I am in my late fourties now so it doesn’t make me feel the way I used to feel when I was young, but I still sometimes have a wish to have had a child.

Somehow the society I live in and the religion I follow prohibits having a child out of wedlock. I was never liked by anyone enough to be considered as a wife.

I do not know what could have happened if I was married. Society usually makes people like us feel that we do not belong anywhere.

I sometimes feel anger, sadness and loneliness, but strangely it hurts more to never had a chance to have a child more than than the fact that I couldn’t marry, so I guess I would feel like this till I die.

I have sat in the early hours of most mornings for years thinking did I try hard enough? Was there anything more I could’ve done?

Let me start at the beginning, a beginning that I could not create myself. I am the eldest of 4 siblings. My childhood was unpredictable. Mum had miscarriages after me and when she was pregnant I became so jealous, sacred too that this new arrival would upset our world. And so it did as I was packed off to my grandparents. I loved them dearly but they were old. Their house full of dark wood and drafts, the bedroom stark despite stickers and posters. 

My youngest sister is 12 years younger than me. For most of my teens she was my shadow as my mum battled with PND and my dad struggled with Parkinson’s and I was needed at home. University wasn’t an option. I stayed close, taking a job in the local Co-op so I could let in my dad’s carers and take my sister to school. In the evenings, my dad and I would read and talk about our dreams.

Aged 17, my brother and his girlfriend were suddenly pregnant. I’d yet to have a boyfriend, I had no time to socialise and felt I was too old, one learns a lot about a life very quickly when you have responsibility thrust on you. I recall their wedding, on a boiling hot summer day, watching their friends, awkward and gangly around a registry office, not sure if they were allowed to drink the Diamond White beyond the toast. Most cycling to the venue as they hadn’t passed their driving test. An odd mixture of teen disco and baby shower.

To give them credit, they had 2 more children and are still married, if not faithfully so. The babies were dumped around my parents at short notice and so I added baby-sitting to my scant CV.  As the years went so my two younger sisters found their way in life, to university and marriage. Then it was just me left and I realise I had no friends, nobody to check up on me. No ties.

So here I am, aged 54 and an aunt 6 times over. An orphan. Except I am not where my family expect me to be as they tackle grandparenthood and hope I’ll be the baby sitter again. 

I write this late in a long day that began with me standing by the doorway of my childhood home for the last time. Alone. On the driveway was my van, loaded with a few essentials. In my bank account, the proceeds of the house sale. In time I’d share some of this with my siblings, as my beloved late dad suggested I might do in his will, but not until I’ve found where I want to live my dreams.

My name is Thomas. I live in Sweden and I would like to share my story with you.

I know the UK very well, I trained to be a designer at Goldsmiths in London and emigrated to Sweden with my girlfriend ten years ago.

We have had IVF with a private clinic. We waited two years and asked for help and that’s were we ended up, and then on a wait list for 3 years. Unfortunately they found a blood clot on my girlfriend’s brain so we didn’t complete the cycle. Some drugs that are used caused blood clots so the risk was too high for us. I found that I had low mobility sperm and we would need to have ICSI treatment.

It took us a while to get over this and I’m sad to say that we are no longer a couple but we are friends. It was very hard to support her and we both ended up blaming each other which didn’t help with her health or mine. We didn’t feel like we had any counselling support from anyone who had been through something similar.

My ex-girlfriend and I have stayed in touch but it was hard to read that she became pregnant with her new partner, they have a two year old daughter now. I was asked to be a godparent but said no after a lot of wondering. It is nice to be friends but I felt that I would not have the space to move myself onwards.

I haven’t dated since we broke up. I wanted to do some thinking, that sounds a bit deep doesn’t it? When I moved, I couldn’t afford much so where I live is remote so I get a lot of time to thinking.

I go for lots of walks and swim too. I have a cat called Harold and freelance so I make the most of my freedom. I liked the vids about male infertility with Dr. Robin Hadley and Michael in Australia. They are top blokes and they did help me to sort my head out.

I have found a lot of peace in nature and outdoor meditation too. I found out about meditation through the Calm app and then went on a retreat. I was really nervous about it, but I met people from all places, doing different jobs.  

I guess the moral of my story is don’t be a bloke about recovering because it’s pretty tough on men too and look outside being a parent for ideas.

It is 1st January 2019 and I sit, sorting through the Christmas cards. I am diligently saving little adornments and carefully cutting out festive images, just as my mother used to do in preparation for Christmas craft activities the following year. I stop suddenly as reality hits and ask myself why I am undertaking what it undoubtedly a fruitless task. Who is going to create pretty Christmas cards and pictures with these tokens I am saving? Certainly no child of mine. It is as I discard them into the rubbish bin that I decide it is time to share my story. I am forty-five years old, and I am childless by circumstance.

Growing up, my hopes and dreams for my life were simple; meet someone, get married and have a family. Idealistic maybe, but not outside the realms of possibility. I had planned to have at least five children, which perhaps was idealistic, but I had been raised on episodes of The Waltons, The Cosby Show and much later, Party of Five, so my rose-tinted outlook was not entirely unexpected! Additionally, being the middle daughter of three girls, I had experienced the joys - and challenges - of having siblings and I wanted the same for my future children.

Having a career was never much of a priority and I was not particularly ambitious. I was academically able and achieved degree level qualifications however and secured my first ‘proper’ job at twenty-two years old. It only ever really felt like an interlude though until I found my happy-ever-after – how naïve I was.

I married my first husband at twenty-nine years old and was blessed with two stepdaughters, then aged four and five who I adored. I embraced the role of stepmother and when they spent weekends with us, I assumed the maternal role with ease and pleasure. Thankfully, they responded with equal ease. My husband and I had discussed having children together and it had always been part of our life plan, such as it was. His career took some time to establish however and we were not financially secure until a few years into our marriage. When we did finally make the decision to cease contraception and ‘see what happens’, we assumed naively that there would not be a problem. He was clearly fertile, and I came from a family where having babies seemed an easy and natural thing to do. Both of my sisters appeared to be able to conceive as easily as they breathed!

The months, and then years passed however and we subjected ourselves to fertility tests, fertility drugs, temperature taking, ovulation kits, etc. without success. No medical issues were ever identified and there was no obvious explanation for our failure. By this time, friends and family were having their second or third baby and the anguish this incurred is difficult to describe. The excruciating monthly ritual of futile yet tentative hope followed by inevitable disappointment will be familiar to many reading this. The utter emptiness is beyond anything I have ever experienced and I would wish it upon anyone.

My husband and I discussed IVF, which was our only remaining option, but we were not eligible for NHS funding as he already had children. My parents offered us a loan but by this time our relationship was rapidly crumbling and not solely due to our inability to conceive. After conveniently avoiding any conversation that I broached about IVF, and indeed being reluctant to have sex over several months, my husband announced that he no longer wanted any more children. I was, naturally, devastated, and whilst it ultimately gave me the courage and drive to leave what had become a very damaging relationship, I nevertheless had to face the very real possibility that I may never have my own children.

The intervening years largely revolved around getting my life back on some kind of even keel. I had a couple of pretty disastrous relationships during this time but in 2014 I met my second husband. He didn’t have children but his online profile stated that he was open to the idea. By this time it was no longer a deal-breaker to me and I was pretty sure that I couldn’t conceive having not used birth-control for several years, but to leave it open as an option seemed sensible. As time went on, we discussed having children and it became clear that it was not a priority for him and as we got older, was something he actively feared. I could understand his reasons and indeed shared his sentiments about many of them. At seven years my senior and hoping to retire at sixty, fatherhood was definitely not on his wish list. We also had a very comfortable life, enjoyed holidays and the freedom to do as we pleased, and a baby would certainly have changed our lives beyond all recognition. There was also the increased risk of having a baby with disabilities and having worked in the field for several years, I knew that I would struggle with knowingly bringing a life into the world that would suffer. There was the risk to my mental and physical health as well and I accepted that having a baby at our stage of life would not be a viable or desirable option. That is where we currently are.

There are those around me that tell me I am a mother however. A mother to my step-daughters (who I am blessed to still have close to me), my God-children, my nieces and nephew, my youth group members and the children and young people I have worked with over the years, I do not, for one second, wish to belittle or devalue these relationships. I am blessed to have been given these opportunities, all of which have enriched my life and my self-worth. I am also blessed to still have so many of these wonderful individuals in my life. My heart is richer as a result and I wouldn’t change a single one of them.

It should be enough. That’s what my head tells me. I have so much and I am grateful, and for the most part my heart agrees. But for that one small, empty part of my heart. The part I keep buried, that holds the tiny flower that still raises its now slightly withered tendrils every month in the vain hope of a miracle. That is despite the now very clear signs of perimenopause. It is the part that still looks upon the cherished faces of my nieces, nephews, God-children and step-daughters and asks, plaintively, “Why not me? What did I do to deserve being denial motherhood?” It’s the part that fractures a little bit deeper every time I hear or read the words, ‘You don’t know what true love is until you’ve held your new-born in your arms.’ The part that still longs to feel the little spark of life growing inside me, and to know that unconditional love. And it’s the part that reminds me that the loss isn’t over yet. I bear the scars of childlessness but have yet to bear the loss of grandchildren. That, I still have to face. And I will do so, God-willing, and I will be brave. And I will be the best step-grandma and great-auntie that I can be. And I’ll pray that all I have been given will help the little empty part of my heart to be filled, and the tiny withered flower be finally buried.

The hardest part for me is I’m only 27, all our friends and families are having kids, constantly talking about it there’s bump and scan pics all over my social media and it does hurt.

