Mothers, stop moaning!

Last week, I received an upsetting email about a pregnant acquaintance. Apparently she is devastated – I repeat, devastated – because her most recent scan shows that her unborn baby is a boy. The mother of two sons will not be having a girl and she is, our mutual emailing friend tells me, beside herself. Dreadful.

I was equally affected when I read Victoria Beckham describing how difficult it is being a working mum: "I have a lot on my plate. I'm not going to lie about it, I'm tired … I'm basically just like any woman who's working and has lots of children – it's tough."

It's tough.

There was a recent article, too – based on a University of Washington survey of 1,600 women – that also stirred me. It concluded that women who tried to be "supermums" were in danger of becoming depressed; that being a mother was so stressful that many women could cope only by hiring help; and stay-at-home mums (with no adult company) were most at risk from this depression. Powerful stuff.

Very powerful. Not because reading my friend's email and those reports made me sit and think about the plight of mothers who may or may not be sprinkling crushed Prozac on to their Special K – but because they made me want to smash my cup of decaf against the wall and then put my fist through the stain.

Enough. Enough already. I don't want to hear any more. I am sick of reading about mums feeling desolate, how hard motherhood is, and how some women can't quite cope if the perfect child in their womb has a penis. Seriously? The joy around Victoria Beckham having a girl after three boys was as ridiculous as her heels. Thank God! Yes, her life making frocks in LA with David and three gorgeous boys must have been torture before.

I don't want to mum-bash, but I do want mums to open their eyes and see what they have. At the risk of being lynched – or, worse, incurring the wrath of Mumsnet Towers … give it a break. Give me a break. Give women like me, who wanted children but don't have them, a break. You mums do not know how blessed you are – so please just be happy and quit complaining. You got the prize. You have the child. Rejoice.

Of course being a mum has its difficulties – but they are finite and surmountable. If you haven't had a child, that devastating problem can never be solved. So raising a child is expensive? So is being single and living alone. You are tired and shattered? That must be horrible – but that feeling can be short-term and the pros (snuggling up to your warm, chubby baby) surely outweigh that particular con? (And let me tell you, the emotional upset of crying congratulations down the phone when your sister nervously tells you she is pregnant, just days after you've been told you most probably never will be, can be exhausting too.)

You feel you have lost your identity? Well, I'd say you've gained a better one. And the women who write "mum" on their Twitter and Facebook bios know that too. Mothers are treated as superior citizens. Pavements and public transport become yours (I was once asked to get off a bus so a woman with a pram could get on, but let's not re-enact that ugly scene here) and the world can't get enough of you.

From every government reaching out to "hard-working families" – the implication being that singles or the childless (or both) don't work hard or have problems or need help (ever read a headline of how single people or the childless fared in a budget, say?) – to tragic news reports that will always mention the loss of a mother before the loss of her equally accomplished no-kids friend, you, the mother, are worth more than childless me.

Mums are the luckiest people on earth. Yes, I don't have the difficulty of combining child-rearing and a career (which could be seen as having the best of both worlds?) but do you really think I'll be on my deathbed whispering "Remember me" to the boss who gave me a promotion because I worked 24/7 for her?

Yes, some mums have to deal with postnatal depression. I know how debilitating and horrendous that is. But I would say depression is depression – and I don't know that the postnatal variety (even loaded with the guilt of not bonding with your child) is any less hideous than the no-natal kind.

I can't tell you how painful not having a child is. My heart drops every time I read a "We're pregnant!" email or a "maternity leave" one. I even have to psych myself back to composure if I read about a pregnant celebrity. (I took myself off Twitter for a day when Beyoncé and Jay-Z's baby snaps were released.) It physically hurts me. Right where a baby would grow.

It is overwhelming to know that my legacy begins and ends with me. So no "family gathering" photographs of me and mine with my siblings and theirs; no proudly watching my kid grow up; no natural place in life's cycle. You, mums, have created the next generation. A new wonderful lineage – of children and probably grandchildren – who are yours and you are theirs. I think that would make me very happy. Please don't give me the "aunts are loved too" platitudes. One of the saddest things I've ever seen was a bench in St Ives obviously placed there in memory of a woman who had loved that spot. On the back of the seat was a plaque engraved with "Much-loved aunt". Jesus. To me it made complete sense that the bench was on the edge of a sodding cliff!

If you think these are the bitter rantings of a woman who fucked up her own life and is just jealous … you'd be 100% right. It kills me that you have the baby and I don't. Why didn't it happen for me? I always wanted children, assumed I would have children and didn't have children because I was only ever in one relationship that was serious enough (and, at 21, he wasn't long enough out of his own nappies to consider that step. Sam Taylor-Wood, I salute you).

I wasn't some hard-nosed career bitch who decided to play russian roulette with her fertility by waiting until her very last egg popped out – preferably between conference calls. I simply never met the right man – and, idiot me in retrospect, I wanted the whole package: the husband and the baby.

At 40, still on my own, I found out I was too old for NHS IVF, had no money and so put my head in the "I'm always reading about women who have babies in their 40s!" sand.

Then my dad died. Grief reassessed my life for me. (People want to create when someone dies. A book, a painting, a child.) I got brave and had fertility tests, which told me, at 46, that my chances of having a baby are pretty much zero.

Then it hit me just how much I wanted a baby and that nothing I have now means anything because that love is the love and I don't have it and won't have it, and therefore have nothing.

That love is the key, isn't it? The reason I'm so upset – and the reason mums should be so grateful. We're told the love between mother and child is the most beautiful, fulfilling emotion in the world – the feeling that finally makes sense of our existence. I don't know because I haven't experienced it – but if the agony of knowing I won't have it is any yardstick, then I would change every decision I ever made that led me to this horrible place.

I've had people I love die in front of me, but even that horror doesn't compare. This rips you (and your future) apart because, as my friend who has been through this said, as I wept over her once again: "You won't heal – because this is deep in you. What you're supposed to do. What's inside us to do. What we're born to do. And you didn't do it."

I will never be pregnant, never be protected by the father of my child, never be loved as the mother of his child, never love like you love, and never be loved as you're loved. I will never mean as much to anyone as you do. Imagine that, mums. Believe me, you don't know you're born.