I figure if we’re going to delve into a lot of nitty-gritty, super personal details about my sex life and medical history, maaaaaybe we should get to know each other first?!
So…here we go.
My husband and I are both in our mid-30s, and we’ve been together forever. Like, nearly-half-our-lives forever. We met when we were 18 and started dating when we were 20. Now we’re fourteen years in, happily married and still completely in love…but we have no kids.
It’s not that we don’t want little munchkins running around, wreaking havoc on our furniture. We do. Very much so. We’ve been waiting for a stork to drop off a little bundle of joy for quite awhile now, with no luck. Our stork has gotten lost.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Over the years, our friendly neighborhood stork has delivered a total of six babies to the Miller Manor: three dogs and three cats.
And one opossum, but we sent him on his way. Because…ick. Moving on.
I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t want kids. My sister and I would play together as children, and we’d pretend to be grown up with kids of our own; cousins who played together, shared clothing, argued…everything we did together as sisters. We were (and still are) very close, and we always dreamed that our kids would grow up together and share a bond like we had.
Well, that didn’t happen. My sister married her high school sweetheart and settled down in our hometown. She married when she was 20 and had her first baby – my beautiful, perfect niece – when she was 23. She worked full time, went to college part time, and had a mortgage and babies before most young people knew what they wanted out of life. She did; and so she grabbed wife-and-motherhood by the horns. And she’s an amazing wife and mother.
I took a different path. I graduated high school and moved across the country for college. I nabbed two degrees and wasn’t finished, so I hopped right into graduate school and had an MFA by the time I was 25. Then it was career planning, paying off student loans, and trying to survive in a city so far away from home that it made me sick. But I, too, knew what I wanted, and I figured marriage and kids could come a little later.
I was with my now-husband through most of this. About five years into our relationship we knew that marriage was inevitable, and so for all practical purposes, we started living together around that time. You see…I’d acquired a cat, and since my apartment didn’t allow pets, I pawned the kitty off on my (very patient) then-boyfriend. This meant that while we may have had separate addresses, I was at his place more often than my own. He had my kittycat, which I guess makes her our random stork delivery number one.
Anyway, after 10 years together, we finally got married in March 2013 and we immediately started trying for kids. I don’t mean just stopping contraception – we’d been NTNP/Whatever Happens, Happens since I found out I had an autoimmune disorder that could affect my fertility. I mean really trying. Fertility apps. Calendars. OPKs. Prenatal vitamins. Timing our…ya know.
Baby dancing. Hibbity dibbity. Chumbawumba. Boinkaroos. Love making.
S-E-X. I told you we’d get a little personal here.
So. We’ve waited four long years but somewhere along the way, our stork has gotten lost. Or drunk. Or…sucked into a jet engine? I dunno, but wherever he is, he’s late to our party. Honestly, I don’t know if he’ll ever find us.
Throughout this trial, though, I’ve learned so much about myself and my body and life in general that I KNOW this blog will help you, if you’re anything at all like me and my husband.
So, to all you girls out there struggling with infertility, or all the husbands, boyfriends, significant others, best friends, family members who have no idea what to say or do…this is for you.
You’re not alone any more.
My Stork Got Lost 