ThinkBaby.org’s Fertility Stories
Hi everyone, Zoe here! If you don’t know already, I personally struggled with my own fertility issues for many years prior to conceiving.
I understand the journey first hand, the emotions I had (they sadly shape you for the rest of your life) and the way just the word ‘fertility’ can make you feel. I’ve spoken about my fertility journey on ThinkBaby.org, which you can read about here, but I am to provide more inspiring stories and fertility resources for my readers.
This page is dedicated to a few women that I have come across in my life that have struggled with infertility. By sharing their story, it not only provides strength, but provides also provides re-assurance and inspiration for those women and couples that are currently going through an unpleasant phase in their life.
And for those currently going through fertility struggles, please check out my Fertility Resources that might be handy for you aswell.
Inspirational Fertility Stories
♥
Brandi Lytle of Not So Mommy…
On Being a Mom: A Childless Woman’s Perspective
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mom. As a little girl, I used to carry my Cabbage Patch Kids in a baby carrier strapped to my chest. And my absolute favorite toy was my doll, Victoria. I had no doubt that I wanted kids.
Let’s start building our family…
So, three years after getting married, my hubby and I agreed that it was time to start building our family.
And two years after that, we determined that it was time to see an infertility specialist.
Appointments, surgeries, medicines, and invasive treatments with a doctor and nurse present were certainly not how I had pictured getting pregnant. But this route seemed to be our only hope to have a biological child, so we tried and tried and tried some more.
This isn’t working…
But ten years, seven failed IUI infertility treatments, several adoption meetings, and countless tears later, we still weren’t pregnant. My hubby told me that he didn’t want to try anymore. And I was utterly crushed.
But I believe in our marriage vows. And infertility… Well, it was the sickness. It was the bad times. I was not going to let it ruin my marriage, however.
Accepting my childless life…
So, I decided to embrace my infertility and begin accepting my childless life. For me, that meant I embrace the blessed life that God has given me and stop trying to obtain the ‘perfect’ life in my head.
To do that, I fully embraced my roles as wife and dog mom, deciding that we were already a family of three. Luckily, my amazing hubby fully supported my over-zealous dog mom role and took his dog dad role pretty seriously, too!
One year into fully embracing our dog parent roles, we met a foreign exchange student and her host mom at a cooking class. After class, we looked at each other and said, “We could do that!” So, we filled out the paperwork to become host parents and two months later, we had a two-legged kid in our home. And by the end of our six-month hosting experience, we were a family of four.
Fifteen years after deciding to start building our family, I have learned that you don’t have to hold a baby in a carrier on your chest to be a mom. Sometimes, being a mom means loving a fur baby or taking care of an exchange student as if she were your own. At least, that’s what being a mom looks like for me…
Brandi Lytle, founder and owner of Not So Mommy…, is a wife, dog mom, aunt, host mom, infertile woman living an imperfectly perfect life in South Carolina, USA with her husband, Dane, and fur baby, Maddie. Brandi is redefining what momhood means to her and strives to focus on the bright sides of being childless, but not childfree. Her hope is to inspire others to be their authentic selves and discover a Plan B that brings them joy!