“I am mostly through the raw and constant grief that comes with the losses of all of one’s children, parenthood and grandparenthood.” Sarah on infertility, grief and childlessness

Edward on childlessness and Christmas and how talking and walking helped with loneliness.

Hello, my name is Jason.

It’s taken me months to write what I wanted to say and I’m a bit nervous. Really scared to tell you the truth. Ironically I’m a writer, with five books published. I’m a historian so I’m good on facts and not so hot with emotional stuff.  During the day I’m a lecturer at a university, I used to teach lower secondary.

I wanted to share my story here because it’s confidential. I don’t have a personal blog as such. An authors website but I don’t want to talk about my story here yet.

As a kid I suffered abuse from my step father. Sexual abuse. There you are, I’ve said it now. It doesn’t directly relate to my childlessness or the breakdown of my marriage. But I don’t feel I can talk about it openly. It’s hard to know where to start with my story.

As a kid I went through all this abuse, I didn’t know it was wrong until we were taught sex education at school and then I was terrified. My mum didn’t believe me at first, I told an aunt who told my mum whose answer was to sent me to live with my aunt just before my GCSEs. Needless to say I failed all of them and had to retake with mixed results. I didn’t live at home again. My stepfather was arrested, I wasn’t the only child. I have had counselling during the trial and since then. I sit uneasily with my past and I’m finding it hard to write about it, I rarely talk about it. Mum has been great, but there is often this elephant in the room and we have to address it now and then. It’s never easy but at Christmas, it’s harder still because the memories are tinged with guilt and upset for what I missed. What she didn’t see. We often go away, hide away in a remote house with her dog and watched boxed sets.

After university I went on to be a school teacher. I loved my work but at home my marriage was failing. I thought that talking about my past would be enough but my attitude to sex wasn’t healthy, shamefully so and I was scared about having children. Terrified I’d repeat all the patterns. It wasn’t until I’d had counselling again that the doctors diagnosed immobile sperm. Without ICSI treatment, that was way beyond our salaries as teachers, I would not be a dad.

It was devastating. I ended up having a breakdown. Maybe something that was destined to happen, but I truthfully thought it was punishment. The infertility I mean. A judgement that I was unfit to be a dad, underlined by someone who told me it was ‘God’s way’. And so that was how I saw it. My mind, so fragile, took that as gospel.

It took five years of mental health support, divorce (a relief in the end for both of us) for me to feel able to work again. In all this, I’ve found that writing helped. I have started to tackle my past by writing a few words. It can take days to feel ‘right’ again so it’s going to be years before I complete anything but it feels important to me.

I trained to be a lecturer after completed a Masters and I’m midway through a PhD now. I watched the Men Matter Too webinar and I was struck by Robin Hadley’s observation about being a single man around children. I cried at that, and spoke to my ex-wife about it because it’s always been a fear. Not that I’d ever be like that monster but that someone would connect him, in prison and on the sex offenders list, with me and make all the wrong assumptions. It’s partly why adoption seemed to precarious for us.

There isn’t a happy ending to this story. I deal with facts – I warned you! But my wife is a good friend to me and a mum now. And I’ve realised, at the grand age of 45 that I’m gay. And I’m so happy to have worked that out at last. I’m in a relationship, the early stages, and it’s my first same sex relationship but oddly feels natural. I haven’t explained my past, I’m hoping that this feet selfie will help me to do that.

I had chemo in my teens and nobody said anything about children then. If they had then I would have said that it didn't matter. I was too busy trying not to die and live my own life not give birth.

So I have known for ages that I wouldn’t have children and it’s not my choice but I have learned to live with what nature gave me and I know I’m lucky to be alive. Each birthday I celebrate being alive and another year clear of cancer.

Life does come with heartbreak… I wanted dearly to have children and adoption didn't work out as my life of wandering around the world seeing all I can, funded by stressful but well paid job wasn’t compatible. I was too headstrong at the time to see that and now I can, in my mid forties, I don’t think I want to go back through the adoption process again.

I have tried counselling, I had a lot in my twenties more do to with cancer than childlessness. I have found that it’s hard to find the right counsellor who knows what it’s like to go through infertility and I’m nervous of life coaches and people in our community who promise a lot. I think its’s really important that you check them out and ask for feedback. I’ve seen someone offering online courses. Well intended I’m sure but I just don’t think it’s right me for me. You need meet that person before you entrust your secrets to them and I don’t know that it’s right to make money from a fellow childless person’s loss.

I am a member of lots of groups on Facebook and I love the support, especially in Childless Path and Walking Forward Inspiration Group. I think these are the best groups and I am going to join Gateway Women after it was so highly praised by everyone in World Childless Week. I loved all the live videos and it was nice to meet people that way. I was actually sorry for anyone who wasn't able to take part because they have children! I also love this website. I often read the stories as it reminds me that I am not alone.

My religion says that I am meant to be a father. The Qur’an compares it to being a sun and I was brought up to believe that my dad was the centre of my world and he is.

I’m told it affects 30% of couples who are Muslim, or at least Google did cos nobody actually says said a thing about it. When I did say a few words, because I was worried, and honestly, going mad inside with it, my dad said that Allah will save me and bless me with a child.

It hasn’t worked in three years. I pray all the time for a miracle.

My wife and I went to the doctor, we had a few tests and I know it’s my problem. She’s great actually, but it’s hard being strong for her. That’s what I am meant to be, strong and supportive but it’s hard when it’s me that’s the problem. I keep saying she should find someone else.

The Qur’an also says that husbands and wives are garments for each other so I cling to that and so does my wife. But there’s a lot of crap out there. People saying it’s because we can’t handle a child, that we’ve past sins that can’t be forgiven, we have a different path in life or it’s Allah’s way of making sure we focus attention on religion not children. Either way, it doesn’t help much.

Each day I feel like I’m walking a different direction, going about life in circles. I don’t really know the solution but I hope that saying these words helps me and helps others who are struggling because of their religion. They aren’t alone.

I'm Tere and I am from Chile and I am childless by circumstances.

I never talked about what it meant to live without children, I spent my entire life feeling excluded, from society and from life itself.

I was married for 11 years. I did not have children during my marriage. For 5 years I lived and waited for the arrival of a baby. I was in an assisted fertilization treatment. It was an invasive, heartbreaking, frustrating, hopeful, exhausting process. My emotions fluctuated between the absolute certainty that I was going to achieve it and "I do not know if I can keep going".

I compared myself to other women and friends who had done everything to have a child and I did not feel capable of doing that much. I did not understand why it was so difficult for me, I got angry with life and specially with friends that got pregnant so easily. I questioned myself if I left it aside and complemented that lack with other things. Finally, I left the treatment.

I started volunteering at a child adoption institution and started an adoption process that ended abruptly because my marriage had been broken for years. At 38 I got divorced.

The years after divorce, were splendor years, reconnecting with myself, enjoying my freedom to be and do what I wanted. Obviously, it was not the time to have children. In my mind, I still had time, I trusted science and that at 40 I could still get pregnant without great risk. I closed all this process, turned the page and went ahead.

I NEVER GOT PREGNANT IN M Y WHOLE LIFE. Never felt a life growing inside me, never gave birth. That still makes me feel deeply sad.

When I left contraceptives, because I felt I need of detoxifying my body and start a change of habits, it happened that my rule did not came anymore, my menopause had already started some time ago and I did not realize it. This happened at 46. It was at that moment that I finally became aware that I really will not have children and realizing I won’t have the chance to do anything about it killed me, I did not know what to do. I thought I was over the baby thing but leaving me without the option to retract myself shocked me.

MY TIME HAS PASSED AND THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO.

About to turn 50, I wanted to close cycles, it was time, I felt prepared. It was not a sudden process. I wanted to start the second stage of my life without dragging pending issues of my past and I worked with a book that guided me in this process called Living the Life Unexpected written by Jody Day. I realized I was always been ambivalent about having children because of multiple facts, my marriage story and my low self-esteem.

It is never easy to become aware of some internal truths, being ambivalent about children made me feel so stupid and ashamed feeling I don´t have the right to complain about anything, but after all it was a liberation, it gave me the opportunity to understand my previous life, to forgive many things like my decisions and indecisions, and especially to be able to start talking about this topic that specifically in my environment, and in Latin America has been absolutely invisible. It is a conversation that is not touched either for consideration, because others believe that it hurts you, or because of taboo that maybe all women will stop having children and the human race will be extinguished!

My walk has been longing for this sense of belonging we humans need. After reading Jody´s Day book I started blogging and then created a website for women with no children called www.mujersinhijos.com where I found a community of women that like me, are trying to have a meaningful life without children.

Today I am grateful.

Here I am 37 and childless.... 20 years ago I was sat in a classroom dreaming of being married, in a 5 bed house with 4 children and 2 dogs....so far I have achieved the marriage part.

My husband and I have always wanted children, it just never happened even with fertility treatment.

The difficulties

We would go out and someone would ask "how many children have you got?" and you reply "none, it didn't happen" you then get the sorry head tilt from them along with comments of "just relax and it will happen in good time" or "just adopt" ..aaaarrghhhhh... i felt like saying 'shut the F up, you have NO idea" but instead I would just politely excuse myself.

Then you get the "feel sorry for" person, friends with THE news tend to start it saying " this is soo hard to tell you" or "i feel so sorry as I am going to upset you..." I am genuinely happy when friends tell me their pregnant but I am also human and go home and cry thinking why isn't it me?!?!

