Saturday, April 7, 2012

A Silent Struggle


Only a handful people have known how long Jeff and I have been trying to have a baby. This is usually not something you announce to the world until you are expecting. I was never really planning on telling more than the few people who already knew.  The more I thought about it the more I realized I needed to share our story. Not to get sympathy, compassion or even support, even though these things are wonderful in someone’s time of need. The only reason I want to do it at all is for the small chance, that we can give someone else who is struggling with infertility one of the most precious things you can give. HOPE. Maybe Jeff and I will one day be blessed with a child of our own and maybe we won’t. But no matter how many different scenarios’ I come up with in my head, in my heart I know that one day, somehow we will be parents.

For the first two years I was ok with the fact that we weren’t getting pregnant. It was before our wedding and we weren’t really trying anyway. I can’t fully explain why we were not preventing it from happening. A lot of you probably think we are crazy and part of me thinks we were too.  Even though we were taking a big risk, I think I knew it wouldn’t happen.  We both knew we wanted children.  I had found the person I wanted to be my partner in building a family with and he had found the girl he wanted to be the mother of his children. That’s all that mattered. We knew we were going to do this one day anyway, why not let nature decide when it happened. We were not necessarily ready to become parents then, but is anyone ever really 100% ready? I mean we all have heard and in some cases watched hundreds of story’s where people were not planning on having a baby but did. A lot of them becoming great parents if they could do it so could we. I mean we had one thing up on a lot of them. We already had each other.

It was after we got married and actually started trying, that I slowly started getting worried. At first I started writing it off, thinking it’s probably better that it didn’t happen this month, we have this coming up or that, that we want to do.  Then before we knew it, slowly the days starting turning into months and quickly the months started turning into years.  After about six months to a year it started to really affect me. Each month that passed brought on a flood of tears and heartache.  Each time with Jeff being my rock telling me everything will work out, that it will happen when it’s time. Our time will come… one day.

2 comments:

  1. You are so right, you WILL be parents one day and even though it may not happen in the way you had imagined, once that child is in your arms nothing else will matter.

    It took Derek and I five years to get pregnant with Addison. Three years in we started seeing specialists and looking for answers. The weight of infertility fell solely on me, which was really hard to bare. I had three separate issues working against me - a malformed uterus, endometriosis, and irregular ovulation. We were looking at in-vitro but it was horrifically expensive, as was adoption. We were burnt out from trying, getting our hopes up, and being let down, so we decided to take a less aggressive approach - acupuncture and herbal therapy. I don't know if it was just timing, if the treatments really were that effective, or if it was simply taking the pressure off and not really 'trying' but we got pregnant a month after I started the natropathic treatments.

    I'm not telling you all this because I feel like one path is better than the other - I just want you to know that we have been there and I completely understand the frustration and disappointment that comes along with infertility. I'm always here if you want to talk or vent and I'll be thinking of you and hoping that you and Jeff get the opportunity to be parents soon.

    <3

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  2. I now know why Jeff has not been himself at work lately. Hang in there both of you, you will get through this, and when you are blessed with a child you will both just appreciate him or her that much more! You two will be great parents.

    -Christie

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