The infertile carer

I work as a support worker looking after adults with learning disabilities. I love my job but it often tugs on my heart right where infertility and baby loss have left it bruised and battered. I regularly find myself brutally reminded that I don't have my own children to care for in the ways I care for the guys I look after. It's also painful when they call me Mum and I have to laugh back 'I'm not your Mum!' Inside a voice is shouting 'no, you're not anyone's Mum!'

Sometimes I can see it as a positive thing. Kind of like practice for when I do finally get to be Mummy. But at the end of the day I've been doing this type of work for nearly 10 years now; I think I've had enough practice! There are plenty of things I do at work that are specific to the client/support worker relationship but every day is punctuated with tasks that would typically be a parent's responsibility. I do the laundry for my clients, prepare their meals, attend to their personal care needs and even feed them in some cases. I do these things without thinking but sometimes something breaks the monotony and it strikes me that I'm acting like a mother for these guys. When they joke that I'm like their Mum my heart breaks a little that I don't yet genuinely go by 'Mummy'.

One of the guys I care for has recently had a decline in health and is now reliant on us for pretty much everything. He wears incontinence pads so to all intents and purposes we have to change his nappy. Now changing and cleaning an adult is very different to changing a nappy on a baby but it still gets me. Some days I'd just love to go home and change my baby's pooey nappy instead of only having to deal with them at work. Now don't get me wrong, I gladly do these things for this man and it breaks my heart that his health has declined to this extent. I'm just trying to paint a picture of some of the particular struggles I face as an infertile carer.

It's not just the practical things that tug at my heart. This morning I took some clients to church and one of them had a major strop/tantrum in the lobby and continued in the taxi back. Now we have guidelines and procedures in place to deal with these behaviours and we followed them but sometimes I find myself sad that it's my job to deal with tantrums not my home life. It actually sounds ridiculous doesn't it?! I want my own child so I can deal with their tantrums in public! It doesn't help that this particular lady (in her 50s) had full blown, foot stomping, thigh slapping tantrums much like a toddler would.

There's another reason this job feels like preparation for parenthood; sleep deprivation! I work very long hours, often 14 hour shifts with little break and do sleep in shifts where the quality of sleep is never the same as at home. I also have to listen to and answer the same question for hours at a time and deal with some pretty major situations on very little sleep. These guys often don't get me at my best! Now I'm not complaining about my hours or shifts here; it is was it is and I do my best. God steps in and gives me energy when I need it most. But when I come home exhausted I realise that I'd much rather be an exhausted parent than an exhausted support worker!

As I said before I love my job and I count it a privilege to serve God in caring for these guys. I love praying with and for them and do so every day. I wouldn't change my clients for the world. I just thought that by this stage in my life, at 33, the subject in that sentence would be children not clients.