I felt like a failure, like my world was falling apart, i couldn't see any silver lining in my clouds... just darkness ...everyone around me was having kids, everywhere I looked there were mum's to be rubbing their tummies and prams galore. I would be stood in a queue and in front would be the new mum with the 'I have a new baby glow" and yes, I have walked out of a queue in a shop crying as I know it won't be me.

The Light......

Then one day i woke up and had a chat with myself.... if the universe isnt going to bless me with children, i am going to make the most of my life and explore the world, dance with my friends until 6am (who am I kidding, I might just make it till 2am). I am going to live, laugh, love and forgive.

Everybody has a different road to follow in life and I have changed my route.... we now book something to do/go away every 3-4 months, whether it would be a festival, city trip or a holiday. I don't make excuses for my lifestyle, i just sit back and enjoy. I wake up early to watch sunrises and stay up late to watch sunsets.

I didn't get to my part of the story I call "The Light" for quite some time... and all I can tell you is I knew I was there once I arrived. I went through the all the stages of Jealousy, Grief, Anger, Failure, and Crying before I made it.

I hope my story helps you. I want you to know you are not alone.... take time out for you, be kind to yourself and remember, everyone's journey is different.

love and hugs

Gilli x

Some might say she is ok now, she’s adopted her family.

Some will think, she looks happier now, she has her family.

Some will assume those things above and more and to a large percentage, my husband and I are the happiest we have ever been.

But what never goes away, is the loss of not being a natural mother. I am a parent now, a Mummy yes, but I will always be the lady who could never conceive her baby. My baby never grew after we attempted IVF, just the once. And before the IVF, there were many painful years of trying to get pregnant.

I longed to be pregnant, to look pregnant, to give birth and to breast feed. Mother nature, what a cruel witch she can be! I was denied those privileges and some will say ‘ you wouldn’t want to give birth anyway’, with a hearty laugh. But these women have had the opportunity to be in labour.

Twice a year, I must write a letter to the lady that carried my children and inform her how wonderful her kids are and how well they are doing. It’s difficult to do because I know how remarkable her children are, and I cry for her loss.

On my children’s birthdays I am very aware that other Mums happily swan around on their kids special day, sharing birth stories on Social Media, comparing humorous tales ‘of this time four years ago’. I cannot do this and it reminds me of my failings as non - productive birth mother.

Strangers or friends that do not know we have adopted our kids, pass comments that my son looks like me, or ‘where does he get that hair from?’

Doctors/opticians etc, ask questions like- ‘is there a family link to this’…., often when my children are present. The records should state their situation and while I loosely try to explain, I can be met with a crumpled face mouthing ‘I’m sorry’ from the clinician. But inside, I am hating that I can’t just say, that my son follows me in that regard. I could go on, but I think you understand.

I am a busy Mummy, part time worker and still adjusting to this huge life change and most of the time I am, as people on the outside will recognise, happy. But every now and then, I am right back to 6 years ago when I could not get pregnant. Even driving past the Fertility clinic makes my heart race faster and I remember the day my one and only embryo was implanted. I recall the joy, when we were told it was starting to form and this was good news. Then I remember the day my period came and I knew the baby, I had never met, had not survived. My little one, who might have had my beautiful red hair, the twinkle my husband carries in his eyes and this baby would have carried on our family genes as we had hoped.

I then began to grieve for the loss of the baby I had never met. That was another road to go down but thankfully I had the best therapist in the world to help me through that. And the first thing I had to do was accept that it was a loss.

I knew we would be ok whatever path we chose and we are, but my infertility never leaves me and neither will the wonder of what could have been.

Mental Health issues caused by infertility after IVF or ICSI treatment failure

Introduction

To do this subject justice, I would need to write a book or two as there are so many variations of mental health problems with different causes and whether or not people have them before or after infertility treatment.  People may be infertile due to many different factors and may not have found a partner to have children with and so are childless by circumstance.  Then there is the treatment itself and the methods, hormones and medications used and their effects on mental health.  There are also those people who choose not to have treatment or cannot afford it or cannot access it.  With all this, are society’s expectations that we should have children and the stigma associated with this when we find that we cannot.    

I am focusing on my mental health problems as a result of having discovered that both my husband and I are infertile.   The subsequent treatment we received and the fact that this failed to result in us having a baby.  

About Us

No one would deny that going through this is stressful in itself.  Infertility is a massive shock when you finally find out that not one but both of you have a problem so for us, Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) was the only treatment available. 

We didn’t tell anyone except my managers at work what we were doing.  My husband didn’t say anything at work despite having to come to the fertility clinic with me and to deliver sperm samples. Because he worked near where we lived at the time it was easier.  We felt very ashamed about having to do this and were financing it ourselves and it was too complicated to discuss with family.  I felt I had let my parents-in-law down as I was the only daughter-in-law who would likely be having children.  My Mum had already got some grandchildren as I am the oldest of four siblings and everyone in my family gets pregnant really easily or so it seemed at that time.  So, I also felt like a failure when my body failed me and I could not get pregnant despite trying to for years.  My emotions were probably very much linked to shame and low self esteem which coupled with the isolation was the right breeding ground for depression (Gilbert, 2000).

The ICSI treatment itself is a rollercoaster of investigations which are very intimate, intrusive and painful.  It’s stressful to find the time and money and fit this around demanding jobs.  Timing of medications and hormones along with injecting yourself every morning at a specific time before work take their toll.  The down regulation of hormones prior to injecting yourself puts you in a menopausal state.  Then you are reversing this, by stimulating your ovaries to produce follicles in the hope that you will have some eggs to be collected ready for the ICSI treatment.  I don’t know what my emotions were at this point apart from a state of continual alert.  You just get swept along with the hope that it will result in a pregnancy and that you must be doing the right thing as this is what is expected of you.  Also, you have spent a lot of savings and wages on ICSI treatment which is more expensive than IVF.  Then you have to pay for extra drugs which I needed to as the first lot weren’t strong enough to produce enough follicles.  During this time I can remember being prone to fits of anger and tearfulness and developing road rage as I got cross with a man who dared to go faster than me in the left hand lane on the motorway! 

I was getting fatter and felt uglier and more useless as time went on.  After the second round of treatment failure we agreed with the Consultant that a donor egg was probably the only way forward for a pregnancy.  There is a long wait but we agreed to be put on the list.  I also had another operation to get rid of the endometrial polyps which kept developing in my womb.

Donor egg

Then in 2012 we got a phone call to say that a donor egg was likely to be available to us and would we be interested.  We needed to act quickly as I was nearly 46 years old and this is the cut off age for donor egg IVF/ICSI treatment.  I had begun to adjust I think to not being a parent although I cannot be sure because I had become quite numb and disconnected from my emotions.  Women at work were becoming pregnant and leaving or going on maternity leave, sometimes for a year, so there was a loss of colleagues too.  I felt worst when another became pregnant via IVF with twins.  Then another woman who was going to adopt had then miraculously became pregnant.  I remember feeling a sense of disbelief, crushed and even more isolated.  All I had was my career in a mental health service.  I had even congratulated the pregnant women and said it was fine that they were pregnant and one could remain my manager against my better judgement.  I had even taught post-partum women about how to manage their anxiety and depression during ICSI treatment, saying it was ‘Ok, I could cope’.  I never felt I had much choice and I didn’t like upsetting people. 

The donor egg did not work out.  We saw the clinic counsellor who I didn’t particularly like and she seems to have suggested that we might not be totally on board with going through with it.  All I needed was time and encouragement.  To have our questions answered.  My husband by this time was suffering with something like health anxiety and was finding it hard to come to terms with being infertile.  There was no real explanation as to why this might be and it seems that male factors for infertility are not really investigated.  Also, we didn’t have the money and my husband felt that he could not accept a baby that wasn’t genetically both of ours and would likely not look like me.  It’s taken me a long time to begin to come to terms with this.  I am very grateful to have found Walk in our shoes, The Dovecote Community and Gateway Women.  Just after this time, our cat was run over and I think with a progressively more stressful job and unwell husband I began to unravel too.  I was eventually diagnosed with anxiety and depression. 

Evidence

There is a recent paper on how mental health is affected by undergoing IVF treatment.  This is a good piece of research as it was done on a large sample of women and was conducted after 20 years.  See references. 

References

VikstrÖm, J., Josefsson, A., Bladh, M., SydsjÖ, G. (2015). Mental health in women 20-23 years after IVF:  a Swedish cross-sectional study.  Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research. BMJ Open Journals. Vol.5, Issue 10. 

Gilbert, P. (2000).  Overcoming Depression.  Robinson. UK. 

Booted or Bare

So, this is me most days, work, social situations, training events, family gatherings. A booted wall of defence is what it feels like, provoked and instigated mostly by high levels of anxiety, sometimes panic, sometimes Generalized Anxiety and Worry, and some social phobia/anxiety, may I add also. Have I always been anxious, ummm, maybe, certainly always been a worrier, but physically felt, bodily arousal type anxiety, no not really.

So this wall of protection feels as though it has to ward off the potential threat and that threat is usually society on some level, whether it be through a lack of understanding, lack of education around Mental Health, or family/ cultural influence.  So, you see, feeling inadequate, less than equal, an outsider, lonely, empty, disconnected, carrying shame and guilt, grief, loss and then, being a statistic can often feel very weighty and so very anxiety and panic provoking, so the vicious cycle continues. 

