Even before Catherine and William were married, there have been talks about the babies that they will one day have. I am sure that soon there will be even more of these conversations which will even include some speculations about if whether are not the couple is expecting a royal heir, especially if Kate begins showing signs of being pregnant, like gaining weight etc.
After I was married, these same conversations began. Everyone began asking when will the babies come? My mother even asked me on occasions, when will I pay my husband back for his ring. I guess she sees giving him a child as paying him back for his ring. I was not bothered by these questions at all, why should I, when I had no idea that soon I would be dealing with infertility,which would span most of my productive years.
As my infertility struggles intensified I began dreading these questions to the point where I would get so annoyed at people when they ask. I don’t know if I had the right to be annoyed, but I was. I was annoyed because I was naively thinking that people should at least figure by now, when they saw that no children were showing up, that something could be frustrating our trying to conceive efforts. The questions continued and we began lying, that we were not ready for children. Soon after however, we realised how ridiculous that answer was, when we were by now, years into our marriage and every couple we knew who were married, had children.
These questions can be very devastating for infertile couples to have to deal with, especially if their infertility struggles span years and so I would like to put this out there - this might still sound a bit naive of me, but I know that some of us are quite capable of being this considerate. For all of us who find ourselves asking when those babies will come, when you see that years are passing by and a couple is not producing children, start wondering if something could be frustrating their procreation efforts, this could very well not be the case, as it could also be that they do not want children. If the latter is the case, then many times these couples will not hesitate to tell you this.
After thinking back at how we handled these questions when we were struggling with infertility, I realised that the best answers for infertile couples to give to people when they ask about them having children, is to say to them politely that, ‘ we will have children when the time is right’ or, ‘it is in God’s hands’. Simple, yet very polite and most of all, these answers remove us from the picture and convey a message of reliance on a source greater than ourselves, because having children is certainly not at all in our hands. God is the one who ultimately decides if he will allow us the privilege of having them.
In a previous post I did, I spoke about how success comes when we fully let go, and being at a place in our struggles when we can convince ourselves and others that we have indeed let go, is the beginning of reaping the harvest of all the successes in our lives that we so yearn far.
ALL THE VERY BEST
