What If Your Baby Fever Never Breaks?
The Atlantic had an article that was passed around the Internet a few weeks ago about how it’s okay if you never get “baby fever.” The sub-headline: “A deep, sudden longing for babies is certainly real, but it’s not a prerequisite for having kids.”
And just in case you were wondering, infertility was mentioned as a possible cause of this feeling:
In fact, some researchers think baby fever is a reaction to infertility struggles, not a ubiquitous maternal urge … It’s a consequence of you wanting to have children and not being able to have them.
Okay.
But what wasn’t really discussed was the flip side: Your baby fever never breaks. You go through life with a scorching case of baby fever that burns long after the point that family building is on the table. I know I’m not the only person who feels this way — many others of you have written about it, too. If infertility was the cause, then family building should have been the cure. But… it wasn’t. I still have baby fever; I’ve just learned to live with it.
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Not family built enough. There’s a wonderful misogynistic joke about a woman who goes to a showroom to get a man. The only rule is that once she leaves a room, she can never go back, she can only go forward. And the first room is a men who don’t drink. The second room is men who don’t drink and have a good income. The third room is men who don’t drink, have a good income and dress well. And the bottom line is that the men get “better and better” and the woman keeps going to the next room to see what that looks like until they’ve reached the end of the warehouse and never picked anyone because they were constantly looking for something better.
Piers Anthony actually made that joke more universal in one his Incarnations of Immortality series, where he sets a model of hell up much the same way as a way for the devil to trap people into giving him their souls for what seems like better to them.
Because the truth is that while men can claim all they like that women are never satisfied, the truth is none of us are ever satisfied. We always want more. We’re created to want more. More spiritual connection, more money, more family, more love, more work, more play. We want better. Religions debate about whether that’s a good trait and they’re very conflicted. Pirkei Avot manages to play both sides against the middle in a delightful way. Consider:
Avot 4:1 Ben Zoma says, “who is rich? The one who is content with his portion” as it says in Psalms, “When you eat the labor of your hands, happy are you (today) and it will be well with you (in the future).
And
Avot: 2:10 in which Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai proposes to his students: Go out and see which is the good way to which humanity should cling: R. Eliezer said ” a good eye” R. Yehoshua said “A good friend” R. Yossi said, “A good neighbor”, R. Shimon said, “One who sees what is born” (the long-term consequences of your actions), and R. Elazar said, “A good heart.” And R. Yochanan Ben Zakai says I prefer the words of Elazar ben Arach to all the rest because his answer includes yours.
One the one hand, contentment with your lot, on the other striving to to obtain all the things that come with a good heart, not being content with any one of those things, but recognizing how essential many things are to the composition of a person.
Which is a very long winded thought for a simple idea.
I disagree that infertility is the cause of baby fever. Yes, there are people who go through infertility who have baby fever, but there are also plenty of examples of people who get pregnant over and over, sometimes past the point that is sustainable for their families, who certainly have baby fever. So I really think the author missed the mark with their conclusion.
I’m sorry you are living with continued baby fever.
I have always had baby fever. It has never gone away, even though I chose to tie my tubes because more babies could be dangerous to my health. Even though I am mid-40s. Even though we have kids with special needs. I still fantasize about miraculously having more babies.
What a weird take (full disclosure I didn’t read the article, just your post).
I didn’t ever really develop baby fever and I know plenty of women who are not infertile who totally have it. And women who are infertile who have it.
I’m tired of being jammed into a box to fit whatever someone thinks I should fit into. Or, as I’ve found in the spiritual community judging that I’m on a certain stage of my path. We’re all on a path. It’s called being a human on the planet Earth. There is no hierarchy between “conscious or unconscious” just different paths. OMG you got me started now. Just today in a meeting a woman stated a value listed in a book wasn’t “conscious”. It’s neutral! It’s a fucking word!
I’m tired of either/or and hierarchical bullsh*t.
…and that’s what I think about the infertility “baby fever” trope too.
The baby fever thing is interesting bc I am definitely one of those people who did not have it until I experienced infertility. So I feel validated hearing I am not the only one. I was never one of those people who wanted to be a mom since they were a child, pined for babies in my early 20s, etc. In fact reading about people like that always made me feel slightly uncomfortable like something was wrong with me. And on the flip side, for me, having my two miracle kids cured my late onset baby fever.