to ask how you cope if you can't have children?

[ohbigdaddio]

Just that really...did you adopt? Or have you accepted it and has your life taken a new, fulfilling direction? Do you ever really get over it? Or are you still finding it difficult years later?

DH and I have been TTC for nearly a year and a half, got another negative pregnancy test result this morning, both feel very down and deflated and considering giving up. I feel really numb today and not sure what I want to do next.

Not sure we can cope with emotional highs and lows (well, mainly lows!) for much longer and it's all we think about.
Age is not on our side, I'm 38, approaching 39 so not really got time to have a break from it all. Next step would be IVF, obviously with no guarantees.

Would love to hear any positive thoughts on a child free life, especially if you really wanted children at one point.

Sorry for typos... I'm on phone in work!

Op...if dd hadnt come along id begun to go through the grieving process and was rethinking jobs and thinking of travelling.

Thanks so much everyone. Particularly inspiring to hear from those who have gone on to do different things which they may not have been able to do without children.

Today is a tough day for me and DH, I think your advice is spot on soloman about not making any decisions about our future today.

Really appreciate you all taking the time out to reply, I do feel a little better for it. Love to all those still struggling with their situations.

Can I suggest an awesome charity called Fertility Network UK? They offer loads of support for anyone with fertility challenges and are completely about the individual and not trying to push anything.

Oops!

Always wanted kids, but it never happened with my ex, and then I met DH when I'd just turned 40. He was older, with two teens from his first marriage, so he wasn't desperate to have more but at the same time, was quite happy to see what happened if we let nature take its course. Sadly, despite lots of enthusiastic shagging (and total relaxation and many holidays, obviously...), nature decided it's not to be. We're both a bit long in the tooth for IVF, and to be honest, I could bear things not working out naturally better than if we'd had our hopes built up. We gave it our best shot. I'm happy with that.

I'm sometimes sad, because we'd have been good parents together and I'm very fond of my almost-adult step-children, but after a few years of schlepping teenagers around, I'm equally often relieved I won't be spending my 60s dealing with Snapchat dramaz (or what social media nightmares will be around in 15 yrs that I won't understand) and worrying about uni fees. We've got more time to give each other, we don't feel guilty about planning things for ourselves (now his DC have more or less flown the nest). I went through a phase of feeling very much the odd one out, as if there must be something wrong with me - I'm literally the only one of my uni mates not to have a family - but as we get older and their children are heading off to college, we seem to be finding common ground the menopause again.

Not having children when you long for them is a peculiar grief. I sometimes feel as if a version of me - the mother, the grandmother - has died and I'll never know her. I sometimes feel my mother and sister had a 'better' bond because they understood parenthood, and I didn't. It's natural to grieve for the children you might have had but - I'm sorry, this is no consolation, really, right now, but it's true - there are other roads you might now get to explore because life didn't take you down that family road, and none of them make you a lesser person. Not literally travel (people always seem to think childless couples are on some kind of endless World Tour of ChildFree Frivolity) but maybe different experiences, time-consuming interests, a side of yourself that you discover through challenges. What waynesbasement says about realising your life path can go anywhere, without the template of childrearing, is very true - it's hard to see it as a liberation when you want the alternative so much, but it really is.

At 32 it took my two years to conceive with dd2. I had literally given up trying at all. I dtank and even smoked! Found i was pregnant that month. We had unexplained infertility also.

I have two children but took a couple of years to get pregnant each time. I adore them but one of my kids is disabled and it has put incredible strain on our marriage and my own mental health. I had a great career but am now unable to work as I'm the carer for my son and we are stuck in a tiny cramped house as we are unable to move on one salary. All my dreams about having kids, working and travelling the world and exploring with them etc are simply not going to happen now. So while I adore my children I am still a bit sad that I'm on a path I never really wanted or expected to be on.

I hope this isn't insensitive. We had fertility difficulties ourselves due to problems with ovulation so ttc for 18-24 months each time. And while we do have our family now and I'm so grateful for them, it hasn't been without many major challenges which are likely to be lifelong (my son is unlikely to live independently ever) and I have been substantially changed and broken to an extent as a person through the process.

Wishing you peace whatever happens.