These not so helpful emotions and cognitions can become all too familiar and overwhelming. But they are also what I and other people like me who are childless by circumstance, or who are infertile, often feel and experience, quite a lot of the time and this can feel so debilitating. The invisibility of what we carry can weigh very heavy, as can so many mental health difficulties.  For me, it's the social or family  situations, when I am the only female who doesn't have children, or the work colleague who isn't able to talk about how her children are doing at parents evening, or the childless woman who is seen as selfish or lacking in empathy because she has never borne a child, or the psychological  therapist who works to help other people manage their mental health better, but is booted every day to protect herself.

Eventually, it becomes exhausting and yes the anxiety creeps back in and then the vicious cycle begins again.   Mental Health affects us all, there is no escaping it, depression and anxiety statistics are at their highest rates now and are set to rise and we can't ignore them or ourselves. Childlessness has had a huge impact on me and my self-esteem, in fact on my ability to function at times. Anxiety is a product of that, for me and something that I have to manage. 

What I really want to do is go barefoot, be more transparent, more open and to feel ok about being 'bare', in an emotional sense, or exposed when I need to be, comfortable enough to let it out from time to time. No one person is an island and accepting help and support is a good thing, I should practice what I preach really.  I feel I can truly be this way with very few people, but organisations like Walk in our Shoes have helped me to feel able to do that more, through connecting with friends whom I have met in similar situations and by reading the stories and relating to their journey. 

Walk in Our Shoes continues to help me and many others.  It gives us the opportunity to share our unique journey around being childless which helps us to connect to the parts of ourselves that we may find too difficult to do sometimes, to ' bare' ourselves in a safe and in encouraging space, to feel less isolated and to re-connect.  This in itself is so powerful and can have such a positive impact on our mental health. 

It also helps because it is a cathartic space and one that can be creative too. What WIOS also does so well, is to raise awareness  of the 'invisibility' that comes with being childless and the grief, depression, anxiety and trauma that it can bring with it.

So yes, Walk promotes safety to share, but also embraces inequality,  especially around stigma by supporting those who share, but also  by raising awareness to   those who struggle to grasp the concept of what its like to be us,  if only briefly to  step into or Walk in Our Shoes and get a sense of what that may feel like.  This in itself has started to bridge the gap between those  differences and 'invisibilities' that we feel and experience and that has to be a good thing in promoting better mental health and to also raise awareness of how being childless not through choice, impacts on our mental health in so many ways. 

So, I now feel more at ease with being 'bare' and I would like to thank WIOS for helping me to peel off my chunky boots, more often xx

March is endometriosis awareness month and I wanted to share a photo and explain about what it is like to have this condition. If you look it up (assuming you can remember how to spell it - I never can, just another thing that's complicated about it), then you'll be told that Endometriosis is a disease. The Mayo Clinic say that it's 'when bits of the tissue that lines the uterus (endometrium) grow on other pelvic organs, such as the ovaries or fallopian tubes. Outside the uterus, endometrial tissue thickens and bleeds, just as the normal endometrium does during the menstrual cycle.' 

So far that sound painful and yucky, which it is. But it's more than all this. When I started my periods aged 14, they hurt and my mum would keep me back at school if I was really sore and the school were fine back in the 80s about this. Most girls at school were either very proud to be 'on' and tease the boys or some of us suffered and preferred to hide.

As I got older, the pain got heaps worse. Imagine lots of tiny blisters inside, rubbing and popping, never really healing and that's about the measure of it. For me, I had an almost constant pelvic pain, sex was painful, sickness, tiredness and lower back pain so bad I could be bedridden. This developed into adenomyosis which is where the tissue is found inside the muscular walls of the uterus and  meant even more cramping and heavy menstrual bleeding. 

I was fortunate that my diagnosis was swift if not damming so I knew my options from early on. There are endless clinics offered surgical and drug options to relive endo. I stuck with my GP and a specialist on the NHS and tried hormone therapy which briefly helped me to live a normal life. When the effects seem to subside,  I had tissue removed via laparoscopic surgery and this has helped.

But inside me is this parasite. I can't term it any other way and I want rid of it. I have asked for a hysterectomy and when my GP agreed to support me I was relieved. I'm still waiting on dates, but that it's going to go ahead is a wonderful thing. 

Endometriosis is the reason I didn't marry, rarely dated and struggled to travel anywhere. I lost my job through overusing my sick even though I'd got a GP note and I simply couldn't be arsed to fight the dismissal though I had a good case. It felt like another way that endometriosis screwed up life for me.

I'm hoping that once this surgery is complete I can start to live the the life I wanted to. I'm forty-six and I think I have just enough time to work through a very big list.

_____________

For support please visit Endometriosis UK 

Hello, I'm Juliana and I haven't had children because I haven't met a man I thought would make a good dad. 

The first bloke I met, I moved 200 miles to live with him even though my dad warned me it wasn't a good idea. I was in love so I went anyway. 

About a year into the relationship I was pregnant and my boyfriend became pathologically jealous of the bump. I can't really describe it any other way and I ended up losing the baby at 17 weeks. If I'm going to be brutal I wasn't sure I was ready to be a mum but my beliefs prevented me from doing anything than go through. So I hoped we'd be okay. I went home after that and never saw my boyfriend again.

I drifted about a bit after that. My dad gave me grief (my mum died when I was 2) until I started to work as a learning assistant in a school. I thought I might try to be a teacher. My dad supported me through my training and it's a job I still do today and despite the pressures of paperwork, I love it. I have no ambition to be a head teacher, I am happy in a classroom.

I am now 49 so I won't have children. I don't think I want to be married or live with anyone. I look after my dad who is now very frail.

I do like the end of term celebrations but it's not without some sadness. I don't know how long my dad is going to be around for and I long for a big table full of family. Instead it's me and dad with a meal but this year I've invited a few friends and we're going to walk a friend's newly adopted dog. It's a new routine for us and I hope the favour will be returned in the years to come when my dad isn't around anymore.

It sounds very sad. I just feel that I have to do my bit to look out for myself because it's just me. I hope to go part-time or take early retirement in a few years, adopt my own dog and try to use my teaching skills to do other things. I fancy dog training because I can help at a rescue maybe and work with owners. It's not so morbid, it's actually rather exciting.

I have always said why I can't have children. My sperm are directionless and my count is low so the only way I would be a dad is through ICSI. I know this because I work in a hospital where IVF was offered. When my ex and I were trying and it didn't work, I thought I'd be tested because, being me... blasé and over confident... I was going to be alright. 

I think part of the reason men struggle is because the resources aren't there. I got told in a nice room by a nice lady and that really was about it. It's not a criticism of my employers, the NHS because I know from working as a nurse, we try all we can with what we're given. Women are already struggling to get support so what is there left for men? I sought some help through private counselling which I found via BACP but it was too expensive to carry on so I do my best to look after myself by telling myself I'm more than a baby making machine. My job has sort of saved me, for a while I said I was too busy to have kids as I was busy with being   a nurse and I wanted to get on with my career. But people laughed and said was I going to be house husband then? It was a bit of a patch up excuse. Okay, a lie then. 

So I started to tell the truth, to close friends - some aren't friends any more because it hurts me as much anyone when I'm called a Jaffa (yes, really) but mostly we're all okay. There's something to be said for the mate who silently hugs you or claps you on the back when he sees that look on your face that says, I can't cope with this. Mostly those friends are from work because that's where we learn those signs. 

haven't tried IVF, I know the tech is there and I read about what it can do. I'm amazed and a bit scared about it to be honest. I'm now proud to be a nurse, I can see it helping others in different ways and that maybe I can help men like me in time. I've started talking about a support group connected to the hospital but the cuts to funding for IVF haven't made that easy but I'm going to keep talking about this. It's important to keep talking about it which is why I've shared my story here.

Thanks for reading.

My name is Erica and I was born in Texas. I want to share my story because involuntary childlessness changed my life in a very unexpected way.

When I left school I married my childhood sweetheart, James. We lived nearby and he was a friend of my elder brother – we’d ridden the same roads, been to the same parties and he was my prom date.

I was probably the girl you’d hate at school. I won beauty queen in our town and James was well paid.  I didn’t want to go into further education, I struggled with reading and took a job with Walmart. Marrying James seemed like a good idea.

Inside though I was scared that this was my future. I kept telling myself that I had a nice home in the basement of his parent’s house who adored me and I might get promotion one day. We’d have lots of babies. I had my looks and wasn’t short of admirers.

Baby-making wasn’t fun though. I didn’t think so anyway, but James was keen to be the first with a grandchild.

For the next 2 years, our lives seemed to be a cycle of me not conceiving and he’d get angry so I began to withdraw from our lives, going out with girlfriends or taking night shifts. Eventually, after a massive argument, we agreed to find medical help and ended up at an IVF clinic staring in shock at a massive quote for all the treatment we’d face. We had money but not that much and we were too embarrassed to ask our families so we kept trying until one day I ended up pregnant. James immediately told everyone and the celebrations started when I was just 4 weeks. At 13 I was in hospital miscarrying.

Everyone blamed me including James. The last time I spoke to my husband he was shouting at me as I lay in the hospital bed. Once I was discharged, I moved into a friend’s spare room.

I lost my job and my home but my friend Anna let me stay rent-free luckily some distance from James. Through her, I got a part-time job at a student shop in the university where she taught history. From this I began to go to night school, learning English Literature which I loved and finishing my education.

But that’s not all. I now live with Anna as her partner and we’ve moved to the UK where we hope we can marry. Anna’s parents are from Manchester and they are lovely, completely supportive of us as a couple and we love the openness of the UK towards the gay community. It’s early days, I have to fill in heaps of paperwork to stay here. I hope that I can teach if I get residency. It is a worry but it is a worry that I think I can manage.

