Womb Warriors! (The truth about pregnancy)

Having a baby is a simple process right? You have sex, the egg gets fertilized and BAM You're expecting a beautiful little bundle of joy. 9 months pass and you have a happy, healthy, baby boy or girl to share life with. What an amazing experience for a woman!   

Unfortunately getting pregnant and staying pregnant is not always an easy process for all women. In fact, some women face some serious struggles when it comes to childbearing. 

Some women have no problem with getting pregnant, they just have a problem staying pregnant. This means after the pregnancy test and the doctor says yes, something in her body says no. Now the hard part about this is that there could be a million reasons why she can't stay pregnant ranging from a weak cervical lining to ovarian cysts to other very serious issues in her uterus. 

This can be a really frustrating, sad and scary process for a woman who wants to have children. She may struggle with getting excited about pregnancy, consider aborting to avoid the inevitable and be afraid to share the news with family, friends and loved ones. She may begin to pray for the best but think the worst each time she finds outs she's expecting. 

After many miscarriages, a woman might begin to question herself, her place in the world as a woman and even her God. I mean how could this be happening to ME? Yes Me! Why is this a struggle in my life? 

I am sharing this because I know that I am not alone in this thing. I know that other women either have my same struggle or very similar ones. There is a woman out there who can't get pregnant at all. A woman who has tried and tried and tried again and with every failed attempt she has cried and cried and cried again.

And then there is me. A woman who saw myself in the future as a child. I always knew I would get married and have kids and at one point I talked about having 3 daughters. I was going to name them Lyric, Loreal, and London. I wouldn't have sons because boys just weren't for me. I was about 19 at the time and this was my plan. I had no idea that things would not turn out this way. I had no idea that I was born with dermoid cysts on my ovaries and that those very complex cysts would someday cause me a lot of physical, mental and emotional pain. I didn't know! 

When I found out I was pregnant with a son (Landan) in 2015 after graduating college, and landing my 1st teaching job, I was just as excited as could be. I didn't care that he wasn't a girl. I was just happy to be almost 5 months and still carrying him. I had already lost a child by this time and just wanted my son to be healthy.

Am I the only woman who thought if I could make it through the first trimester, I was good and had no more worries? This proved so inaccurate when I lost my son at 5 in a half months pregnant. I learned that for a woman like me, there was no safe place. No in the clear. No moment when I could stop worrying. 

Since Landan, I have had a few more failed attempts at bringing life into this complicated world. This used to be embarrassing for me. I didn't want anyone to know because somehow people would see me as broken. Like some malfunctioning toy in the midst of a bunch of perfectly good ones. But I don't care anymore what people will say or think of me. Sharing my truth might help someone else and that's what matters to me. 

Sometimes people make comments about how being over 30 and having kids is too old, or they ask me when I'm going to have a baby and feel the need to remind me of my biological clock. They don't know that it's not that simple for me and I am not obligated to share my medical history with anyone. If you're like those people and you've made these comments or asked these questions, think about my blog the next time you fix your lips to say something so unintentionally hurtful. 

Some of us didn't plan to be over 30 with no children. We had no control over our complex journeys. But in the words of a very wise and special woman in my life "Its going to happen in Gods time. Trust his plan for your life. There is still hope". 

At this point I am just going to continue to get to know my body, seek God for healing and professionals for help. I am not hopeless nor am I helpless. I will use my pain to drive my journey to becoming a wife and mommy some day. I know I'll be a great mom and if you share my story or a similar one, so will you! You may cry and ask God why but remember that he sees, he knows and he cares. 

Don't give up!