No Baby

Adoption: My favorite word. Possibly the way we will build our family. More on that in a future blog.

We were married August 1^st, 2003. Such a wonderful day! We were so young. I wonder why our parents weren’t completely losing their minds over us getting married so young. It must be the peace that comes from knowing that two people are meant to be together. It wasn’t easy at first. In our first three years of marriage we learned a lot about life, love, finances, and being a “grown up”… mostly the hard way. J

I think back to our first year of marriage and I remember how nervous I was that I would end up pregnant before our first anniversary. It was so important to me that we have “our” time before little ones came along. Actually, the farther we go into marriage the more I believe it IS important for couples to have “their” time before starting their family. There is so much to learn about marriage at first. If you’re in your mid to early 20’s there will be a lot to learn about life as well. In my (humble) opinion, each couple would ideally have several years at the beginning of their marriage to build their foundation spiritually, emotionally, and financially.

Only a few months into our marriage I had to stop taking birth control. For me BC was a nightmare! I feel it’s important to say that because so many women suffer in silence. Once I felt confident enough to talk with my friends about the issues I was having I discovered that so many had also had great difficulty with BC (I’m referring to oral contraceptives). I suffered with so many symptoms ranging from insomnia to heavy bleeding. I tried several different low-dose BC’s and eventually had to quit all together and go on anti-depressants because I was so depressed. My hormones were a wreck. It took about 5 years for my cycles to normalize again.

Anyway, after I stopped BC and we made it past our first anniversary I began to get the “baby cravings”. Ladies, you know what I mean. Suddenly you notice every baby, every pregnant woman, and you find yourself in the baby isle at Target learning about bottles and breast pumps. It’s such a strange and sudden shift in perspective that takes you from being a girl who is avoiding pregnancy like the swine flu to being a woman seeing herself as a mommy-to-be. I was all about the baby thing.

A year passed with no baby. Then two years. Then three. My desire for a baby would come and go. Usually around the Fall and Christmas time I would think about having a baby. Then by January the feelings would subside as I would get really busy with my job. Because of this we did not pursue fertility testing at that time. I’ve always dreamed of being a stay-at-home mom. This could not have been a reality had I had a baby in the last few years. For that matter, it’s not going to be a reality if we have a baby in the next few years. This is a fact that I have resigned myself to, understanding that this will (hopefully) be a short-term sacrifice. However, in the first few years of “trying” I consoled myself each month saying “it’s ok because we’re not financially ready anyhow.” Not being financially “ready” was my reason for not pursuing fertility tests until now.

We’re now at year six. No baby.