I would love to say thank you to the people of the UK and especially of Salford for being so welcoming. It has made me realise that it’s not all about children and there is so much more to life.

I am Verena, aged 32. This week is hard for me because after spending thousands on IVF, we have only two blastocysts to show for it. 

I keep reading "it only takes one" posts online, and they upset me terribly because I have tried IVF in two countries now and have long passed the "miracle"-stage of "and then we did IVF and - tadaa - he is four now and extremely cute". That's great for everyone for whom IVF worked out smoothly, but our embryos don't give a shit about statistics and let me end up in the "not even clinically pregnant" category over and over again. 

The worst thing about IVF in my opinion is that people can influence your life when they shouldn't have any say in it. I am seeing a psychologist because I sometimes have a hard time dealing with maybe never having a kid. When the IVF clinic found out that I had told my family doctor that sometimes I felt like hurting myself, they demanded a psychological evaluation or otherwise they would not implant any of my embryos because "a pregnancy sometimes makes such conditions worse." Never mind that I was feeling depressed BECAUSE we've been unable to conceive for about four years.

Incidents like these make me speechless. They make me feel like not only my body, but society on top of that are taking my choices away. It has made me wonder about society and women's choices at a more general level. I mean, what's the deal with doctors refusing to tie the tubes of women who are sure they don't want children? Basically, they are subjecting these women to the risk of becoming pregnant involuntarily. How come doctors get a say in these matters at all?

In my opinion, society needs to mind their own business and let us do what we think is best for us individually. A little less judgement about different lifestyles and choices would be nice.

I was on the path to success. I had a great job and a partner and I was expecting our first baby after our second IVF cycle.

At 11.38am on a wet Monday morning, a speeding car driver missed a turning and smashed into me. 

Three weeks later I came around to find that I had lost part of my leg, part of my left arm and my much longed for baby. Five months later I lost my partner as he struggled come to terms with the change in me. 

I felt desperately grief stricken for him, for my body and my baby. I can remember shaking with the despair, unable to control my feelings and my reactions which I felt so selfish about. It took months to get over those physical reactions. I had counselling for a long time and still go to see a someone who could help give me coping tools from everything from how other people look at me to how I feel about myself. 

My employers were good, I had good healthcare but I've decided to take the leap - best as I can! -  and do a PhD. I love literature and I hope this means can I teach the next generation to love it as much as me.

I don't know if will have children. I would need to go through IVF again because I don't want to use the embryos my partner and I had. I don't think that my amputation stops me being a mum but it's like it's opened up different possibilities. 

My parents have been amazing. They helped me to find a new flat which my brother and I share. Joe is my twin and I think he got a huge shock and being close helps us both. So I have asked Joe to share my photo and to say thank you to him. 

My name is Jill, I am in my seventies now.

I married when I was 20 – as was expected in those far off days. Before the wedding, my fiancé said he wanted six children! I thought two would probably be enough – but nothing happened.

When I was 30 we turned to the doctors and discovered that my husband had a very low sperm count. There was no treatment available because, as the doctor said, there was little research into male infertility. There was no call for it as women usually found their own solution to the problem.

It took a while before I understood what he meant – but that didn’t help. I was incapable of seeking extramarital adventures.

How this diagnosis affected my husband, I don’t know. We couldn’t talk about such things. Having no children, we threw ourselves into our separate careers, and slowly drifted apart.

I was in my forties when I met my second husband. I wasn't too late yet to start a family. But it soon became apparent that he was very ill. I nursed him for eight years – then he died.

The stress had worn me out and it took a further five years before I really recovered. By then my mother needed my care. Gradually, over the next 13 years, she deteriorated – becoming confused, distressed, blind, deaf, incontinent, suicidal, and there was scant help from the NHS or Social Services. We struggled on alone.

She died in 2013 and now, four years on, I am only just beginning to feel less stressed and tired.

And yet… it has not all been bad. My husband made me promise to write the story of his illness and death.  He wanted to write it himself but couldn’t manage it. I did not know if I could write, but it felt as if he was dictating to me… the words just flowed onto the page and within two months of his death, the manuscript of my first book was complete – and I knew I could be a writer.

Before the book was published, I sent the manuscript to the hospice that featured quite largely in the tale. I was swiftly invited to address a gathering of all their bereavement counsellors to tell them my story. I didn’t know if I could handle this – but before I finished talking most of the audience were in tears, and I was thoroughly enjoying myself.  I had found my new career. I realised that I am a Storyteller!

I mean a traditional, oral storyteller – not someone reading from a book. 
It is a wonderful career – not much money, but great satisfaction. I love watching adults relax as they begin to understand that stories are not just for children. And children, who are nowadays supposed to have such a short attention span, sit transfixed for nearly two hours, enjoying the same ancient folk tales that have entertained and educated mankind since the very beginnings of civilisation.

As long as I have my memory and my voice, I can continue my work. But when they fail me… what can I anticipate? I have no family now. My close friends have all died or moved away. I live in a very rural area with many holiday homes and few neighbours – but I do not want to move from this beautiful house – so full of memories.

I just pray that I will be allowed to go suddenly – a swift fatal heart attack or stroke, please.

I am eighty years young. I am now of the age when my friends are talking about their grandchildren and sharing photos with me down the pub or at church.

My wife, Julia and I tried to have children but it didn't happen. It affected us terribly, lots of tears and the pressure was a lot back then. It is a lot now. When I see cards for Mothering Sunday and Father's Day in the shops I feel very sorry for younger people but that's what it was like when I was younger, and it felt constant. There were few role models or examples of people who didn't have children. In our small village we were considered strange for not having children so we moved to a city.

We didn't have any explanation. I worked in a printing firm and thought it might be the chemicals we had to use when I started work in the 1960s. My wife thought it might be her fault but she was always careful. I treated her like china you know. My heart breaks when I hear of the funding cut for treatment. We had nothing and it caused us grief, it's the not knowing or never having the opportunity. People pay for their health though tax and.. well let's not go into politics but it makes me ashamed for this country.

Julia passed away three years ago and I am lonely sometimes. We became closer because of what we did not have. It was a happy marriage despite this and we had nephews and nieces who still bring me happiness. They are teaching me the internet. I suppose not having having commitments meant we could travel a lot and I took early retirement so we had many adventures. But I would trade in all the views to have had a family.

I worry about what will happen to me. I have been to cooking classes so I can make a nice meal. Meals on Wheels was cut here. My wider family look out for me but I do not want to be a burden. I keep active. I walk every day and take dogs from the Cinnamon Trust with me and I have made new friends that way. I think that if I am visible then if I fell or was ill, they may realise and rescue me but I do have an alert system in my home.  

I used to paint and I went back to it when I was widowed and it's lovely. I really look forward to it. The group are so focussed on their painting that we don't talk about families that much!  

It was through a painting club and walking our dogs that I read about the project and I found out from Berenice about Walk In Our Shoes and World Childless Week. I dare say I'm the oldest person taking part but I hope others will talk about it. I would like to meet other men like me and to know that my story means something.

Robert was interviewed last month for #WorldChildlessWeek by Berenice. 

I am Olivia and I live in London. I am childless not by choice and I have been compelled to write after the recent events in London and I hope you will publish my words.

I live close to Grenfell which caught fire a week ago. I have seen such terrible grief these past days, people trying to come to terms with something so terrible that it is impossible to comprehend. 

You might be wondering why this is related to me since I wasn't made homeless and I didn't see my world burnt. It's because I used my plan B. I completely changed my job from a social worker to a grief counsellor after I wasn't able to have children.

I had worked in children's services when I was diagnosed with early menopause. I felt like a failure when I got angry at people who didn't treat their children well. My attitude wasn't healthy for them or me. I'd go home and be so bloody angry and dread the next day, calling in sick and letting down people. I had to work it out somehow but ended up being put on extended leave which made me feel worse for ages, until I started counselling again, this time with more of a skew on career and CBT. I decided to re-train. I already had some basic counselling skills through my job and was able to fund myself through a loan to take professional skills. 

This week I felt useful in the face of utter disaster, walking between church halls, a sports centre and just doing what I can to help anyone by listening. I've helped to sort through the mountains of donations. I hope, I pray that my actions have helped in a small way. We are told and can believe that we are less useful, a bit redundant but we have to stop believing that shit. It's wrong. Small stuff matters. Just saying hello or thanking someone is useful because it brightens a day.  

I knew Carrie from school. We'd lost touch after we'd left the secondary school having made all the promises that you do when you're sixteen about best friends forever. I think we had met in the Wimpy in our nearest town and had a stilted conversation. She was going off to sixth form and university. My family has got me a job as a secretary in a publishing firm. 

Roll forward thirty years and an invitation pops through my parents door and a note on Facebook from a friend of a friend appears to say that there is a school reunion. Carrie is going and wants to see me. I really don't want to go. In the years that passed since I left school, I've Facebook stalked almost everyone who is online and shared the same lessons as me. Married and kids, or divorced with kids. 

I simply didn't meet the right person. My first partner was married - I wasted nine years assuming he was divorcing and then suddenly came to my senses and walked away. I didn't meet anyone for ages and when I did, he simply didn't want children and I agreed, blinded by love and not terribly sure about them myself. It felt too grown up to have children with someone and a huge deal to tie with someone whom I loved but was erratic, unreliable and apparently a bit of liar having forgotten to tell me about his kids by his first marriage.

