25th October 2012 | by MFC Team
Running out of time
For as long as I can remember my goal was to climb the corporate ladder and establish myself professionally before I would consider having children. Most of my time, energy and focus went into work – I ended up living, breathing and dreaming about work. Thankfully, all of my hard work ended up being rewarded. I recently became a partner in my law firm at age 40. My husband works in real estate and is as consumed by his work as I am. He spent most of his 30s getting his company off the ground and raising the company’s profile in the city. We’ve been married for almost 10 years. At first family members and friends used to ask us when we were going to have kids, but in the last few years they just assumed our careers were our lives and stopped asking. Little did they know that my husband and I both actually really wanted kids, but we wanted to get to a place in our careers where one or both of us could afford to take some time off. We wanted to wait until we were ready.
Within a few months of making partner we set out for our next challenge of having kids. I had started to exercise regularly and eat organic. Frankly, I was in the best shape I’d been in for years. So I figured my fertility would be just fine. Little did I know that getting pregnant wouldn’t be that easy. After trying for six months we were pretty shocked that we still weren’t pregnant. So we started fertility investigations and treatment. It’s been really stressful and disappointing. This issue is just too private and painful to share, so we suffered in silence. People don’t realize that their comments like, “Aren’t you guys going to regret that you didn’t have kids?” hit us right in the stomach.
With hard work we both have been successful at everything else that has mattered to us in our lives. It’s a bitter pill to think that something as important as having kids might not happen for us. It’s been a pretty huge wakeup call. Little did we know that we were running out of time. Maybe we should have tried earlier…but we just assumed that when we were ready, our bodies would be up for the challenge. Hopefully with the help of the docs at the fertility clinic we’ll be able to have kids together…if not, I guess we’ll look at our other options.