All I Want is a Child!: Parenthood and Infertility

I can still see her round soul searching innocent look every time I remember her. My third neonatal lost, she was pretty and so very fragile. She was just 24 weeks old, born too soon and immaturely into the world.

She was the third child I have lost within two years.

I can still remember the first child I lost at the same 24 weeks old who never saw the world. He died in the loving protection of my womb and came out to be buried in an unmarked grave that I never saw. He was tiny and fragile, and what I regret most today was I never got the chance to hold him. The second was a child still forming and was lost in my monthly flow, he/she was just 10 weeks old, a body still forming to accommodate a soul.

All these happened within three years into my marriage. It was a pressure I put upon myself because that was what was expected of me. There was no pressure from my in-laws, my family, nor my husband. There was just something missing, and I felt like there was something wrong with me. It was like I had been married a hundred years without a child. My god! How then does a woman married for five,10, 15, 20 years feel?! I can’t imagine.

Everything around me was speaking the same thing: get pregnant. There was a rush to get pregnant, “get pregnant” was my brainwave. Nothing else mattered. I was not thinking about the child, sex – nothing. My brain and thoughts had one storyline: Why am I losing my pregnancies? Why am I different? And I need to keep trying.

I can still feel the pain as if it were yesterday, I can see the scenario unfold before me with the nurses, doctors, and my family and friends, and I can still feel the raw pain and anger. I still see the pity on people’s faces and the search in their eyes, and sometimes the judgement, too, in those eyes. But I live through it. I can’t tell you how or what I did, but I lived. I survived it with love and support from a group of lovely people around me.

No one can tell you the pain of losing a pregnancy, expecting a pregnancy each month that never shows up, or the pain of losing a child. No one can ever explain the anger you feel, the pain that tears at you from within, or the secret fight and torment you put yourself through as you search for answers that are not there.

You feel incomplete. You try to search for things you have done wrong to deserve such punishment from nature or God. If you fail to find answers, you turn on your closest family members to see if they were the cause of your pain or if they were doing something wrong. You just keep looking, and you end up seeing because your thoughts are your perception and, in turn, your reality.

We just need to look, and ask, and search. I believe that, once there is life, then there is hope and anything can happen. The world has grown to offer more chances, more choices, and more hope to give men and women that chance they have always wanted to have a child of their own, or to have a child they can call their own by birth or by any legal available means. Does the method matter? To me, no It’s all about satisfying that need, that strong need to have my own child.

I now have two lovely and adorable boys. The thirst and pain are gone, and only the dull tug of pain remains when I remember my lost children. But I know they are somewhere, lovely and exciting! And who knows. Maybe they are the gentle souls that touch my heart with love and kindness once in a while when life gets too demanding.

Now my time is spent loving, teaching, and caring for my boys. Mind you, I still shout, scream, and need a break from them, and that is what makes me human. But there was a time when I was so desperate to have a child that it caused utter dysfunction and craziness around me.

I adore and thank nature (God) every day for the blessings, as they are a blessing to my life and to the world. No matter how they became my children – through birth, adoption, any way – all that matters is that they are mine, and I love them to bits.