I sound like the worst judge of men and, sat alone at home, looking at the computer screen I didn't want to go. What on earth would I talk about? 

A few days later I found the Facebook group, joined and rsvp'd to say no but thanks. I explained that I was on holiday and privately noted that I should actually book a ticket somewhere in case I forgot and was spotted at Tesco's in a true moment of paranoia. 

Then came Carrie's email. She said she was sad that I wasn't coming along but could we meet for a coffee, she had lots to talk about and really wanted to catch up. She proved persistent, and I'm glad she did.

Carrie and I share so much in common, our relationship history and our lives. We neither went to university, she hated her first term and left but later did an Open University course like me. We share lots of common likes including crafts, cats and baking. We have much that isn't in common, she has step children with her former partner whom she still keeps in touch with. These differences don't divide us. We didn't go to the school reunion, we booked a flight to Crete and spent a week talking and talking. We are thinking about going into business together.

My message is that the people from the past aren't always bad. I could have easily deleted that email and spent my life wondering what if, just as I'd done so often in the past. But I have a bright new future with a good friend by my side. 

My story of fertility is a bumpy road of junctions. Unplanned pregnancies with the wrong people at the wrong times early in my adult life and emotionally forced into terminations. I always assumed there would be a right time! Then suddenly when I thought I was too old, but desperately in love, I had a surprise pregnancy at 40 I thought I was blessed only to have a missed miscarriage, then another miscarriage and sadly an early labour at 16 weeks due to Edwards Syndrome so we had hopes gained with heartbeats and dashed with heartbreaking scans. I don't tend to say that I'm infertile but now at the age of 43 and 1/2 I'm definitely now firmly in a place of involuntary childlessness. A hard place where people leave your life alongside your quality eggs, like people abandoning a crap party when you're the last one there still trying to keep the music on and keep on dancing.

My story doesn't include IVF, a financial and emotional choice for us but I still feel that pressure and the simmering judgement from many mothers (especially the ones with miracle babies) that I haven't tried hard enough to be a mum. My gut says that is not something I think my heart can cope with when our combined ages give us a similar chance of conceiving naturally than of having successful IVF so what's the point in adding even more grief to our heavy hearts. You don't hear many people say that but now I say it loud and proud every time I'm asked in that must try harder tone! It's our lives, our grief and our choices so please respect us as all we want is a family together.

Eight years ago my husband of fifteen years and I jointly decided that we would not become parents. Abandoning IVF, we passed the panel for adoption and were unable to work out how on earth to choose a child. We should have been joyous and we were briefly. But unable to decide the weeks and months slipped by. My husband said I should choose because it’s my idea. This is not like a trip to the cats home, I tell him.

By then we had stopped having sex. My husband was unable to get the images when we first went through IVF from his mind. He had diligently sat with me through every procedure but when I miscarried, it was the start of the decline of what little sex life we had. And if I’m honest, we didn’t do much to repair it because I felt hopeless. I was overweight and covered in spots from the steroids. I was red eyed from tears and we had shared too much to feel like there was any mystery left. We tried daily kisses and hugs and they were enough. Cavorting in my undies trying to be sexy was humiliating when I was rejected and my husband refused to seek help.

Then I met the man who became my lover. I met him at work, he was briefly my manager and I moved departments such was the need I felt. I wanted him to notice me. He isn't conventionally handsome but he feels capable and a permanent bachelor. Calling him a lover makes us both seem less sordid than it is. It isn’t, it’s skulking around and hiding in his flat and wishing I could hold his hand in public. It’s watching him across the staff canteen and knowing that if I sat with him, I wouldn’t trust myself not to say something intimate or revealing that would give us away.

I can pack a bag under my husband’s nose and say I’m going to a work conference. I call him from my mobile three miles away from the kitchen standing my my lover's kettle, making tea, to say I’m having a nice time. It reflects on the lack of interest my husband has in me and I in him.

I want him to find out so that someone can decide my future for me. Since I first stuck a needle in me, since I first called the adoption agency, I don’t feel I have had a choice, because I can’t choose a child alone.

Yet I can chose to be with my lover. I can decide when I want sex and that I do want sex, that I am as glorious as he says. I can go into a shop and buy underwear I’d never usually buy, speak words I’d never say to my husband and be the free woman I longed for.

Infertility screws up your sex life - literally. I do not think that I am a great example for Walk In Our Shoes because I feel I should tell you that I will repair my marriage. I don’t think I will until someone does something. I am older than my lover and he may go off me, my husband may find out or I may tire of them both or come to my senses.

So this is my photo, of my lover and my feet. The only one I can take.

Christmas often finds me at work. I'm a fireman and if there's work going I'd take it and any extra shifts I could to avoid anything festive.

I am infertile. I found out after my wife and I went for investigations. We tried to save up for IVF as the PCT doesn't offer it here and in any case she already has a daughter so we wouldn't have qualified. She was a teacher and neither of us earned enough really. We scraped enough for one cycle of ICSI but we lost the pregnancy a week before Christmas, five years ago at 13 weeks. A year later our marriage had ended even though we had been through therapy so you can only guess how I felt about Christmas.

Two years ago I struggled after a house fire. A baby died and I went to pieces, more than I should. The parents had been smoking and it made me unspeakably angry. That's when it all came out. To be fair when I told my boss and went on sick leave for a bit, I felt braver for doing it. I told the rest of the station why and they've been amazing, I thought I'd get called a jaffa but they don't. Nobody did. I'm still Spike but they're a bit more sensitive around me when it comes to kids and it's good to have someone tap me on the shoulder and check I'm okay. One of them, Jim mentioned that he volunteers at a homeless shelter over Christmas. So I went with him that year and realised that there are lots of people out there who have been disowned by their families. It's so heartbreaking but I came away feeling rewarded and exhausted. I went last year and ended up setting up a footie team!

This year, three of us are going including Jenny who is Jim's sister. We started dating in the summer and yes, she knows all about me and assures me that it's okay. I told her really early on so she can make a choice and she has chosen to stay with me. I hope that sharing my story will help other men to speak out and get support. It's worse to bottle it up.

My colleague and I share a secret.

I’m childless through circumstance. My first wife was certain that motherhood wasn’t for her. That broke my heart and eventually our marriage. I don’t know when I thought it was over and why we just hadn’t talked about it before, but there it was.

At 30, I thought I’d never meet anyone who’d want me. Then I fell in love with Maria. I knew her through friends and we moved in together six months after our first date. Fast forward three years and despite all our efforts, we were yet to conceive. When we started to look at Chinese herbs, we came to our senses and saw our GP. We were almost instantly referred to IVF and none of the three cycles worked. On paper we’re perfect. We have to be to get through the restrictions placed on couples. We’re both the right BMI and neither of us smoke or drink a lot of booze.

We’re both 40 and our hopes of becoming parents are fading. Surprisingly we’re okay with it. The pain of IVF letting us down is worse than finding our feet in a new future. We’ve managed to buy ourselves a small house because we can afford two bedrooms better than 3 or 4. We have amazing holidays and we’re talking about setting up a business together. The future is different but not any less exciting.

In the meantime I’m working in a huge company with my best mate. His name is David and his wife almost lost her life last year when she miscarried their baby. We sit together and seen as the departmental ‘lads’, always up for a pub quiz and sponsored events. To you and most of our colleagues, we’re happy chaps. Like me, little stuff affects him. A bloke in our team brought in cake when his wife got past their 12 week scan and neither of us could swallow a bite.

I’m sure we’re meant to be stronger, at least that’s what society wants. I’ve seen David in tears, broken hearted and unable to speak. Today he found me kicking boxes after we went to a book launch at work and they wanted parents to take home a book for their kids. Little stuff screws you up even if the future is actually okay.

     I found this site last weekend when I was celebrating the Wave of Light. Usually when I log onto social media, it's swamped with stories of my friends and their kids. I like to see them sometimes but not always and I feel a bit lonely.This weekend I was overwhelmed with Waves of Light and it was like I'd found a tribe. It was lovely. So my photo is my feet and candles to honor that moment. I've now looked at joining some support groups to find more women like me. My husband also found the Fertility Network video from Gareth. He said that he was like someone had spoken his words.

Sometimes social media hurts but when it works, it's so powerful. Thank you tribe.

Beyond the daily challenges that people on this site have spoken about there are those days and months are marked by anniversaries of private grief.

Life can lose focus. You study, work and then assume that you may take maternity leave. For me, IVF over many years was my focus. I felt guilt for taking time off so I didn't have a break when I probably should have for my own sanity. I pay that price now. I am too tired to fight the most simple of battles.

We adopted our lovely dog but our home has two empty bedrooms, the chair where I fainted is still in the house and I exist in a space that was for a life that never arrived.

It is easy to be fearful for a different future. To feel no energy from the things like design and creativity sometimes. To feel desperately sad at times when I know the experiences of the journey have changed me but I know that the situations around me have not, to feel alienated from basic problems as child loss feels so much more significant.

I found solace in study, and the result of that is this website. I hope the future will bring something equally as encouraging and hopeful, educational and inspiring.

Every single person who has found the courage to participate, those who are not ready to do that and those who read this and understand or learn, we'll walk together.

Society refers to me as childless. I prefer calling myself an angel mum, of 4, all affected by the same condition. My husband and I both have the same faulty gene, resulting in 1 in 4 pregnancies being affected, our angels knew better, they were all affected, not just 1 of them.

Seven years on and me knocking on the door of 50; the decision made a good few years ago to stop trying for that '3 in 4' child. Now my body has made that decision too. It is time to move on. Not to forget, not to get over but learn to live with & move on.

