Featured in the AllPaths Magazine, 2024 Volume 1
By Charlie Dice
Most little girls love to play with baby dolls. I played with plastic horses.
Most little girls dream of how many kids they’ll have when they grow up; what their names will be. I dreamed of having my own ranch out west where I couldn’t see my neighbors.
Being an avid fantasy and fiction reader, this sounds like a trope I gravitate towards – “she’s not like other girls”.
And yet, 1 in 6 people worldwide struggle with infertility and becoming a parent. So the irony is…I am like A LOT of other girls.
But let me back up.
As I said, growing up I never wanted to be a mom. It was never something I felt called to, and being around kids always made me really uncomfortable. I never babysat; I dog sat. I cherished my peace and quiet with a good book and loved being able to pick up and go whenever I wanted.
Even when I met my husband my sophomore year of college, I was upfront and honest about the fact that I did not see kids in my future. If he wanted to bow out of the relationship because of that, I would understand. He didn’t.
Life churned along during the rest of my twenties as it is wont to do – I graduated college during the Great Recession, found a job (not a career), eventually started a career and moved in with my then-boyfriend (now husband). We got a dog, then another, lived in a 900 square foot rundown apartment on his dad’s farm to save money, then built our dream home. Things were ordinary but satisfying as far as we were concerned.
When I turned 30 everything changed. The biological clock I thought either didn’t exist or was irreparably broken started ticking. Ok, not so much a tick as a bullhorn.
Needless to say we started trying; we didn’t think it would take long. All of our siblings have three children each and had no issues conceiving or staying pregnant. In addition, we knew of no one in our immediate families that had trouble either.
After a year of trying with no success, we got our first ever positive pregnancy test in August of 2020. To be honest I was terrified. I guess I naively assumed that since we had been trying so long without success, that it would just never happen. I also naively thought that since it HAD happened, that at the end of the next nine months I would be holding our baby in my arms.