We ttc for seven years, had seven IVF cycles and lost three babies. It was a very traumatic time and many people don't understand and tell you to 'relax' or 'just adopt'. It took a long time to give up on trying, lots of money and nearly every complementary therapy I could think of! You will know the right thing for you, I would advise to read as much as you can about all the different options and see what feels right for you.

OP, nothing to offer personally but sympathy -- but the adoption board on Mn is extremely good, and full of wise, compassionate people, many of whom came to adoption after infertility. Which is not to say you should be considering adoption, which is certainly not for everyone (and you may already be sick of people popping in and cheerily opining 'Oh, you can always adopt!' like it's some kind of easy, failsafe fallback) only that I've seen many threads on there insightfully discussing people's mental journey from giving up ttc/IVF to deciding to make the first step to adopt.

Most adoption agencies enforce a certain period of time between the final shot at IVF etc in order to allow someone to deal with their initial feelings of grief/disappointment about not having a biological child, and some of that 'how I dealt with it' might be useful to you, whether or not you decide that adoption might be for you.

Very best wishes.

Before we started ttc, DP and I had a conversation about how long we would try to conceive and what we may do if we didn't. I decided not to continue after I was 40 (I was 33 at the time) and if it didn't happen then DP was not happy about IVF in principle.

We decided that if it didn't happen then we would have to change our lives so that we were fulfilled in other ways, we wouldn't have stayed in naice suburbia, in a semi and had good, stable jobs. We probably would have worked abroad, DP may have gone back to uni, I probably would have been more conragious with my career. We may have done VSO or just something else different.

I'm in a similar place to Viewofhedges with similarities in terms of introversion and use of time and space. I'm very happy and and in some ways actually glad for how things worked out for us.

I really wanted children when I was a young married woman- we both did. It was very difficult nor being able to produce a child (my husband produced no sperm) as we were part of a huge family and the same week we found out we were infertile was the same week my SIL plonked her brand new gorgeous daughter in my arms. What a bitter sweet moment. We were going to try donor insemination but my husband wasn't keen, then adoption- the intrusive process put us off. IN the end I realised something- I was not going to die for not having a child and I was tired of being stuck in this place of wanting something I couldn't seem to have. - this was something we could live with, live through. We decided to travel for a year using a bit of money I inherited from my dad. Whilst travelling we met an 8 year old boy who had no parents- he was begging on the street. To cut a long story short we became his unofficial parents and put him through school in his own country, vising him whenever we could for extensive periods of time. We couldn't adopt him and bring him to the UK due to the international politics at that time regarding international adoption between his country and UK. He is now 37 years old. As an adult he was able to visit the UK and is now living and working here- the courts finally recognised us as his family and that he had the right to be with us. So we did have the experience of parenting but this came to us after we gave up on the whole idea, and through an unexpected route. I hope you find peace of mind and can let go of the wanting. I hope you will some day and some way have the experience of being a parent- there are so many children who need this.

That's such a beautiful post SloughCooker, you have me almost in tears.

OP, sorry for your struggles. I have the question knocking around at the back of my mind but haven't been brave enough to ask it out loud. DH has two and we've been ttc for 18 months, with 3 miscarriages, one a mmc at the 12 week scan which was an especially shitty time. When you're desperate to be pregnant there's nothing you want more than a bfp, and we've been incredibly lucky to have 3 in quite quick succession, but only because we keep losing them! Getting pregnant is a huge blessing but it's fuck all use if you can't stay pregnant, which seems to be where I'm at - unexplained recurrent miscarriage.

All the tests are clear and logically there's no reason it shouldn't all go to plan, eventually, hopefully. The NHS has been good to us and we have a great doctor. But what if I keep getting pregnant and losing babies? What if I had a brief run of luck and never get pregnant again? What if there's something horribly wrong but we'll never get a diagnosis? What on earth does life look like if I can't be a Mum? I stupidly just assumed it would happen. Don't I feel stupid now....

This is the crap that keeps me awake at night. I adore my step children, they make me very happy, but to be completely truthful, I always thought I'd get to be a step mum and a mum to my own children. The thought of not having my own wasn't part of my plan and my step children are young and with us every week, so we don't have the opportunities people talk about - more money, time, flexibility, opportunities - if we don't manage to have a child together.