Society makes being childless difficult. Just like we never thought that it would happen to us, it seems that society never expects to meet a woman without children, even though it knows that childlessness exists. Throwaway questions are asked - 'Do you have children?' is one of them. It's the one question in the world that I dreaded. I'm not one to shock or surprise, I never wanted to be different or stand out from the crowd or worse, lie. As soon as I heard that question I knew that my answer would make me do just that, apart from lying, that never felt right.

Part of my moving on is to write a book documenting my journey of freeing myself of the challenges that I face as a childless mother in a child-centric world. One of those challenges is finding an answer to THAT question, so far I have found that it depends on the person asking & the situation. So far, that works & that's a big step in my shoes, in the right direction.

 always thought I would be a mother.

By the time I heard my clock ticking, an alarm was sounding and it seemed like a mad dash to find the guy and get pregnant. I found the guy, but 3 failed IVFs, 2 abandoned attempts at adoption, and one divorce later I realised my life was not going to look like I had hoped.

Seven years later after lots of therapy and support, I am finally in a place where I am happy with who I am and what my life looks like. This is not to say that there aren't triggers, but they are not as frequent and I have many tools to help me mitigate the sadness. I look back on that time and sometimes wonder how I survived so much pain, but I am so proud of the person I have become.

A beautiful, caring woman, who can still love and give even though the very core of my being has been tested. I never thought I could let myself be vulnerable enough to share my experience, but here I am.

Ten years ago today:

I sat naked on a cold exam table with only a paper gown to cover me.

I experienced my last miscarriage, but had not yet known.

I saw the tech's face drop when examining the screen she was looking at, the same screen on which I had previously seen my baby, and photos of which I had previously taken home, coveted, and shared.

I lost all control. After the tech excused herself and left the room, still not saying a thing, no one from the hospital came back to us for hours to tell us what was going on – but I knew-- and all I wanted to do was to get the fuck out of there, but I couldn't. They wouldn't let me leave. I am still so mad. Leaving should have been the one thing I still had control over at that very moment, but I didn't even have that.

My then husband paced the room for hours, trying to comfort me, making phone calls to my parents, family, friends, and my employer for me. The hours allowed him to get pissed off on my behalf and his own. He was suffering, but in a far different way. I was too self-consumed to see it. He almost wasn't there. He wasn't even supposed to be there. But, by chance, his then senior partner found out about the appointment and told him to go. A glint of light in all this darkness, for which I am still extremely grateful for. We are now divorced. I wonder if he knows what today is.

I had never felt so desperate and alone in my life, in the dark, cold, and silent room, despite my then husband being there with me. We were there together, and yet each alone, experiencing this loss differently.

I had never cried so hard in my life and haven't again since.

I wasn’t aware that I would have to endure blood draws every week, multiple times a week, so the doctors could review my hormone levels, which for weeks revealed my body wasn't giving up on the baby and wouldn't let go.

I would still have months to go before I would deliver my baby. Which I did. Much later. Months later. At home. On the bathroom floor. Alone. The “friendly” staff of my ObGyn told me I was “just passing tissue” when it happened. But I saw. It was my baby. That's another story.

I knew that I'd likely not get pregnant again. I would choose to not continue down the infertility treatment path. The shots, the pills, the temperature taking, the blood draws, the procedures, the pain, the hormones, the rushing to the clinic an hour away with a brown paper bag full of hope, the hope to become pregnant via a painful injection, and again and again have disappointing results being told to me in a clinic filled with pictures of success stories lining the lobby, hallways, and even bereavement room, and just the myriad of tests upon tests upon tests all to result in “unexplained infertility.” It was exhausting (and expensive). I knew I couldn't do it again. And ten years later, I haven't. I can't bring myself to get my hopes up again.

I had no idea that my brilliant and beautiful stepdaughter was safely in her mother's body, growing strong at that very same moment. I had no idea, nor would I have been able to fathom, the bittersweet feeling I get now when reading bedtime stories and hearing her giggle or smelling her hair and wondering what my children's laughs would've sounded like or how their hair would have smelled. It is beyond indescribable. My heart fills and empties at the same time.

My life changed forever. And not in the way I had dreamed or planned.

I write this because ten years ago today, I felt desperately alone and broken and defective. Before my miscarriages, I didn't know anyone else who had gone through one. Obviously now, looking back, of course I had known women who had suffered through them, but I didn't know they did. No one talks about this, but it is so common and so traumatic. I often make people uncomfortable talking about it. But what they don’t realize is that it is the not talking about it that makes the miscarriages even that more traumatic. We suffer alone when we don’t need to.

I'd like to nominate my friend Francis for being a lifesaver in difficult times. I used to live in a part of the city that could best be described as Nappy Valley. My partner and I had moved to that area in the hopes of starting a family. After a few years, it became apparent that children weren’t in the cards for us. We were very sad. Everywhere we went in the neighbourhood, we saw pregnant women, pushcarts with babies, children playing in the streets. Our house was empty.

I felt lost, lonely and isolated in my own neighbourhood. Until I met Francis. Francis is a single mother to a lovely boy who was born with spina bifida. Francis showed me the unglamorous side of motherhood. She was a mother who didn’t pretend life was all rosy and who listened to my story. Thanks to her, I gained a new perspective to my situation: That motherhood isn’t necessarily the dream job it seems to be, and mothers aren’t always enviable. It is good to have a friend as honest and open as she is. I wish everybody had a Francis.

I have struggled to find a sense of purpose in my life when age, life and health conspired and my journey to being a parent came to an end without a child.

I had studied extensively, taking academic courses whilst I was trying to be a mum. When these ended and my dream of being a parent also came to a close at about the same time, I felt I’d failed. I was stuck in a job I wasn’t happy with because it was easier to take holidays at short notice and manage my work as I knew it all so well. I felt utterly lost and a pointless person with no value to human life. It didn’t help that my parents didn’t understand and spent all their time cooing over my nephew. They had no conception of why this was upsetting and why I might feel excluded.

I found that counselling was a god send. Finding the right person wasn’t easy, I had to meet a few before I felt I had the right counsellor for me. With her help, I found ways to cope - tools and actions that allowed me to handle daily situations better. I was able to see that the situation with my parents required me having some empathy for them. I talked with my parents about the efforts I had made to be a parent, to give context to how I felt. It is not a great relationship but through trusting my sister to help, it is getting better. My mum admitted that she thought her only purpose in life was to have children and often felt trapped by being a parent.

I was also able to explore new career options. I have read a few books and blogs on life when you can’t be a mum. Most seem to focus on dramatic life changes from adopting cats or dogs to moving to the seaside. That isn’t always practical, especially for me as I have to face my future now as a divorced woman. I’ve yet to hand in my notice but I have taken on some voluntary work. Small steps matter and I am reminded that there is a lot I can do without children, a weird opposite of my mum’s situation. In fact we are tentatively starting some sewing classes together to find some new common ground. It is helping to heal us both. This website has helped me too, reading the stories and knowing I am brave enough to share my experience. 

My partner, Tina and I have been exploring the different ways to be parents. We’ve thought a lot about IVF but our PCT altered its guidelines so we can only have one cycle. We can’t really afford to pay for the rest. Lots of people say to us that if we can’t afford it privately, we cannot afford children but they perhaps do not realise that the cost of a cycle is up front and anything from £6,000. Then we have the sperm donation costs and the dilemma of who should be the father. Unlike films and stories, we do not have ‘best gay male friend’ who thinks it an honour. Life isn’t really that simple!

If we chose IVF, then we jeopardise our chances of adoption because you have to be ‘over’ IVF if you start the adoption process. We are often told to ‘just adopt’. Worse, it that it’s 'God’s way’ or unnatural as if it’s punishment for being a same sex couple. We’d like the opportunity for one of us to be a birth mother – but who gets that honour and the privilege of being mum? The law states that the other partner has to adopt!

We wonder if we did the right thing in talking about our dreams to be mothers. We felt it was the best solution as it became increasingly hard to hang out with friends who were pregnant and watch our peers have families. Distressingly we’ve ended up in an odd position where almost everyone tries to fix us.

At the moment, we are somewhat moved forward. Both of us have escaped London and moved to a small town in Cambridgeshire. It has given us space from the ‘fixers’ and we’ve made new friends who do not know our hopes. I’ve started to train as a teacher and I am enjoying watching children learn, inspiring them and finding that’s enough for the moment.

Trying for a baby - and not getting one - is so difficult. The ups and downs of each monthly cycle, with the build up of one failure after another, is devastating.

I was so determined not to get obsessed by the idea of getting pregnant that I avoided conversations about it and didn't let many friends share what my husband and I were going through. IVF brought us closer as a couple and we retreated into our own world, supporting each other through the process. I found it so hard to share with those close to me as I was plagued by fears, feelings of shame and failure which I did not want to feel.

Counselling has been a huge help to me and what started out as a few sessions turned into two years of regular visits. I've stopped now as part of the moving on process, and I'm determined to look to my friends and family for support when I need it, even though I find this so hard. I still feel guilty that I can't provide the much hoped-for grandchildren and all the happiness that would bring to my parents.

Turning 40 has helped me to move forward from that desperate "trying for a baby" phase, with its crushing low points. Rather than suggesting, why don't you... adopt/foster/go private, I hope people will realise what I'm starting to; that I'm okay, and I'm enough, on my own.

'Have you thought about fostering or adoption?' It’s a question I'm asked every time I say that I can't have children. I always reply it's not for me. For one, because of my job and ridiculous shifts I wouldn't be accepted and secondly I don't know if I'm the right person to be trying to care for children from broken homes.

