Just the Two of Us

Amsterdam, May 2004
River Seine, Paris, May 2004
Trevi Fountain, Rome, May 2004

When people get married, it is expected that having children would come next. Not in our case. It's been ten years, but we have not been blessed with children. I admit, we would love it if we were blessed with children (see our posts on IVF) , but life has been good to us and we couldn't really ask for more.

Having gone through a lot in our quest to have children (numerous medical consultations, surgery, IVF) and not being successful have put our marriage to a test. And the experience had actually strengthened what we have. We now know that happiness in a marriage cannot be equated with having children.

What Hubby and I have done to cope with not having children is to always look around us and appreciate what we already have, and we actually enjoy a lot of good things even if we don't have kids.

Some of the things that we enjoy the most with not having children is that we can plan for travel anytime we want. We don't have to worry about whether we should bring the children and scheduling our vacations only when the children are on vacation. Not having to think of saving up for tuition fees (which I know could cost as much as P100,000 per year in grade school and up to P200,000 for college) is also a positive thing. In addition, there is no need to worry about yayas -- I've had a lot of officemates who would have to absent themselves from work when their yayas quit. And, as I understand there is also a lot of pressure now for parents to teach their kids and help them in their school work. Some required projects would be impossible for kids to do without major help from parents ,which I think is so unfair to parents by the way and I just think it would just make kids more dependent on help. Teachers should only assign projects that can be done by kids themselves! I'm not sure if I would take that sitting down, I can picture myself fighting with the teachers :-)

In other words, we continue to experience some form of personal and financial freedom. We can be a bit carefree with our finances (spending on things we both enjoy) without really worrying about the future. We can travel, buy luxury items which we both enjoy and dine in expensive restaurants. We can do whatever we want without the guilt.

Not having children allows us to pursue our dreams even late in life. I started teaching only three years ago, and it is something I see myself doing for the long haul. It also allows us to try new things , and sometimes take risks like start a business.

We are also able to spend more time with our parents, our families, our nephews and nieces. We realize that there is more of our time, money and other resources that we can share with our loved ones.

We can also afford to help other people, in their education, their kids' education, medical bills and other things.

And I think the most important thing is that my Husband and I have grown closer together. We have turned to each other during the most difficult times, but we have also spent our happiest moments together. We are happy, even if it's just the two of us.