I can live without children. This sounds so different from how I felt just a couple of years ago, but it’s true. Sometimes I still want a baby, but I no longer feel like I need to have children. My feelings are fleeting. I want to hold my baby, to feel what it’s like to have your baby kick. I want to have a baby fall asleep in my arms. But, I don’t want to see them suffer with illness, I don’t want tantrums. Maybe I don’t want kids in reality, I want the commercial version. It’s taken me a long time, but my maternal drive can be directed elsewhere. Maybe there’s a reason I dealt with infertility, a reason I was not able to carry a pregnancy to term, a reason adoption never worked out. I think it was so I could really evaluate this decision.