My partner and I have been together 7 years and are very much in love. We have had conversations over the years about having children and I thought it was something we were gently working towards. I started to investigate my fertility about 3 years ago which eventually led to me having surgery earlier this year to remove a cyst and being told that my fallopian tubes are blocked, therefore, we would need to go down the IVF route. I was devastated at the time, especially as NSH IVF for over-35 year olds in my area does not exist and my partner and I can not afford it. We are very lucky in that my parents have offered to help us and we soothed ourselves with the idea of going to a clinic in Prague as it's a lot cheaper. Anyway, that was three months ago and just in the last few weeks, my partner has confided in me that he doesn't feel ready for children and doesn't know if he does actually want to go down that road. He has low self-esteem and does not think he's achieved much in his life due to having dyslexia and ADHA (neither of which were diagnosed), his school experience was traumatic and he feels he needs to be successful first before he can even think about having children. I understand he needs to be in the right headspace to be a parent and I don't want him to feel forced into something he doesn't want but I feel the rug has been yanked out from underneath me. I'm 38 and it's going to be difficult already, let along waiting for a number of years to wait and see if he is ready, only for him to potentially never be ready and for me to miss my opportunity to be a Mother. I should also mention that I'm not an especially ambitious person, I am a hard-worker and enjoy my job in a school but I have always known that the thing that would bring the most meaning in my life would be through building a family. I can't even begin to imagine life without my partner, he really is my soulmate but I don't want to resent him if I miss the opportunity. What shall I do?