I always knew that I wanted to have children, but when I got married, I wasn’t quite ready yet. I wanted to focus on my career and my marriage and feel a little bit more settled, because I knew that having kids would change everything. So, when we were ready to start a family, what I didn’t expect is that it would be much more difficult to get pregnant than I had expected.
After trying for a year, we started to ask questions and get tests to see what might be going wrong. Nothing, no problems, or so that they could find, and yet, month after month, we weren’t pregnant.
I remember a friend describing the journey of infertility as living in 2 week cycles – for two weeks you were hopeful, would you have a positive test, you would wait impatiently in hopes that you would see a positive pregnancy sign, and then when it wasn’t positive, the next two weeks were spent in grief and knowing that you had to wait for two more weeks to try again. This cycle went on for years for us. Until we finally sought medical treatment, which in the end didn’t end up working.
I’ve been one of the lucky ones who was able to conceive a child, two in fact, and give birth to both of them. They are both healthy and happy, and yet, a total mystery as to how I was able to conceive them. It wasn’t medical intervention, maybe it was just the exact right time, who knows, but to me, it feels like two little miracles.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful, so happy, but I still wonder why and how it happened when for so long it didn’t. And why me, why was I able to have kids when so many others weren’t able to? I’m someone who likes to plan, likes to have control, to understand the why behind everything, but this, this was totally out of my control. No matter how much I wanted to make it happen, I couldn’t, it in the end really didn’t feel like it was up to me.
I may never really fully understand how or why, and that will always be hard for me, but I’ve learned to understand that there are so many things outside of our control. The gift of life truly is a miracle, one that I try not to take for granted, because it is a gift that I didn’t do something to earn or deserve, and yet, have received, a mystery that I try to hold tenderly.
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