Infertility and how to help your spouse cope with stress

This is a sponsored conversation from Mums the Word Network and The Stork OTC. All opinions are my own.

My Story

As a mother of three children, I hear a lot about how lucky I am to have my amazing family. I have conversations and small talks with friends and colleagues about my kids and how it must have been easy for me to conceive them because I’m a young mom. While you see this perfect little family on the outside there’s always a sheer privacy shade covering how each of my kids was born. Each of my children has a unique birthday story and each had amazing conception stories too.

I was 22 when my husband Mike and I got married, I was very young and very naïve about what it meant to be a wife much less a mom. I was on ‘the pill’ and it was going to stay that way. By the time our first wedding anniversary rolled around I realized I wasn’t too careful and discovered I was pregnant. The stress of working a full-time job, going to school full time and being a wife to someone I’ve never lived with before was enough to put me in a state of panic and now this… But at 24, my son came and my life got even better. He brought out feelings of motherhood that I will be forever thankful for. Becoming a mom was and is hands down one of the best experiences of my life. The maternal feelings that awoke in me that first time I held him couldn’t be described in a short blog post, all I knew was that I was meant to be a mother.

The Stress

About a year after my son was born, I told my husband that I wanted to try and have another baby. In my head, I was figuring it all out, I would get pregnant again soon and by the time this second baby came my first would be around 2, but we tried for over a year and I didn’t get pregnant. How was this the case I asked myself every month, I mean I wasn’t even trying for my son, in fact, I was on birth control and got pregnant with him, why is getting pregnant again so difficult. During that year we tried everything short of going into the doctor’s office for tests. We did bring it up with her but she insisted we give it a year on our own. ‘It will happen” she said, “you have one child already so relax and enjoy trying”. In fact, the handful of friends that knew we were trying for that entire year said the same thing. Don’t worry but that’s all I did, was worry. I became obsessed with getting pregnant. I tried everything I read, heard, saw and still that negative pregnancy tests every month became a recurring feeling of despair in my life.

No Support

During that year, I lost both of my grandmothers, we were in an automobile accident, switch jobs, moved 2 times, and I had a couple minor surgeries as well. The stress was unbelievable and mounting by the days. I felt no support from my husband either. We stopped communicating, I don’t know if I was embarrassed or angry about not getting pregnant and I never shared with him my fears but the stress was there like a third person in our marriage. No one was saying what they were thinking and that we might end up with only one child, the very thing I didn’t want to hear out loud because I am an only child and I knew I didn’t want this for my son. I wanted to give him what I didn’t have. No, I’m not insensitive to the fact that some people have one child and are completely and utterly happy with that. Every family has their own vision of what they want but for us, my husband and I didn’t want my son to be an only child, this was something we wanted for OUR family.

Good News Finally

We were on our second year of trying, we made an appointment with my OBGYN to run some basic tests in a couple of months but in the meantime I was going to schedule and remove my tonsils that have been bothering me since childhood. I went in for pre-op and I get a call as I was driving home, “We have some news, do you know that you’re pregnant?”, those words I longed to hear for over a year didn’t come through clearly. I asked the lab tech twice if she could repeat what she said because hearing it once didn’t do my agony turned relief any justice.

Eight months later I had my beautiful daughter, she was early but perfect in every way. My husband and I grew closer together and bonded over the experiences of the last year. We also learned that stress plays a big factor in what had happened, stress in our marriage, stress on my body, the stress of raising an infant and going through life and everything that had turned us upside down for the last year before my daughter was conceived.

Asking for HELP

We also talked about how we should deal with support going forward. I need to ask for help. Those simple words have helped me over the years to cope and get stronger. If I can’t go to my husband and ask for help how would he know what to do, or ask my doctor for help? These days though there are tools and other devices that can help with conception. One of which I’ve heard amazing things about from my girlfriends.

The Stork

The Stork OTC is a uniquely designed innovative device you use at home, during ovulation, to assist your chances of becoming pregnant. It is FDA cleared, over the counter device available at Target and CVS, located in the family planning section next to the ovulation test kids. You can also purchase it directly online at www.storkotc.com for $59.99.

If you would like to learn more about how the Stork can help you conceive faster then, join the upcoming Twitter party on October 19^th, 2017 at 8 pm EST. You can participate using #TTCwithStorkOTC.