to a point where I can say yes or no. But I'm not sure how to get there!

~Julia

[BurtsGirl]

Glad you made it over, Julia!

So what is everyone (<-- postive thinking) doing this weekend.

Tonight we are putting together the bottom part of the entertainment center DW is building. We should be able to take that part home tonight. SO excited! Tomorrow we're watching the nephew's basketball game and volunteering to plant some trees! : Sunday we'll probably relax but might do a hike if the weather stays nice. Today it's supposed to get into the 60's!

[jlutgendorf]

No firm plans yet. We might go tour a house for my parents, but the owner hasn't gotten back to me yet. Parents live in AZ, and want to get a second house out here, so we've offered to check them out if they're not too far away. Other than that, the house is scary, so maybe we'll (finally) do some sort of cleaning.

Robert's back! : he's tired, but he had an amazing time. it's really interesting, because his experience of the inauguration was really different from what they were showing on tv, mainly in regards to people's reaction to both Bushes. It seems like a bunch of people snuck in this huge colapsable sign, and when the Bushes and Cheneys were leaving on Marine 1, they put it together and pointed it at the helicopter, reading "Get the F@#! out of Washington". Not the nicest of sentiments, but I can totally understand why people feel that way.

He also said that it was akin to a religious experience for many of the people there, people just overcome with joy, crying because they were so happy and so proud. My mom sent this to us in an email: "I just wanted to share, that just before Pres. Obama was sworn in, I had a flash from when I was a child watching (in black and white, natch) on TV the civil rights demonstrators in Alabama having the police turn fire hoses and dogs on them. It was vicious. There’s no other way to describe it.

Several of us had chills as he took the oath of office. So much has happened in baby boomer lifetimes."

And Robert said they were showing those exact same clips on the jumbotrons, I guess doing a recap of the civil rights movement. He also said that the crowd just went insane any time the Obama girls were shown, all the flags went up waving, everyone cheering and clapping. In general, just happy excited mayhem. And apparently, everyone was in a good mood, polite to everyone else, no fights, etc.

We looked through some photos, but not all. He took 20 GIGS worth. We'll need to pare that down some!

oooo, and he got me an Obama shirt, with the logo done up in sparkly rhinestones! (I love sparkles ).

I'll def. post links to the pictures when we get them online.

~Julia

[BurtsGirl]

Julia, WOW! What an experience. I can't even imagine what the energy was there. And I had no doubt that he would fill up several memory cards, lol. All the photographer friends I have would do the same thing. Better to have too many than not enough, lol. Should be fun going through them with him. And I'm totally envious of the sparkly Obama shirt!

House hunting with someone elses money sounds like fun! I love shows like House Hunter and My First Place.

[BurtsGirl]

Just so I'm clear, *snicker*. I just saw your status on Facebook, Julia. And am I wrong in saying that NONE of us (me, you, or Grace) is the cook in the house? Our partners are the kick-butt chef's of the family? That's hilarous! If all of us ever get together (which I'm really hoping will happen one day) we're screwed! 1800-take-out please.

[Scribe]

Hey, I'm Grace! I'm a nearly-30 year old woman, partnered to a man, Mark. We're undecided about kids--Mark leans against, I lean towards. Strongly towards. So it's something that we talk about some and are sort of waiting on.

I currently work at a university but am changing jobs in two weeks to go back to my former career--technical writing.

Mark and I have two dogs and three cats, as well as a rotation of foster dogs. Currently, Mark is interviewing for post-docs and in a few months we'll be moving somewhere, but we don't know where yet, which stresses me out.

And I don't cook. Unless I have to. I'm trying, though!

[jlutgendorf]

Originally Posted by BurtsGirl

Just so I'm clear, *snicker*. I just saw your status on Facebook, Julia. And am I wrong in saying that NONE of us (me, you, or Grace) is the cook in the house? Our partners are the kick-butt chef's of the family? That's hilarous! If all of us ever get together (which I'm really hoping will happen one day) we're screwed! 1800-take-out please.

Yup, Robert's the main chef! I like to bake, but don't do it very often.

See, if we all get together, our partners can just send us with food! And we can all pretend we cooked.

~Julia

[BurtsGirl]

Originally Posted by jlutgendorf

Yup, Robert's the main chef! I like to bake, but don't do it very often.

See, if we all get together, our partners can just send us with food! And we can all pretend we cooked.

~Julia

laughup :

OMG, that was hilarious! I also love baking but don't do it much because of the waist line. Also, I totally forgot you had 8 guinea pigs. How does one acquire 8 guinea pigs? Do they have names?

You know we could use a neuroscience guy in SC! *hint-hint, poke, giggle*

[Scribe]

Hehe. I wish.

