When are you going to have a baby?” she asked me hopefully. There was no malice in her voice, her eyes were full of excitement, and she was clearly just asking a question to make conversation.

“Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see,” I shrugged, giving a polite smile and quickly changing the subject.

To someone who has never struggled with infertility, a simple question about someone’s future children seems so innocent. But to someone who has been trying to get pregnant for months, it is a heartbreaking reminder of your ongoing battle to make a baby.

After the first few months of trying, you start to wonder if something is wrong. You record your basal body temperature every morning to see when you are ovulating and use ovulation predictor tests every month so you have sex at the right times.

Each month you have ridiculous sex during ovulation, and then wait two painful weeks to see if it worked. You want to get pregnant so bad that you convince yourself that you are nauseous or extra tired or that your boobs are sore. That makes it even worse when the pregnancy tests are all negative and then the month ends in your period.

When you can’t get pregnant, it feels like all of your friends are getting pregnant and leaving you behind. You watch their bellies grow and their babies be born, and as much as you want to be happy for them, you feel like crying every time they post a new picture of their perfect baby.

The question “when are you going to have a baby?” is just a reminder that your body isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. It is a reminder of the roller coaster of emotions you ride every single month. It is a reminder of all the days and nights you spend crying, because it still isn’t happening. It is a reminder that what you want the most is to experience pregnancy and hold your own newborn baby in your arms. It is a reminder that you have no idea when you are going to be able to have a baby.

But that’s not something you mention in casual conversation. When someone asks “when are you going to have a baby?” you don’t unload the stress you’ve been feeling for months, or maybe even years for others, about the pain you’ve felt while trying to get pregnant. You can’t tell them about the battle you’ve been having with your own body because if you try you are just going to break down. So you try and be casual and brush it off with a “oh, I don’t know, we’ll see,” and then try to quickly change the conversation

People see my husband and I in public and ask why we don’t have a baby of our own yet. Or tell us that’s we’d make such a beautiful baby. It just makes me sad. It makes me feel like less of a woman, because woman are supposed to bare children. It’s up to us to help repopulate the world. We have this HUGE weight on our shoulders, yet most don’t even think we do. Why is it that people that don’t deserve to have babies, can get pregnant so quick and then they decide to abort the baby, or don’t care enough to stop doing harmful things to theirselves and take for granted that they have the gift to have babies? Every month I hope I don’t get my period in hopes I’ll finally get my chance. But for some reason, I have this gut feeling I’ll never get that chance...

I still hold onto hope that one day I’ll be able to experience the big belly, the weird food cravings, and the swollen ankles. But for now, I’ll enjoy the pictures of you ladies and your big bellies, weird food cravings, swollen ankles, and pictures of your baby when he/she is born 💕

TTC HELP!