Infertility is a disease that affects more than 7.3 million couples of childbearing age. Broken down, that means that one in every eight couples of childbearing age are infertile. 30% of infertility cases are due to a female problem, 30% are due to a male problem, 10% are a mixture of both, and 20% of infertility cases are unexplained. My husband and I are one of the many one in eight.
My husband and I started trying to conceive in November of 2010. We did the pills, the natural supplements, the lifestyle changes, and just about every other piece of fertility advice under the sun. I never became pregnant. We were told by two fertility specialists that IVF was our only hope for having a biological child. We started planning for IVF and saving our money until one day we came to the realization that we were not happy. Our quest for a child had become massively unhealthy.
We decided in July of 2013 not to do IVF and to stop trying to conceive. We made the decision to live childfree. This change hasn't been easy. I am still grieving everything I have gone through and the loss of my dream of motherhood, but I am learning to dream new dreams.
It is my hope that sharing my story will benefit anyone else who is experiencing reproductive difficulties and to (hopefully) show people experiencing infertility that living childfree is a valid option. There are many of us reproductively-challenged ladies (and gentlemen) out there and most suffer through it in silence. We don't have to!