There are some really thoughtful posts on here. Ignore the chaff about miracle cures, everyone knows someone who took a holiday or gave up cheese or whatever and got pregnant straight away! So? Lucky bloody them. It has no bearing on anyone else. The miscarriage equivalent is your friend who has a friend who lost 25 babies and then took a holiday and carried triplets to term

I don't have anything helpful to add, sorry, but I do feel your pain and uncertainty.

When (step)FIL met MIL he was almost 30, had always wanted children. She was late 30s and DH and SIL were teens, she didn't want anymore.

Not the same but he had to decide between her and potential children and chose her.

He has a lot of hobbies and weekends away that he couldn't have had with children, they have fab holidays and a nice house, they lived in NZ for two years (we are UK).

He's the best grandad DD could ask for.

On the 'unhelpful happy endings' side...

My parents married at 20 and started 'trying' (probably not even a thing in 1968), by 24 my mum was told she probably could have children, they had some fertility treatments (I don't know the ins and outs), but eventually gave up hope and stopped 'trying'.

I was born when she was 36 (which was considered ancient for a first time mum in 1984 I think), my brother followed 2 years later.

No personal experience but my bil is infertile. Dsis and bil decided if they couldn't have children together they didn't want to go down the route of sperm donors etc.

They went through the adoption route and adopted my gorgeous niece when she was 10 months old. They are shortly going to look at adopting no2 as well. They felt this was right for them.
They couldn't have children together and weren't happy with never having children so adoption was the path that was open to them.

OP, nothing to add but you sound a very kind and levelled person.

Which ever route your future takes, I hope it is one filled with happiness and adventure.

Not quite the same as our infertility was secondary)had DS at 36 with no real issues after one early m/c. But then when we tried for DC2 nothing. Month after month year after year. I remember very well the day AF arrives yet again, the symptom spotting, charting, temping, ovulation sticks, peering on e dkess sticks way too early. The heartache.

After two years we had fertility treatment (IUI) that was unsuccessful. At the time my only focus was getting pregnant and trying to find a reason why we couldn't.

Anyway long story short I discovered I had endometriosis - my symptoms weren't the usual ones but it was picked up on a private internal ultrasound by a brilliant doctor in London. Could this be a possibility for you? I had it removed and fell pg twice afterwards but lost both - one to a mmc which required repeat ERPCs to resolve. I almost gave up at that point but we had one last role of the dice on new years eve shortly before I was due to have surgery for uterine scarring and you guessed it...bam out of nowhere. DS2 is now coming up 2.

Looking back I'm not sure if I'd have fertility treatment again. I felt like I was being "processed" and the repeated intimate examinations and procedures have left me with some PTSD. But I also remember what it was like to feel desperate for a baby.

Good luck OP. I hope you find peace whatever the future holds.

This thread is a collection of all the worst things to say to a person struggling with infertility. From relax to quackery to kids aren't that great. It's got it all!

Yep, add to the list it'll happen when you stop trying and you could always adopt, it really has got it all.

A friend of mine gets a lot of support through this organisation:

gateway-women.com

I wish you all the best OP.

After 9 years if trying naturally and having ivf we decided to use donor eggs. Worked first time.

We chose the ivf route and our son was born after our 3rd cycle. If ivf hadn't worked I think we may have adopted and did consider adoption for a 2nd child but ultimately decided that we couldn't offer the attention an adopted child would need (our son is disabled).
I hope you find peace with whatever decision you make.

I am not sure that all of the..."and then I got pregnant" stories are helpful. OP, despite all of their best efforts, some people will never get pregnant. If this is the case for you (hope it isn't), I suggest you allow yourself to grieve, be angry and work through the experience until you emerge at the other side. There is another side, there is another life to be had. Its not the life you may have imagined but there are lots of other paths out there.

We gave up after 4 ivfs.
It took about two years after the last failed treatment to get over the worst of the heartache .
Now we live very much in the present and have a happy marriage, we count our blessings.
It leaves a mark, there is no doubt about it but personally I have found a strength I didn't know I was capable of.
You'll live , in other words.

WTF is the deal with posters success stories ?
That's exactly what the op needs to hear ffs.