My Story...

Hi, my name is Jennifer. I am a 45 year old married professional woman who is childless, not by choice. I grew up surrounded by children because I was the baby of the family with older siblings who were settling down and having kids. I was an “aunt” at the early age of 10 years old. I was given the responsibility of watching my nieces and nephews through my early pre-teen years so babysitting came naturally for me that I naturally babysat the neighborhood kids throughout my high school/college years as well. I continued to babysitting once I hit the corporate world working full-time and even became a nanny once or twice during this time when the corporate world got much too stressful for me. All the families I watched for were always saying to me “you are going to make such a great mom” and I truly enjoyed watching and being around children that I too thought this as well. As my career flourished and my 20’s started to slide into my 30’s with no potential mate in sight, I started to really focus on finding a man to marry and felt the rest would just fall into place. Well, it didn’t happen that easily and I really started to lose hope that I would even get married, let alone have children. I was 34 years old when I finally met my husband. For the first 2-3 years of our relationship, we were just solely focused on our relationship and making sure it was solid then we would eventually marry. We moved away from our home state in our third year together leaving behind family and friends to a state where we knew no one. It was very hard at first as I left a job that I loved behind and my husband was getting a new job. It took over 8 months for me to finally secure a full-time position there and during that time I become pregnant for the first time. I had only been off birth control for alittle over a month and it was quite a shock to both of us that it happened so quickly – we figured we had months due to my age. I had very mixed emotion over this pregnancy due to the fact of our living situation, we were renting a townhome, I was unemployed and the job my husband and I moved for didn’t work out. My husband did eventually get another job, but it wasn’t with health benefits and the salary was much lower. It just wasn’t what I had envisioned our life to be like when I got pregnant. I would cry at night in the shower and long for the days back home when we had our own home and the stability of two incomes. I wasn’t sure how it was going to all work out. At 10 weeks of my pregnancy, God had already decided how it was going to work out and I miscarried. We were both shocked and devastated, but shall I say alittle “relieved”. I just kept telling myself “the timing wasn’t right” and it was ok because we would get pregnant again down the road. I went back on birth control, we got married and continued to live for the next 4 years away from our homestate. During this time we purchased a home and my husband started his own business – two major life events. Finally in our 4th year away from home, we decided it was time to try again. We weren’t particularly happy with our life – living where we were, but we wanted a family with hopes that we could fill those empty bedrooms and become truly happy. We tried for the next 6 months and nothing. Then my mom’s health started to fail so moving back home was becoming more of a focus for us. Within 3 months we were back home living in a rental again, I had left my job and my husband closed up his business. Again, our focus change but I never went back on birth control either. My Mom passed away 4 months later and the grief I felt overshadowed everything. I found another job and my husband went back to school. About a year and half later, we moved again to another rental closer to my job. My husband reestablished his business and we began to settle back into our life again. I had found a new ob/gyn in our town and went into for my first annual visit, explained my history and began to talk about our desire to have a child. At this point I was 42 years old and I knew my chances were getting slimmer and slimmer, but this doctor was so positive and had lots of women in her practice of mature maternal age who got pregnancy that I left that appointment so filled with hope again. I was scheduled to go back in a month for a HSG to see if there was any blockage that was preventing pregnancy, but I never ended up having that HSG due to finding out that month that I was indeed pregnant! OMG…total shock and so happy, but also as most women who have dealt with miscarriage prior very nervous and cautious. I can’t begin to tell you how nervous I was about everything surrounding this pregnancy. I couldn’t think pass the current moment – living just day by day and just praying that “it would stick”. I refused many a time to talk about the future of this potential child and how our lives were going to change. My motto during this time was just suriving each day and hoping to get thru it without seeing any signs of a miscarriage. On March 27, 2010, I miscarried for the second time at 7 weeks. How could this happen again…this was suppose to be our “miracle child” and I was going to follow in my Mom’s footsteps of having a child at 42, but sadly it just wasn’t meant to be. We did try to do testing on embryo, but not enough tissue, unconclusive – more heartbreaking news. The next few months we unbelievable hard on me, depression was setting in and each time I had to go back to see my ob/gyn after that for follow-ups, it was like reliving it over and over again. By August of that year, I went for my last visit and she advised that I go see an infertility doc. I was truly on the fence about it all – still so heartbroken, but yet alittle hopeful too. In September I got an appt. with infertility doc and she sent me for a battery of bloodwork (22 vials to be exact). Waited another week or so but in the end it came back with “low ovarian reserve = eggs are crappy”. She advised that the only way for us to become parents was with egg donor or adoption (neither of which we would do). I also was informed that I was starting pre-menopause as well. I left there with a prescription for hormones to try to get my period back on track, but felt so defeated. I spent the next 9 months taking this prescription with no consistent return of period and totally depressed over our situation. Finally, in the summer of 2011, I decided enough was enough, I stopped the prescription, took my life back and slowly started to accept our fate as a childless couple. It has been a long road and still at times I will face that feeling of “why” that makes me yearn for my children. In the last 6 months I have turned a corner and started to focus on the positive things in my life. I have learned that God has a plan for us and though we don’t always agree with that plan, he knows best. I tend to now turn the negatives of being childless into positives and focus on the things I can control in my life – having a strong and loving marriage, a non-stressful job and surrounding myself with friends and family that I love.