My journey to motherhood

The truth is that I’m having a hard time writing my next mom story so I’m going to procrastinate and tell you my story, since, well, I am a mom, you know, and I do have a story that I haven’t shared.

This is my journey to motherhood.

My husband and I were married on April 21, 2001. I was 25 and he was 27. Shortly after the wedding, Jon and I had the conversation about starting a family. I said I wanted to have a baby before I turned 30. Jon wanted to be sure we could afford to have a baby, but agreed with the 30 part. So we waited, sort of.

By the end of 2001 and early 2002, we were actively trying to get pregnant. Month after month I failed. It quickly became a terribly dark time. After several failed attempts, I became depressed. Month after month my husband did the best he could to sympathizing with my pain. I wish I had the words to accurately describe this time in my life.

It became a burden not to be able to get pregnant. I started taking clomid and still couldn’t get pregnant. Friends began getting pregnant and having babies while the stress of not being able to have a baby was destroying the foundation of my marriage.

During this time, so few people surrounding me knew what I was going through. Jon and I told very few people about our baby plans. My family kind of knew, but we never really talked about it. Some of my friends knew what was going on, but I didn’t tell them too much, because, frankly, who wants to hang out with someone who complains every time you talk to them? Not me. So I kept everything inside. The few times it burst out were completely inappropriate.

In 2003, I went to the doctor and had this test done called hysterosalpingogram (HSG) to make sure my uterus was OK. It was. The doctor’s had no explanation for why I wasn't getting pregnant. The whole experience just made me even more upset.

If you can’t have a baby and you’re really trying to have one, it messes with your head. I started to feel like if I couldn’t have a baby, then why on earth was I even married? I was frustrated and stressed and in need of some serious help. I started therapy. My therapist was the most amazing woman on the planet. But as amazing as she was, my husband and I still separated in 2005.

We only separated for 9 months. During that time we were both in therapy and going to marriage counseling. I came to terms with the fact that I may never have children of my own and I learned to be OK with that possibility. I had worked through my anger, gotten rid of my stress and Jon and I decided we wanted to save our marriage.

Around this time, I decided that if I couldn’t have children of my own we would adopt a child. I didn't want to go through the stress of IVF. Our plan was to start the adoption process when I turned 35.

In October 2005, Jon and I moved back in together. That same month I got pregnant with Sophia. The pregnancy just may have been the biggest shocker of my life, just when I had come to terms with things, everything changed.

After Sophia arrived, I nursed her for a while, but when I went back to work after my maternity leave, we started her on formula and that’s when I started the pill.

Apparently, and this is something no one ever talks about, once you resume your period after having a baby sometimes things aren’t exactly in order. In my case, I had a period that just wouldn’t go away. I mean, seriously, it last two whole months. So I foolishly stopped taking the pill hoping that it would level out my hormones. I told my husband what I was doing. We figured it took so long for us to have Sophia that the odds of us getting pregnant again so soon were astronomical.

Obviously we were very wrong. My next cycle never started and that’s when we learned about Ryan. I couldn’t have been more surprised.

So, this is the extremely abbreviated version of my journey to motherhood. There is a lot here I never shared before and I'm a little nervous about this post. But, whatever, I think it's important to know that the journey to motherhood isn't easy, whether it was easy to get pregnant or not. I've experienced both. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how the child got here be because the journey to motherhood is only the beginning of the journey of parenthood.