Growing up, I always knew I wanted to get married and have a family. Children were always a part of the plan from an early age. I met my childhood sweetheart when I was just eight years old. As teenagers, we knew we wanted a family of our own right away. Being a mother was the only thing I could think about; we were married when I was just eighteen years old. By this time, the doctors had already told us that children were never going to be in our future. For a time, I was unsure that getting married would happen. How could I trap the man I love in a future without children?
Going against all the odds and recommendations, we decided to marry and try to have children anyway. We got pregnant right away! It was short-lived and after just six weeks, I miscarried. After becoming ready to try again, we struggled to get pregnant a second time. Knowing I wanted to be a mother more than anything else in this world made the next six years hard to deal with. We tried and tried, going to doctors and specialists to find ways to help us. One doctor put me on fertility pills and we were sure this was the time we could finally get pregnant. Again, nothing happened. That was it! We were done with trying to have our own children.
Adoption was our best option at this point. Six years into marriage, we resigned the thoughts that we would ever have our own children. We worked on getting things ready to adopt a child. Weeks began to fly by and I became ill for a period of months. Trips back and forth to the doctor never revealed anything new until a few months later. Less than a week before our sixth Christmas together, we learned I was pregnant!
I was finally going to have the chance to be a mother like I had always wanted to be! I was going to have a baby! The months flew by and years too it seemed. One child after another until we had three beautiful babies in less than four years. Our daughter came in the middle and she was born with spina bifida. I had always known that I would go to college but now that dream was out of reach.
Surgery after surgery, hospitalizations every week, lasted for years. There was never an end in sight and the children were growing up quicker than we could spend the time we needed with them. For three years we lived in and out of the hospital with our daughter. The boys learned how to be quiet going down the halls before they were two. By then, they also knew how to help take care of their sister.
By the time our daughter was six, it seemed that life had passed all of us by. Our boys needed more and more attention and we were frustrated, worn, and spent. At this point, we were also alone, helping each other cope with all the problems and setbacks. It was at this point, in the middle of the chaos that I decided to go back to school to work on achieving my dreams of graduating college.
I set a goal to graduate by the time my youngest was in kindergarten, so that I could go to work while the children were still young. It was time to work on getting our own house to live in. Intending on owning our own home, my husband and I opened our own business and he ran it from home. Things were finally moving in the right direction. Our family was getting somewhere. And then we lost the home we lived in since the kids had been born. Next, we lost the business. I was determined that no matter what I was going to make life better for our children.
Through the chaos, I worked hard to continue in school, earning my Associates degree in Business Management. I began classes for my Bachelor’s degree just to find out that I had fibromyalgia. Again, I was told, progress would be limited and it may be better for me, mentally and emotionally, to just give in and accept what was dealt to me. I would not; I fully intended to finish my degree to give my children and my husband a better life. Against the odds, I finished my Bachelor’s degree. I never intended on giving up, I never intended NOT to have children, and I never intended on failing. Intention is a powerful thing. It can be a motivator or a hindrance. No matter who tells you that you CAN’T, tell them CAN’T is not in your vocabulary and PROVE them wrong.
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