I commented this on a previous post about pregnancy dysphoria. Still holds true to how i feel,

I’ve mostly made peace with the fact that it will never happen. It hurts very badly sometimes but it is what it is. I really want to be a mom one day, and when I am able to I will love my children with all my heart. For me, being a mom is my life’s dream. I wish I could conceive my own children but, I can’t. Someday it will be a reality for women like us but it’s not there yet and I’m really not holding out any hope that it will be within my life time. Even if it does happen in my lifetime I don’t want to spend my life waiting for something that is unlikely to ever happen for me. Focusing on how ultimately being a mom itself is my dream has helped me cope. Because that is something I can work towards today.

I really strongly empathize with this pain though. I’ve cried myself to sleep over it many times. I hope you’re able to find what helps make it easier for you.

I’m not a trans person, but maybe my experience will help. I thought for some years, when I was young, of having children because it was what my mother told me that gave happiness and even value to a [cis] woman. She criticized [cis] women who had no [cis] husband, who were lesbian, who were childless, etc. She even pitied them saying things like “poor Whoever, she ended up unmarried” or things like that. It was like living with a typical 19th century woman in a way.

So I internalized things, but then I started hitting adulthood and I started to question them. First the deal with heteronormativity and stuff. But then I questioned the idealization of pregnancy and motherhood. Oh, boy! It’s a deep topic when you dive into it, but some highlights.

First, feminism has a lot of resources about how pregnancy is a very complex and even risky biological process and it is very subjective (and it should be subjective) if it is enjoyable or not; that is, some might enjoy it (and that’s great news), but others might suffer or hate the whole process and that doesn’t make them mean, evil, ungrateful or whatever (it’s super valid not to enjoy it too). That made me think of it in a colder, more medical and more realistic way: it’s a thing bodies can pass, there’s no obligation, there’s no magic, there’s nothing. The aura, the mystification fell. It was a choice. Should I make it still?

Well, that’s my second highlight: the morality of creating life. After some years, I concluded I had no right to impose life unto other. It sounds dramatic, but really, why should I bring another person to this life (especially to these times, but always)? To meet some social standard?, some biological tendencies that I might adopt blindly as rules (no, thanks)?, some narcissistic dream of seeing myself replicated? Philosophical antinatalism reaffirmed my thoughts as I haven’t found convincing any “refutation” of it. And thus another myth fell: that we ought to reproduce. We don’t; it might even be morally problematic or wrong (which is my stance).

And by questioning the aura, the aesthetics and even ethics we impose on pregnancy and motherhood, by making all the issue “naked”, I noticed it was not appealing to me anymore. I’m tolerant as most vegans are tolerant of meat-consumers, like “you do you”, but really it’s kind of horrific to me sometimes as an idea. It feels like a science fiction thing. You can read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley in an antinatalist light and that’s the vibe I sometimes get from people who manically (as Viktor) rush to have “babies” for the ideas behind (the baby shower, and the little objects, and the beautiful flowy dresses, and…), only to find out, like Viktor, that creating life should be about the responsibility and the creature and not the ego, the fanciful life, etc.

So I’m childless by choice. No crave from the uterus (lol) nor other misogynistic and outdated descriptions; and no unhappiness. I do have a partner, but I know I could be happy with just friends too. I can gladly say my mom was wrong on these ones. I found being a happy woman is not about fitting into these (honestly closed) boxes.
The end. Sorry for the long comment.

tbh just not thinking about it and avoiding triggers … I never wanted children until I was on estrogen, unfortunately that flipped my biological switch and now I wish I could get pregnant and have kids 😞

my voice and face are much greater daily sources of dysphoria, usually the pregnancy issue comes up when I see other mothers and I yearn to be like them.

That said, it’s tempered some by knowing even if I could get pregnant, I’m not sure I would do it - I don’t feel ready or competent enough. I feel like I haven’t figured out how to care for myself yet, let alone be well enough that I would feel confident I wouldn’t screw up my kids. I see how little is in my control, and I just couldn’t stomach participating in perpetuating cycles of generational trauma.

I have no advice, but sympathy. I know what this feels like, and wish you the best. Though I have not yet felt pregnancy dysphoria specifically, I have felt like I’m missing a core part of womanhood by not having periods. And I personally know the sting of invalidation when someone says you shouldn’t want an experience because it’s unpleasant.

Take care <3

I wish I had a better answer, but the best that I can suggest is that it might help to find solidarity with other women who aren’t able to become pregnant. I know a lot of cis women who struggle with this, and it causes them stress in a manner that seems analogous to gender dysphoria. A surprising number of cis women experience this, but it’s not spoken about much because of how much stigma there is around it.

There are many cis women that will never be able to give birth and the actual hope is terrible and destroying, not to mention the actual physical toll. In many cases the acceptance that it will never happen allows for some healing and the search for alternatives. Being a mother is not just carrying a child in your womb, that part, although wonderful on it’s own is just the beginning. I wish you the best of luck.

Well I got over it by watching my partner give birth to a 4.6 kg baby. The anaesthesiologist managed to nick her spinal artery with the epidural and she lost about half a pint of blood while being in active labour she managed to get the baby out in a couple of hours largely without pain relief because the epidural didn’t find it’s mark. She did great, but it was very traumatic for everyone involved.

Edit: also I have plenty of children. I really don’t need more 😂