About eight years ago, aged 25, I came to the realisation that I would never be a parent.

I have no known fertility issues. This conclusion was reached solely because of the impact a chronic health condition has on my life. (Others with the same chronic illness have reached different conclusions within their own set of circumstances. There is no right or wrong.)

In 2010 I became unwell with an unknown virus and rather than recovering after a week or two, I became severely debilitated by symptoms that would go on to last over a decade. Being unable to perform acts of personal care, cook, clean, work, or live independently, my priority became survival. The care and support of my family enabled me to eventually come close to something that resembled thriving within the extreme limitations that life had suddenly placed upon me.

With no recovery in sight, and progress being hard to see to those on the outskirts, I finally voiced my devastating conclusion that children weren’t going to feature in my life. Should recovery miraculously occur, there is a chance that any children I may have could develop the same health condition, and so even then it felt like there was no other option than childlessness.

Until I started talking about it online, I had not come across anyone else who was in the same boat as me; childless through chronic illness.

I then steeled myself for the day my siblings or cousins made a pregnancy announcement. But I still wasn’t quite ready for it.

With every friend that announced that they were having a baby, there was a huge internal conflict. I was overjoyed for them, but heartbroken for myself. Every birth announcement left me torn between elation and despair. These feelings were amplified when my sister announced her pregnancy in late 2018. I have missed out on a lot since being ill but this sacrifice seemed too cruel a thing to endure.

I suppose you could say I chose my health over a family of my own. I don’t consider it to have been much of a choice, but I suppose it was; a choice that others facing childlessness did not get. It was a decision based on circumstances that are beyond my control.

And because I had that choice, reaching a conclusion that so few understand, my childlessness often feels like it’s less than other people’s childlessness. I have received the classic responses every other childless person faces; have I considered adoption/surrogacy/fostering/employing a nanny. As the years pass they become no less tiresome for my husband and I to hear.

It’s hard for those around me too, as they then feel cautious about sharing the most monumental and amazing journeys of their lives. However, it is not their joy that causes my pain, and I hope that my pain does not diminish their joy. I can be happy for them but sad for myself at the same time; opposite emotions that I hadn’t initially realised I was allowed to feel.

As the years pass and I try to mould a role as Auntie Anna around my health, I have no qualms that a childless life was the only one I could have ever had since losing my health. I continue to try immersing myself in a quiet, childfree life.

Anna Redshaw