Early on she had decided that if she wasn’t married and pregnant by age 35, she wasn’t going to have a baby. “I went through a natural grieving process knowing that I was probably not going to have biological children,” she says.
“But I had made a decision that I didn’t want to be a kindergarten mom at age 50.” When she joined her new stepfamily, Gretchen’s husband, Brad, asked her to be an active parenting partner to his two children and she stepped up to the plate.
“My mother had twelve children and she said, ‘I’ve never seen you driven to have kids, but just because you didn’t give birth to the children doesn’t mean you’re not a good parent. You earn that. It’s what you do, not what you say, that kids pay attention to.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
But what happens if you don’t make the decision? What if your husband doesn’t want to have any more children? Or worse, what if he says he does at the beginning, but then changes his mind after the wedding? If that’s your case, get some help dealing with the anger and grief you’re bound to feel. Cheryl’s partner David is fourteen years her senior.