Stepping on Toes

*I am going to step on some toes with this. And that's okay with me. Because my toes are stepped on every day, by parents who take for granted what they have.*

Infertility by definition/diagnosis is the inability for a couple to conceive on their own after trying for at least one year. This is true in primary infertility as well as secondary infertility. 1 in 8 couples well struggle with infertility. A woman's risk of infertility rises with age.

Now I want to preface this by saying that I do not take lightly what it would feel like to be in the situation I am about to discuss, so please hear me all the way out on this. It hurts my heart when I hear women who have barely even been trying to have their 2nd child compare their pain to that of a woman who has been trying for YEARS to have A child at all. If God gives me just one single child, I will thank my lucky stars! Will I desire to have a 2nd child? Most certainly. Will it hurt if that is hard also? Certainly.

But here's the thing... primary infertility leaves you longing to be a mother. Longing to create and carry a child inside of your body. Primary infertility is me and my husband with no child and no way to know if we ever will have a child. Now I can sit here and tell you that I know God will make me a mother someday, somehow. But the ugly truth is, there are women who never become a mother. They fight this fight and lose. So I don't really know I will be a mother someday. I believe God will make me one somehow when it is according to his timing. I hope this is true. But I do not know.

I wonder every day when I see a mother and her child, if I will ever experience that. I cry every single time I see a picture of a newborn baby on facebook. My heart stops every time I hear of another pregnancy announcement. I had a hysterical breakdown standing in Target after leaving the movie theater where I had a conversation with the cutest little girls who were going to see Beauty and the Beast with their mother. We went to Target next, and while I waited for my husband by the doors, a young woman and her daughter walked by with loving and adorable interactions. And my heart just literally broke right then and there. My husband found me standing alone at Target so hysterical that I could not even tell him why I was crying.

This, friends, is what primary infertility feels like. And again I say, that I do GET IT that secondary infertility still hurts. But please stop comparing it. It is NOT the same. It never will be. You have A child, even if that is the only child you get. I have none. There is a huge difference between these two.