Hi

First a little about me

I'm a 62 year old male and childless not by choice. I've been married for 34 years to a beautiful woman that I love very much. When I married my wife I knew she had been married before and had two children (boy & girl). They were grown and didn't live with us. So I took no part in their upbringing. A few years after we were married each of them had gotten married and they each had two children.

We had tried for a quit a few years in the beginning to have our own child without any success. We tried artificial insemination(IVF was not in the finances) and that didn't work. We were never given a reason why. I was checked(for count) and told I was ok. For the last roughly 30 years this has bothered me on and off. Especially at times like when I was helping my wife put together a wedding shower for her daughter and going to her wedding or her sons wedding.

But last August a co-worker and his wife had their first child. For some reason that really affected me, it was like something snapped in my mind. I've been obsessing over not having a child ever since. I’m reminded that I don’t EVERY DAY. In the grocery store, a man, a woman or couple with a child. When I leave the store walking to my car there always seems to be a woman putting her small child into a stroller from the car. TV’s a big one. Co workers. Magazine adds. Etc. we all know the triggers. I think one reason that the guy at work bothered me so much is that his wife was 45 years old when she had there child and my wife was a bit younger than that when we were trying. She did have a miscarriage with me. And just recently I found a place in Tennessee USA where you can honor a miscarriage or the “A” word(abor••••). It’s a wonderful place and the people there are amazingly compassionate.

The fact that my wife has children can be extremely difficult at times. She says she would have liked to have a baby with me. Maybe she does. I feel, she has two kids and wasn’t to upset about us not having any.

People don’t think sometimes, even the ones closest to you. Without realizing what she's saying, my wife has told me about how she thought her daughter would never walk because she bounced around on her butt for so long when she was a child. Or how long and how bad the labor pains were with her first child. She didn’t realize how badly those things affected me. I told her about that, I said years ago you told me about how long your labor pains were with your daughter I believe you said 24 hours and I told her please don't correct me if I'm wrong. I told her if I was the father I would have cared and been interested. She also told me about a scar she had when her son was young, about doctors telling her he had Leukemia, and she had churches and people praying for him. And then the doctors told her they didn’t understand how but it was gone. Don’t get me wrong that was great news. Once my wife and I were at some occasion not sure exactly what but her daughter introduced us to someone, “this is my mom and this is Ken”. Wait a minute who’s Ken, no title like “mom”. I don’t know “this is my stepfather” might work. That experience didn’t leave me feeling very good. You get that, you’re a nobody feeling.

Mother's Day this year was a disaster for me. I tried to do the right thing I bought her and her daughter flowers and a card for my wife. Her daughter came over in the morning. And as usual the conversation went to her children. And about her son getting married in September. In the afternoon her son came over with his girlfriend (he's divorced now) and of course after a while her son starts talking about his kids. My wife started to say something about when her daughter was small and then of course not to be left out his girlfriend starts talking about her kids (she also has two from a previous marriage). All I could do was sit there. I had nothing to add to the conversations. Yeah I know what being left out feels like. They didn't think that their Joy was someone else's misery. I was dying inside.

I told my wife that when her daughter was pregnant I wanted to ask her if I could see her stomach and fell it, but didn't because I thought she would think I was a little crazy. It was something I thought I'd never see or feel.

All of us here are bothered and upset about the same thing to varying degrees. But when you feel like you can’t share it with or get compassionate help from the one you’re married to, it is a very lonely feeling.