The day I met my husband, he asked if I would consider entering into a courtship with him, That word, "courtship", conjured a few thoughts. One, that I would have to ride in a van with 8 biological homeschooled children. I didn't even want kids. Two, I knew that I would be well taken care of by a good man. The latter has proved true beyond what I imagined.
He was excited to be a family man someday and was looking forward to the prospect of children in his life. While we were still dating, I convinced him that having kids was just a terrible idea, and he began to share my cynicism.
A year into our marriage, I got the "mommy bug" and decided I could hardly wait to get pregnant. It didn't take the Mr. that long to come back around to the idea. What stood in the way was my personal health and our finances. I was brokenhearted at the prospect of having to wait so long.
Of course there is always something in the water, and while I waited, newly expectant women were popping out of the woodworks. Pregnancy announcements made me weep. I felt left out.
We finally decided to start our family. It was everything I wanted and I'd been planning hard for it for a year and a half.
My reproductive health has never been in a perfect place, and three years of marriage have not changed that.
This is an emotional journey filled with hope and disappointment, expectation and cynicism. Thinking for three weeks that your life may be about to change in a radical way, and spending the next two weeks reeling from the disappearance of those dreams is something that happens month after month, and it is exhausting.
After three years of marriage, after passing another Mother's Day, by Father's Day my light has dimmed. I know that we won't get pregnant easily, and perhaps not without outside help.
We are beginning to accept that we may live without children. Perhaps not forever. That children may cost more money than we have to even conceive. I always said I didn't want to "be one of those people" who was 25 before starting a family. This is a paradigm shift causes us to restructure how we have expected our lives to turn out.
The acceptance of being a childless couple is not with interruption of that hope that is unbearable. The body is a tease. Even though you know you most likely will not conceive, there is that monthly wait that holds out "maybe this time", preceding another 3 weeks of expectation, followed by another two weeks of reeling, followed by more acceptance, and then all over again. I cannot find acceptance while always interrupted by hope. It is too exhausting emotionally to go through it, but I do it, again and again. This is why it is nearly tempting to prevent that hope altogether with a birth control pill.
I feel guilty for not giving this to my husband. I feel too bad to say it to his parents that want to be grandparents. I want to give that to my mother. I want to give it to me.
People don't understand. We have heard, "It will happen fast!" "Children will come, so do other things now". No. No, no, no, no. That is not our story. That is okay. But one more cheerful parent of 32 children says this to me and I will punch them in the face.
And that is where I am.
