NC’d, long term poster.
I have two DCs, a DS and a DD. DS was unplanned and I had awful, awful HG. I was in hospital for the entire pregnancy and was desperately unwell. It destroyed my career and my well-being - it was awful. Eventually, DS was induced and I adore him (obviously). DH and I swore we would never do it again. So, when we wanted another, we tried to adopt. We were messed around by our adoption agency and they had clearly no interest in actually facilitating any adoption. Of the potential adopters in our cohort, none were successful. Of the people who were successful that came and spoke to us at sessions, none of them went through the official adoption timeline or process - they were all singled out at their first stage and fast-tracked through. It became very clear that if you weren’t a fast-tracked adopter then you wouldn’t ever be progressed, approved or matched. We withdrew from the process and then, about six months later, decided to TTC again. We thought maybe if we were better prepared, we could handle the pregnancy. It doesn’t always happen in subsequent pregnancies and we thought (hoped) we might be lucky. We weren’t lucky - I was even more ill than the first pregnancy and I was induced even earlier. I developed HELLP on top of the HG and DH was diagnosed with depression before we’d even hit the second trimester. I have long-term health problems as a result and I cannot put my body through it again.
There’s nothing I love more in the world than my DCs and I’m so grateful that I have them. But, I always wanted four DCs and so did DH. It’s something we always agreed on and was such a clear plan in our life. We bought our house thinking that, we have in-jokes about it. It was so set that we wanted four children. But I cannot go through a pregnancy again. DS is at an age now where he keeps telling me that he wants a brother and it is breaking my heart.
It hurts. It hurts more than is reasonable or rational or logical but I can’t help it. I understand that it’s not uncommon for families to not be able to have as many children as they’d like for a whole host of reasons (infertility, financial reasons, relationship breakdown etc - I’m not going to make any comparisons or turn this into a competition). How do you cope with the sadness? Does it ever stop hurting?