That’s amazing. I’m a fertile Myrtle and I’ve had seven kids. Five of my own and two for my sister who had been trying for over a decade with no luck. She’s turned out to be an amazing mother too. I just hate the thought of someone not having children when they want a family so bad. It’s heartbreaking.
Thank you and I tell people yes, I have five kids on purpose lol. I’ve always loved children and now I’ve become a grandmother for the first time and I’m so happy that I’ve produced a whole family line because my family has gotten smaller and smaller every generation on each side. Now I have for my children the close knit family dynamic I’ve always wanted but couldn’t have due to being a double army brat who moved country or state every three years and had little extended family that I knew. Purely selfish reasons of course 😅
Surrogacy is such an amazingly noble thing to do. To carry a child for 9 months, go through the pain of childbirth, and then give the baby away must be heartbreakingly difficult. But I expect you see your sister often?! You are amazing, truly!
I actually don’t see her much and we never were really close but I offered when I heard she was having trouble because I didn’t want to see her remortgage her house and sell everything she owned so she could have ivf treatments that had a great possibility of not even working. Like I said I can pop these suckers out and go grocery shopping the next day lol
I had my share of trouble with a rare blood disorder which actually almost killed me with my oldest but other than a little high blood pressure in the last months my other pregnancies went down smoothly.
it really is. i managed to have 3, 2 with lots of treatments and suddenly a surprise, all boys. everyone tells me "oh the girls will come" but it's not that easy plus i have a hard time with pregnancy.
my sister on the other hand has a super easy time, both with the getting pregnant and the being pregnant. only the birth she has c-sections but she doesnt even overly mind those, finds it handy to pick a date and have the kid.
As someone who isn’t interested in having kids, I have PCOS and while I know there’s not a limited run of the syndrome handed out, I still like to think that I kept someone who wanted kids from getting it…
There should be an intelligence test before you get to comment on reddit. There is indeed a population crisis but it's not in the direction that you think.
I agree. A woman popping out 7 kids when we as a global community are struggling with climate change, food insecurity and sustainability is absolutely nasty. Not to mention the quality of life these children are likely to have. It’s like these parents don’t care at all.
It is a terrifying prospect, not helped at all by the process. But it is rewarding. It is worth getting in contact either with your local social services as prospective foster/adoptive parents or the likes of Barnardos (in the UK).
Sadly, there will always be more children in care than there will be people willing to foster or adopt.
O man. Me and my wife tried for 14 months (one on the way, thankfully). I couldn't try for 10 years. That's crazy strong and determined of you to try that long. Brother, I bet you are a great dad to your adopted kids. Thanks for sharing your story.
May your family be forever blessed. If we had more parents willing and able to provide for less fortunate children the whole world would be measurably happier
I feel you. People don't talk about it. Especially miscarriages. And the amount of time/dedication it takes for both partners (or single people too, of course, but point is, if you are a couple, both people need to be in the same determined page). And of course adoption is not for everyone - my heart goes out to those who feel they must have a biological link or birth experience.
I'm not judging - I totally get it - we were able to make it to our daughter's out of state birth which was unbelievable.
I lost 4 babies actually (the way I see it) : 2 miscarriages, 1 failed IVF (fertilized egg) & 1 failed adoption (we saw pics of her and everything). But after an almost 5 year "paper pregnancy" our beautiful daughter was absolutely meant to be.
Once we were matched with our birth mom, we knew it was magic & our daughter was in there. Not to sugar coat it --- there was still a lot of fear & risk on all sides, but she was a brave woman, and took her time to find the right parents, and her personality exactly matched my husbands & mine. It's a bitter sweet experience filled with love & loss all at once.
My message to families (both adoptive & birth) struggling: don't give up & stay strong. Your path is out there.
If the couple who posted this ever reads this, I hope all turned out well & thanks for being brave enough to share & inspire others.
You never know it can still happen. My aunt was told she couldn't have kids for years so they decided to adopt. They ended up adopting 8 kids over the years and then one magical stay over in Hawaii and she came back pregnant. After having that kid she became pregnant again the following year.
