My Story

I don't remember the exact moment I knew I wanted to be a mom, but I was young - 5 years old at the most. I just know that I've known for most of my life that I wanted to be a mom. Aside from my family, it has been the one constant in my life. My work/jobs have changed and evolved over time, I never really was able to stay focused on any one job or topic for very long, so I sort of coasted through my work life. Always, in the back of my mind was the thought that I would be a stay-at-home mom that worked part-time (or more if needed) once I had kids.  

I have always been nurturing, I babysat from the time it was allowed and babied my siblings. I mothered all the children in church and taught Sunday school when I was a teenager. When I was 16, I thought I wanted 12 kids! That changed over time to wanting 2 or 3, but the desire to have my own kids has never gone away. From babysitting to being my niece's guardian for a few summers to running a small daycare for a year, taking care of children has always been a part of my life and I just assumed it always would be. 

I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was in my early 30's and told that it might be difficult to get pregnant. I didn't think much of it I guess, I knew there were different options out there for people experiencing infertility and I must have just assumed I would be able to try as many of them as I needed. Looking back, I may have been in denial, and I'm not sure I had all the available information about fertility and the different treatment options. I just thought that I would be one of the ones that just falls pregnant naturally anyway - without help.

 I became involved with my husband when I was 34. Our courtship was short because we grew up in the same town and dated when we were teenagers. He has a daughter from a previous marriage, and he knew from day 1 that I wanted kids and was ok with it. We never used protection, and I've never been pregnant. We had some struggles early in our marriage and we didn't start looking into fertility treatments until I was 38 or 39. I can remember the day I had the hysterosalpingogram and the doctor told me that my tubes were clear. I ran out to the waiting area and hugged my sister. There were so many things I didn't realize you had to think about in relation to fertility and fertility treatments. I learned a lot over the next few years - one of them being that we couldn't afford the majority of the treatments. We could only afford IUI, without the extra hormone shots – and you might as well not even try without the hormone shots. I wasn’t ovulating even with Clomid. I kept hoping and praying I would fall pregnant naturally, even though my hormonal issues told me otherwise.

My line in the sand happened a couple years ago. We were on our way back from the funeral of my husband's uncle, and I was having a particularly horrible period and I just knew I couldn't keep living that way. My periods are often horribly painful and too long, causing me to be anemic. I am still waiting to have an ablation to hopefully deal with the periods, and there are days that I still hope that I will be one of the lucky few that falls pregnant naturally. I know that at my age a pregnancy could be dangerous, plus I have a couple other health issues that could cause complications with a pregnancy, but that hope to be a mom still hasn't gone completely away. I am just starting to deal with the grief of not having children, and so many days I feel like I'm either floundering or drowning. I am holding on to the hope that it will get better. I see glimmers of it now and then, so it helps me to keep going. 

 Stacy, 46, Married, Canada