Right now, it's between Virginia (outside D.C.) and the East Bay.

[BurtsGirl]

East Bay? Is that the one in CA? If so my vote is for the East Coast! DC is drivable for Julia and I and we can meet in the middle. So I think you and Mark should plan your move, careers and life around us being able to hang out, drink wine (beer for Julia), and giggle like school girls once a year or so. You good with that, Julia?

[jlutgendorf]

Originally Posted by BurtsGirl

East Bay? Is that the one in CA? If so my vote is for the East Coast! DC is drivable for Julia and I and we can meet in the middle. So I think you and Mark should plan your move, careers and life around us being able to hang out, drink wine (beer for Julia), and giggle like school girls once a year or so. You good with that, Julia?

I am totes good with that. Doooooooo iiiiiittt.

And you get 8 guinea pigs by starting out with 2. Then you suddenly have a lot more. Then when a pair of boys break into the girls sections, you have A LOT more. I think at our height, we had almost 20. which is a lot. Our current ones (in order of age) are: Arizona, Tigger Yum Yum, Flower, Brillo's Baby, Pepe Lopez, Dobie Jr., Chub Tub, and Little Bit. (we like weird names).

[BurtsGirl]

LMAO! I : the names! Especially Pepe Lopez and Chub Tub! Ok, too many exclamation marks...sorry.

So it's all decided and Julia and I approve the DC move. Whew. Now that that's done we can create world peace.
Seriously, which place would you prefer to live, Grace?

Man, I'm in a good mood today.

[jlutgendorf]

Originally Posted by BurtsGirl

LMAO! I : the names! Especially Pepe Lopez and Chub Tub! Ok, too many exclamation marks...sorry.

So it's all decided and Julia and I approve the DC move. Whew. Now that that's done we can create world peace.
Seriously, which place would you prefer to live, Grace?

Man, I'm in a good mood today.

Pepe Lopez is actually named after a bottle of Tequila. Chub Tub was a slip of the tongue when Robert got Photobucket and SmugMug confused with each other. It was hilarious (to me).

We also had a foster stray cat named Chalupa and a rabbit named Gordita. Yes, we are weird.

Yeah, where would you like best, Grace?

~Julia

[Scribe]

Berkeley. But it's complicated. The offer in Virginia is probably a better one. We'll see.

[BurtsGirl]

Julia, you are seriously cracking me the h@ll up! I'm sure someone is going to walk past my cube and ask why I'm giggling so much.

Grace, I hope where ever you move you'll be happy and so will Mark. (although I am still placing my vote on DC for purely selfish reasons.) When do you think you guys will be making the final decision?

[Scribe]

Should just be a few weeks. Mark goes to England next week for his last interview. When he gets back, we should have all the information we need to decide.

[BurtsGirl]

How was everyone's weekend?

We mostly just hung out at home which was nice. Sat we skipped the game and went to do the volunteer work but when we got to the meeting location no one was there. We were majorly bummed about that. I'm going to email the org to see what happened. Maybe we missed something. Sunday we cooked, played video games and I did some reading. I gotta tell you I just love the magazine Natural Health. I read the whole issue yesterday.

[wannabemoms]

Hey, I finally made it over here...

Intro, intro, let's see...

I'm Crystal and I'm a 29-year-old gal married to my 39-year-old wife, who has been my partner for over 7 years. In the summer of '07 we got this crazy notion about having kids. We supplemented, charted, tested, doctor-ed, and called it quits a year later. We are on the road to a child-free life, which I am fine with 90% of the time and really angry about 10% of the time (which is probably better than it was 6 months ago, so I guess I'm making progress).

We live in an old continually-being-renovated-schoolhouse in the country, surrounded by hayfield and woodlots. We are grossly outnumbered by our 2 cats and 3 dogs, who somehow always get away with claiming the couch. I'm an ecologist by training, am currently trapped in a cubicle administering federal grants to people doing the type of research I WANT to do, and am plotting my eventual escape back to grad school to do my PhD.

Lately I have been a largely absentee contributor to this lovely group of women who I adore, because I am in a big snit/mood/bummer/somethingorother and I tend to withdraw from people I care about when I'm like that (sorry girls!

Originally Posted by BurtsGirl

Just so I'm clear, *snicker*. I just saw your status on Facebook, Julia. And am I wrong in saying that NONE of us (me, you, or Grace) is the cook in the house? Our partners are the kick-butt chef's of the family? That's hilarous! If all of us ever get together (which I'm really hoping will happen one day) we're screwed! 1800-take-out please.

Hey! I'll have you know I cook! I made lasagna and chili and stew and an oven roast this weekend, and un-cooked for the dogs, too!!