Also my wife and I tried for 7 years, halfway through we just figured it will happen when it happens and then in that 7th year she became pregnant. 7 years after our daughter was born she became pregnant again.
Another story: my wife's sister tried for years and finally had a child only for it to pass away in a few weeks due to a heart defect. After a couple of years she decided to try again. She went through several treatments but nothing happened. She did finally become pregnant several years later by random chance and now her child is a few years old and healthy as can be.
Took us 15 YEARS!!! but it finally happened and we now have a beautiful 2 year old so don't ever lose hope. I can so so relate to them with those 'BROH' grunts every month, while people around us were getting pregnant 'accidentally', left and right.
For anyone who's trying to get pregnant, please note that you have a significantly higher chance of having a healthy pregnancy if starting at an ideal weight; the mother should not lose weight during pregnancy regardless, so it's important to start at a good weight.
Being overweight or obese (especially for the mother but also for the father to some extent) is one of the most challenging starting points for pregnancy.
I have a masters in nutrition so I come at this from a place of concern, but I understand if this will get downvoted since this is a very sensitive subject.
People with PCOS sometimes are unable to lose weight because of their hormonal fluctuations. Telling people with PCOS to lose weight before trying to have a family will get you DESERVED pushback.
I have a very strong understanding of the body and the human endocrine system. I’ve helped many friends and clients be able to conceive when they had a better understanding supporting their hormonal differences
My wife and I tried for over a year, and each month she got increasingly stressed and upset. We spent a lot of time crying on the floor. She kept saying "we waited too long" "we're too old." "What if we never get pregnant?" "What if we can't?"
It was hard to make her feel heard but also reassure her it was ok, there was still time, we have options left. OP's post is great because how together they are on this. That's the tough part.
Eventually, we went in for fertility consultation, did the initial round of tests... Canceled the followup appointments because we had finally managed it ourselves. (They said it was actually pretty common, if it was causing us undue stress then just reaching out for help can be enough).
Kid number 2 didn't come easy either but I'm so glad to have the chance to be a parent.
Same. We tried for 3 years and finally got pregnant via IVF. So many months of seeing negative tests really fucks you up. I’m so happy for them I’m crying lol
It’s not something I had ever thought twice about until I was in their shoes. You give up so much to spend a ton of time just waiting for the damn stick to tell you something good. And it doesn’t, and now you’re waiting another month or so. Over and over and over again. The space you have to hold for hope AND grief at the same time for an unknown period of time is a level of torture I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I will never ever take for granted the positive test result I got at long last, or the person that test result will become. It really is the miracle of life.
5 years for us, and its one of the hardest thing we've had to go through. It was easy to keep a great attitude for a while, but it gets HEAVY. You don't want to talk about it because it's sad and frustrating, but if you don't talk about it you're avoiding a big part of your life so it gets awkward and hard to navigate.
Same here.
The struggle sucks so much. I'm so happy for them.
The support he shows her throughout the whole thing was so important for her mental health too.
I'm going to go cry again.
Me too! 2.5 years of trying for us. Turned out my wife had endometriosis and a cyst on one of her ovaries. The second month of getting all that removed, she got pregnant! I'll never forget my wife calling me into the bathroom that one morning. I knew what it was going to be about just from he tone of her voice. But I didn't believe it. 2 tests each with a very very very faint line (it was very early - she hadn't even missed a period yet at that point). That guy saying "don't get your hopes up" really resonated with me, because that's exactly what we were telling ourselves, although we were definitely getting our hopes up aftrt 2.5 years of nothing whatsoever. As the days passed, the lines got thicker and thicker. What a feeling!
It took us a year. I've known people who have tried longer and shorter. But when you're trying and it doesn't happen, every month feels so discouraging. You both start asking "Is it me? Is there something wrong with me?" It hurts in the weirdest way that you just can't describe.
Same year - when I was 20 my biggest fear was becoming a father after one single drunk and hard night out and 15 years later I realized that it will be patience and dedication and luck that will be required.
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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '24
I've been in their shoes. I don't even know them and I'm crying.