Infertility: You Never Know

I'm a busy and tired mom with four kids.

I love them with everything I have.

But travel back with me in time 15 years. That's when I began slowly realizing I might never have the opportunity to be a mother, which devastated me. We started trying to get pregnant during my last year of college. I was only 21 but I had always planned to be a young mother and would've started trying sooner but the "voices of reason" around me encouraged me to get an education and a year or two of newlywed life in (I married at 20).

Thanks to thorough sex education I believed any sex without birth control would probably/most likely/definitely lead to pregnancy. Since that didn't happen the first few months, I thought "God must have a plan! He wants me to get a bachelor's degree!" Regardless of whether it was his plan, mine, or even my mother's, thankfully I did graduate. In my last month before finishing school, my internship offered me a full time position.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I hesitated to take that perfect job offer. I had never planned on actual career level work. I'd dreamed of domestic full time bliss and thought barring birth control that would be the natural result of a marriage relationship. Since I was at graduation month with no pregnancy I excitedly accepted the offer--it was a dream job, if I'd allow myself to plan a career.

The next year involved rewarding work weeks but heartbreaking weekends. I spent Sunday church scanning the crowd for baby faces for equal parts cute enjoyment and piercing heartbreak. Crying after church became a regular ritual. That can't be all blamed on the cute babies in the crowd, as the biggest pain was inflicted by casual comments of their parents: "I wish we could enjoy the selfishness of a career, but we chose to sacrifice to have children first." In reality that is the only comment I remember. The majority of people were loving and worried about their own concerns. The emotional state of mind I had entered magnified things like that exponentially higher than they were meant by the teacher who said it.

At the year and a half mark, I finally saw my doctor about infertility and he began to test my husband and I. Around the two year mark and a round of clomid my temperature chart showed an actual ovulation AND fertilization. And that was the end of my infertility saga. A short one by most standards. But the weight of that fear of never parenting is something I can clearly recall more than a decade later. If there is anything I learned, it is to be sensitive when speaking to another woman, it is this deeply personal part of life. Another woman doesn't need to have kids at the age I did, the number I did, or answer to me about any of the reasons for her choices in that matter.

I love to take these sentimental family pictures of what brings me joy today. But they don't tell the entire story. You just never know.

Bobi Jensen is a stay at home parent who makes a living buying, remodeling, and selling the places which her family lives. She is passionate about religion, real estate and homelessness. When not obsessively reading she likes to write about her interests at westernwarmth.blogspot.com.