Melissa said, "Having children is hard, NOT having children can be even harder."

I said in my first or second post that I would speak about my infertility, and for some reason tonight what I wanted to say starting coming to my mind.  Danny and I got married when I was 18 and he had just turned 22 the day before.  I am now 33 and he is almost 37, we will have been married for 15 years next month.  That is a LONG time for a couple to be married and remain childless.  What often saves us from the outright question as to why we do not have any children is people do not realize how long we have been married.  I think we both look relatively young and no one in this day and age gets married as young as we did.  Inevitably though the question does get asked...why don't you have any children yet? After the question comes the awkward mumble of an answer.  We can't, we have tried, blah, blah, blah.  How do I answer what seems like a simple question with what is an entirely complex answer.  Most of the time I just answer, "not yet," but that does not nearly cover it.

When Danny and I got married somehow I knew i would have trouble getting pregnant.  It took my mother and father 13 years to conceive me, my older brother was adopted when he was 4 weeks old.  I thought I had youth on my side however.  I was so young when I got married, I would be very young when I started trying, so even if it took a few years, I should still be a young mother. After a few years of trying with nothing happening, I decided to consult a doctor.  They put me on clomid, which stimulates ovulation.  I tried that for several months with no results either.  I went to injections, and after the first round the nurse called me and asked that I check the expiration date on the box of hormones, because they must be expired since they had been so ineffective.  I was so heartbroken by the conclusion of the nurse that I gave up medical intervention into my fertility for several years.  That is when children came into my life, albeit in a completely different way.

I started breeding cats, Bengal cats to be specific.  The story as to how we got roped into that is a completely different one, but what is relevant to this discussion that that we did.  We started bringing these little mewling creatures into the world.  I remember my first litter.  I was scared to death.  I had never owned a cat until my first Bengal and I had never seen a live animal born.  I am not squeamish at all, but to see this precious mama cat push out that kitten, to see her clean it, to see that baby start to nurse, it was magical.  This little animal's body did so easily what my body just could not seem to do, even with medical intervention.  Somehow this was able to fill a need in me for a time.  I got to play midwife for my beautiful girls, got to cradle newborn kittens in my hand, watch over them and help keep them safe, and then see them off to their new families.  I loved this work, I could be a mother of sorts to my beautiful Bengal babies, but even that only served as a band aid on a wound that would soon start to hemorrhage again.

Some years later with better health insurance we tried again.  More hormones again, more sterile rooms where I was poked and prodded, had very embarrassing procedures performed on me to make sure that my...eh... plumbing.... was still working as it should be.  This was painful and humiliating.  Then it was decided that we would try an artificial insemination.  They thought this was my best chance.  Take the best of Danny's swimmers and put them right up where they needed to be.  Well, needless to say it did not work.  Devastated barely describes what I felt, but I still had my cats, still had these little lives that I helped bring into the world that hopefully went on to be loved and cherished, went on to make another family complete.

My next step was the weight loss surgery, my doctor told me that losing weight would help me to ovulate, which the lack thereof seemed to my only real medical issue.  Well, we all know by now how that little surgery went.  Whether or not the weight loss surgery ultimately will help my fertility still remains to be seen.  What is the most sad to me thought now is that I do not have the cats to comfort me.  Seeing these little wiggling balls of fluff be born and grow into beautiful little kittens was always a source of comfort to me.

Infertility is a very hard thing to deal with.  Baring children is my God given right as a woman, and yet I have failed at it.  One more thing in a long line of my particular failures (at least that is the way I look at it.).  I absolutely love my husband and I will learn to accept our family as a party of 2, but I am sad and grieve for what might never be.  Every time I hear someone complaining about something their children are doing I WISH that I could get the chance to complain about anything my child could do.  For those of you parents that wistfully think about all of us childless couple that can do whatever we want to do, remember, we are thinking about you, and just as wistfully wishing that we could have a sweet chocolate smudged good night kiss and a hug.  We would trade any perceived freedom for the chance to have a family.