A week after my father brought me home I had major surgery to try and repair the damage that had been done. It took a couple of months for me to recover physically, but I did. I got myself into a battered women's group and counseling and with time I began to heal emotionally, too.

Three years later, in a summer class, I met.....him. I knew from the first that this man would impact my life. He was 3 1/2 years younger than me, but he was very kind and gentle. We began to date and 6 months later we moved in together. We bought a home together and life was good. Four years after we met, we married. And then we began trying for a family.

Bret knew soon after he met me, that I had fertility problems and as time went on he learned more and more about the other things that had happened. He understood and was as patient as any woman could ask.

We started out with lots of tests and discovered that he had some problems, also. It was very discouraging for us, but we did not give up.

After my experience and major surgery, I began to be plagued with polycystic ovaries. PSO is a very painful disease and it can cause other problems with a woman's hormones. I kept developing cysts and tons of scar tissue that looked like spider webs on an x-ray. It kept surrounding my tube and ovary on the left side and inhibited ovulation. And I already did not ovulate normally. I had one operation to clear out the scar tissue while we were living together and then had two more in rapid succession shortly after we were married.

My doctor started me on a course of fertility drugs (Chlomide) and steroids (Decadron) to control the scar tissue. I had to start using a temperature chart and each morning before I even got out of bed, I would have to take my temperature and mark it down on a chart. The doctor was trying to discover if I was ovulating or not. Most of the time, I didn't.

Our frustration grew as we tried more and more...and it began to affect our relationship. My husband had also moved into management by this time and he was home less and less. I did not understand at the time, that it was not just work. I trusted him...but I also began to notice that he was drinking more, a lot more, and this worried me.

The adhesions (scar tissue) and cysts came back again and I had my sixth surgery. The steroids were beginning to seriously affect my health. They suppress the white blood cells, and I began to catch almost everything that was going around. I would get infections and the flu all the time...and I began to dispair. The doctors have since discovered that my body has almost none of a particular kind of antibody that helps prevent infections in the mucous membranes of the body. And with the fertility drugs, I had constant mood swings that did not help the situation at home at all.

Finally the day came when my doctor explained to us that there was nothing else he could do and he was referring me to another doctor at a major medical center in a neighboring state. It was a 3 hour drive to the medical center and I wasn't sure how we could manage it with both our jobs, but I was desperate and willing to try anything. Sometimes I think my husband went along with it just to keep me quiet. I think that he had already given up in his heart and he would reproach me often for "failing" him as a wife. His family had made it clear many a time that I was unsatisfactory as a woman because I could not give him children.

It became more and more painful for me to attend family get togethers, either with his family or mine. All of our siblings had families, except for us. And I always felt as if I was on the outside looking in. There was something beautiful missing from my life. I had a heart full of love to give and no child to share it with.

Throughout our relationship together, Bret and I had taken in the teenage children of my sisters when they had problems at home...before we were through, we had finished raising 5 teenagers. We loved them all very much, but it had always been made very clear to us that these were not OUR children. It was very painful at times. And I longed to hold a child of my own in my arms.

When we went to the major medical center, we met a very kind doctor who had worked with thousands of infertility couples and he informed us that he could not make any promises. But I still had hope. The first thing he did was an operation using a laser. They shot holes into my ovaries to try and stimulate them to release eggs. Unfortunately it was not successful.

He then decided he wanted to try another procedure with us, but it would have meant spending, at a minimum, two weeks at the medical center. I could not afford to be away from work for so long, so we almost gave up. But when I came home, I discussed the situation with my doctor and he set it up so that it could be tried here. I was to receive two shots each day of Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), I would have an ultra sound each day and blood tests to check hormone levels. And once again, I was using a temperature chart.

The hormones made me very sick to my stomach and caused terrible headaches. They also caused severe pain in my ovaries...sometimes I would just hold myself and cry from the pain. I also gained quite a bit of weight while taking them. But to me, anything was worth it, if I could just get pregnant. Everything seemed to work beautifully...and I ovulated and released three eggs. We waited to see if it had taken. The waiting was awful, but I had so much hope in my heart that this time it would work.

When the test came back negative, I hurt so much inside. I almost gave hope right then. The procedure cost almost $5,000 and insurance did not cover much of it, because fertility procedures were still considered experimental at that time. It was becoming a terrible burden on us financially.

Bret and I discussed it and decided to try it one more time, but this time the doctor was going to use intrauterine insemination, using my husband's sperm. He seemed so sure that it would work this time. His enthusiasm infected me and I started to have more positive feelings about it, too. In a way, I wish that I hadn't. When the test came back one more time negative, I think I finally just gave up in my heart. I knew that my husband and I could not afford to try it again, we no longer had the resources and we were deeply in debt for the two times we HAD tried.

My fight was finally over and I had to learn to live with the idea that I would never hold a child born from my body in my arms. I felt a terrible sense of loss, of failure...and felt that I was less than a woman for not being able to have a child. It has taken a long time for me to come to terms with it and sometimes I still wonder if I have completely...or if I ever really will.

For links and information on infertility, please visit my Infertility/Adoption page.