You are able to conceive as both of you have all working parts.

Never did I think these words from the fertility specialist would end up being a lie.

I was 37 when I met my husband Terry, he was 26. I remember saying to him, we can’t be together due to our age difference and what if I am not able to give you children?

People assumed that I was too busy partying with the girls and not concerned about meeting “the one” to settle down and have children with and that was never the case. The case was, that I was not willing to have children for the sake of having them.

When I met Terry, I was never expecting him to be my forever love, but he is and even though I resigned to the fact that meeting someone so late in life may affect my ability to have children, we moved forward with getting our fertility checked and apart from needing to have my fallopian tubes flushed, Terry and I were considered fully functioning and would be able to conceive naturally. The specialist was even surprised at the number of eggs I was producing despite my age.

We tried to fall naturally and nothing so we tried IVF once, twice and we couldn’t even get to egg retrieval because my body was not having a bar of the hormone injections.

I do not know what is going, as there no biological or medical reasons for your not to conceive and I just can’t explain it

Those words from the specialist sadly were true, but we were not going let that define us, so we went for round 3 of IVF, expect this time it was worse. Now my body decided at the age of 41 it was going to introduce me to the crazy world of perimenopause.

What’s next? Adoption? After months of research with various organisations, we decided it was not our path to take.

I have now failed my husband in not ever allowing him to be the wonderful father I knew he could be. He lost his father when he was 5 years old, and I wanted to give this to him so badly. I wanted to give my parents grandchildren, my siblings nieces and/or nephews. I wanted to expand my big fat Greek family, (my hubby is a xeno – or Aussie) and it wasn’t going to happen.

Things just got worse, my favourite uncle, who was like my second father died, my mother suffered a life changing stroke a month later and I just wanted to fix things. Now I know that my having children would not fix these things and that I had to listen to my husband and accept that I am loved just as I am. I told him to go, because who am I to stop him from having children, but as he said to me when we met 11 years ago now, I did not want to be with you to have children, I want to be with you for you.

Today I am at a place where I feel lucky, very lucky in fact. It might sound weird for me to say that, however I am lucky, as I have not experienced the pain and agony of unviable embryos or miscarriages and I didn’t lose my husband. Our relationship never faulted.

The reason we don’t have children may never be known, but what I do know is that drawing that line in the sand to stop trying and to stop questioning has enabled us to accept our childlessness and live life to the fullest.

Sophia H from Australia