I can’t believe I don’t have a baby 

| Kimberly Smith


I’m over 40 and I’m Single and childless …and I just can’t believe it. 

Sometimes I am hopeful that might change, sometimes I’m quite at peace and content if it doesn’t, sometimes I’m overwhelmed with the grief and sadness of it – but mostly, I just can’t believe it. 

I just can’t understand how this is the way my life has gone! All I’ve ever wanted to be is a wife and mother. Instead, I continue to experience so many other amazing things that I didn’t expect, or even imagine would be part of my life. I have so many other roles – a friend, an Aunty, a Pastor, an author, a speaker, a leader, a traveller – I love so much about my life. But I just can’t believe I’m not a mum. 

I love babies. I love children. They seem to love me (well most of them). They run to give me hugs, they fall asleep in my arms; they each have their special nicknames, hugs and traditions. I have a well-developed ability to sleep literally anywhere (including standing up – true story) at any time which I am sure would be a handy skill to have as a sleep-deprived new mum. I have a full heart and an empty home.

I am supremely confident of God’s nearness and His love. He leads me, He defends me, He grows me in wisdom and in His grace. He comforts me. He blesses me abundantly. While I completely trust His plans and purposes for my life, I don’t completely understand them. I’m sure He knows what I long for. 

I can’t believe I don’t have a baby. 

My Singleness doesn’t feel like it has an end date. I can marry at any time – and I hold the deep hope that I will on an open hand. There’s a biological reality to my capacity to conceive and carry a child on which the window is rapidly closing, or may have already closed. 

I can’t believe I’m not a mum. 

I think it’s okay to say that out loud. I feel like it’s healthy to express that in context to a greater sense of contentment and peace. Because the sense of disbelief is actually the feeling that rises most regularly. Sometimes it’s so strong it physically arrests me and I literally stop what I’m doing and shake my head – I’m sure I have a confused expression on my face. 

And then? Well, then I take the next step forward into whatever else is happening and whatever else is coming. 

10 thoughts on “I can’t believe I don’t have a baby ”

  1. I have had those very same “I can’t believe it” moments – it’s great to state and healthy to acknowledge, and makes me feel ‘validated’ to hear them expressed here. Since many of God’s miracles in the word, and attributed in our world, are about pregnancy, it sometimes _feels_ as though it’s the pregnancy and motherhood that is the gift. But I’m not sure this is the point. I’ve been having a lot of thinks about the babies that come from those miracles, and what lives they ended up leading, what purposes they fulfilled. Luke 1 for example – the double-pregnancy miracles. 🙂 Very unusual boys. ❤

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  3. KimmE – you are an amazing women & l love reading your words! There are so many things that happen in this life that l will never understand, but l stand strong in knowing God has it under control! You are such an inspiration to me & so many others. God has not finished with you yet… not by a long shot! I’m excited about seeing/hearing what God has planned for you in the future! Have a lovely Christmas. Every blessing to you, Kim! x

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  4. Thanks for your honesty. I’m a single dad, so obviously already have kids of my own. When I began my single journey, having more kids and babies wasn’t on my mind at all but an article that I came across (somewhere on the amazing internet that has articles on everything) changed all that. ‘I’ have kids, but if, God willing, there is a future ‘we’, the other half of that ‘we’ might want to have babies of her own. Babies which would be ‘our’ kids. Just one more complicated part of the journey, but thanks to the article I read, it’s a part that is no longer something I have ruled out.

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