It sounds so mature – I’ve accepted my unexplained infertility, embraced my childless state, and am moving on into a new and wonderful future full of joy and endless amazing opportunities.

Can I be honest?

My real experience is more of a never-ending rollercoaster cycle – some steps forward, some steps back, and lots of emotional upheaval.

It’s enrolling in a new, interesting, intellectually stimulating university degree and achieving very good results, then collapsing on the floor in tears because I don’t want to be pursuing a plan B for my life.

It’s walking in the garden enjoying sunshine on my face, drinking in the colours of new growth and flowering plants, then crashing because I don’t have a little one beside me exploring in the grass, touching the leaves and flowers, and chasing butterflies.

It’s going for weeks or months without really thinking about not having children, then being stunned by a wave of grief over another pregnancy announcement or the sight of a family out with their new baby.

It’s actually enjoying some of the benefits of childlessness, then sitting in church surrounded by families and being ‘reminded’ that bringing up children is the most important job anyone will ever have.

It’s finally feeling up to having people over, then having to listen to them talk about their children’s milestones and how important it is to invest in your child’s future and realizing that I will never fit into the ‘mum club’.

It’s finding myself talking to the dogs out of sheer loneliness, then sobbing my eyes out because they are just dogs and they are all I’ll ever have – no arms wrapped around my neck in sticky hugs, no whispered words of love, no bath time or bedtime stories or tucking in for the night.

It’s succumbing to the moment of grief, then deliberately choosing to pick up the pieces and move forward because I am determined that infertility will not define me, will not beat me, will not make me bitter, will not stop me from finding something meaningful to focus on.

It’s one step forward at a time.

Ruth Muller