Although saying that, I have adopted. Or should I say my husband and I have been chosen to care?

Almost six years ago a little half starved fur baby turned up in our garden, after my husband gave him my ham from my work lunches and it was snatched out of his hand he decided to buy some proper food. After a few months this little boy grew stronger and started to trust us, then finally moved in realising that his previously owners had abandoned him. Now he is a rather big boy who is very contented in our house.

Okay, so I'm talking about a cat but if my husband hadn't seen him that cold winter day he would have died. I love Dopey (husband named him, not me) to bits and when I'm down or feeling unwell he will always come and sit on me (he's not normally a lap cat). It's like he knows I need a little loving too. Without him I know that some days would be much harder to get through.

So next time I'm asked about fostering or adoption I think I'll respond by saying that I'm the one that's been adopted by a beautiful fur baby.

I was compelled to write after seeing Maria's post about work and her brave attempts to change the workplace.I find it hard at work. I work in a training environment so I deliver courses and work with colleagues on their work. I'm constantly amazed by how often they make assumptions that all the people they educate are parents or have had experience of bringing up children. They'll often put this into scenarios or role play.

I've had two rounds of IVF. We were pregnant on the second round and most of the company knew of this. We are a small workforce and it was hard to hide my absences and easier to explain them. I also made sure to read information from support groups like the Fertility Friends and Gateway Women so I was prepared for questions. A lot of what we train is about communication so I figured I'd get a few observations. I think we learned a lot at the time. At 18 weeks I miscarried and I truly couldn't have asked for more support. I took some time off on sick leave to restore myself, and when I got back, it was a phased return. People said they were so sorry and nobody tried to fix me, as if that was possible but were kind and forgiving of my woolly brain.

Despite this, they do need to be reminded that I am not the only one. There are people out there who are also affected. As you have said on the site, it's one in five so it's very easy to find that any training course could include someone who has suffered loss. Mine was six years ago but I know that if I was to sit in on a course and be asked to act out a scenario that included being a parent, I'd struggle very much. If you find yourself in that situation, you must tell the trainer if you can. Write a note if you struggle to speak about it. It isn't acceptable but know that I'm out there beating on a drum for you.

     My husband and I were told 10 years ago that we couldn't have children. After attempting IVF and attending adoption meetings (stress personified) we decided to stop. Just stop. My head couldn't take anymore, my heart couldn't take anymore, my body couldn't take anymore. I was going insane. It took the Nat out of Nat (stealing a wonderful poignant quote from Cheryl Strayed). I wouldn't do that to myself anymore. That was it... I thought, my husband thought...we are done. Now we can move on. Get the Nat back in Nat!

But I couldn't... We tackled many other trials, hardships and illnesses over the years... yet the sadness got worse and began to take over. I searched in vain for support, finding a few kindred spirits along the way that kept me going. I built a strong career. It made me feel good about myself. I am a strong, intelligent, award winning business woman I would reason. It helped with the 'I'm not a real woman' feelings that would flash before me many times in despair. The numbness and the blankness. The overwhelming sadness. The career "thing" helped for a few years but really, in the end, it was meaningless.

Through this time I suffered a breakdown, endured chronic fatigue, depression and other such horrid things, and worst of all, watched hopelessly as my husband became consumed by disability. Counselling, love and faith kept us together as we learnt how to crawl out of the abyss. And yet, early in 2015, four different sets of friends announced their pregnancies. Joy of flippin joys! Now, don't get me wrong, we have wonderful friends with gorgeous and yummy children, and a delicious niece and nephew that bring us sheer joy. But this was different. This time I couldn't take it. Madness with life, the universe and everything ensued. Anger and jealousy. And in desperation I googled the word childlessness and found Jody Day (founder of gateway women) and her amazing life changing book. What a relief. I began to breathe...just breathe. Support and love and understanding and tears and hope and more understanding. She got it. Her group got it. Kelly and the Dovecote Community got it.

I took Jody's advice and went for childlessness grief counselling. I am still in the process. Still learning. Still absorbing and crying. Crying buckets... (how can I produce such an amount of tears?) Grieving.

Cheryl Strayed says 'Grief has no face'. I wish it did. That the world would recognise. We are just going to have to educate the world about Grieving for our unborn children. Our beautiful unborn daughters and sons.

I finally am grieving...allowing myself to feel it all. The horridness, the sadness, the full on crapness of it all. Honouring my dreams of our children. And healing. My life is good, my life will be good. With a deep scar that I will cherish and treasure forever.

I cope most of the time. 90% I’m okay. But then you get the blips, thanks to the idea of someone in an advertising agency who thinks a challenge on Instagram with tag Mumsworkharder is a great idea. There is no thought to someone like me. I am inconsequential with no monetary value. The mummy pound counts for more.

To my friends, seduced by the matter of winning a prize, thanks to the thoughts of the someone-in-the-marketing-agency, I am suddenly nothing. Let’s click ‘n’ share and bollocks to the consequences.

Yes, it’s an idea created by the someone-in-the-marketing-agency, but I am your friend. I work hard. I work so very hard at staying positive. 

There are 365 days. But there is one day in March that used to set me back each year.

Mother's Day

It's worse because my birthday falls that time of the year too. I detest that each year I get older and my chances of being a mum are less.

What saves me are good friends who I trust, my gorgeous dog and just accepting it's crap. I try to limit time online and I invite friends in the similar situation as me for lunch. We met through a support group and I can't imagine being without them now.

We'll take our dogs out and try to reclaim the day. You can't completely but you can at least feel you're being a tiny bit more empowered.

I used to try to wield a campaign on social media, constantly posting memes and reminders that it's hurtful but it eats you up. Leave the educating for another time when you are less angry and use your energy to find the ones that cheer you up and inspire. And never underestimate that mums understand more than you think. They may have had miscarriages or lost their mums.

We can get through this with good friends. 

One night, when I was 37, I woke up soaking wet. Taking off my soaked sleepwear, I retreated to the guest room. This was it. Seven years after my ovarian tumour, the damaged affected areas removed and treatment had concluded, as predicted, I was entering early onset menopause.

Over the next year, I became hyper positive. My skin colour that had caused me to suffer so much racial abuse when I lived in the UK had now become my saviour, no-one could see my hot flushes. Living in a warm climate too meant everyone was feeling warm, not just me and having to carry lots of sanitary wear was becoming a thing of the past!

Outwardly, I looked the same and acted like a teenager still so my psyche was great and continues to be so. As the saying goes about looking at a glass half full or empty, for me it's not about whether the glass is half empty or half full, it's whether there is something in the glass at all!

So I couldn't be a mother, I could not adopt. But since birth until my death, I am Nuria. That has and will not change only the potential options open to me did. It wasn't my fault, I could not change the outcome so that’s how I cope, because the ache and want never really goes away, I have just learnt to control it.

In conclusion, live, do not exist! Make a difference, as I did, I became a teacher!

It is amazing what can trigger you. Last April 1st I logged on to find that my friend, let's call her Melanie for this is my former friend's name (!) was pregnant.

By 12noon she was not.

It was a rather poor taste April Fool joke.

So my post is asking people not to do this. This is why. Three times in my life I have had held a pregnancy test in my hand and believed myself to be pregnant. Three times I have been to a scan and found that I was no longer pregnant.

There are one in 10 couples who will be seeing their GP for help because unlike the trickster, they are devasted by not being able to have a child. Each month they find that the pregnancy test doesn't show the line on it and it's not funny at 8am, 9am or even after 12 noon.

One in 4 of your friends will see that update and be genuinely upset because they have gone past the point of trying with no hope, and are considering a life without children.

Becky Thompson on a wonderful post published in 2014 on her blog said 'you won’t see many status updates that say something along the lines of, “Still not pregnant. #whenwillitbemyturn” Because for many, the journey to pregnancy it is a deeply emotional process. It’s not something that comes up in everyday discussions'.

It's not being sensitive, this is about you being grown up and understanding that it's very likely that your status update could have the power to really hurt someone you care about. So this year, be a bit more creative about your joke.

Thank you.

For nearly thirty years, from the age of 13, I experienced horrendous menstrual cramps. Doctors sent me home with prescriptions for ever-stronger pain killers. None of them ever raised the subject of endometriosis. When I failed to conceive in my first marriage, I was still relatively young and naive. I told myself it would happen when the time was right. So many of my friends were having children and I just assumed that it would happen for me, too, "one day".

When I met my second husband, the time was right but nothing happened. By the time the endometriosis was diagnosed, we were already under the assisted conception clinic. Against my initial instinct, we went through IVF. But at 41, my poor eggs were no longer up to the job. For a handful of hopeful days I was "mother" to five, beautiful, cherished cells. I still have the photograph of that embryo.

I have a good life which brings me many opportunities to help and support children and young people in my work, family and circle of friends. I have come to terms with not having children, mainly thanks to the support from an amazing community called Gateway Women. But I will never forget how it felt to suffer, so deeply, in silence. And I will always cherish the memory of the beautiful potential held in that perfect arrangement of five beloved cells. My dearest, secret love.

So this picture was taken shortly after I had returned from a Gateway retreat, where I was challenged by several GWs to take a photo a day, and after we had done a lot of barefoot walking on summer grass as we 'reignited'.

My passion and creativity in life is through my photography - I love taking my camera out to explore and capture pictures of natural beauty, and landscapes. But I rarely have taken pictures that capture the moment I am in personally, with me in them. I realised that I have often hidden behind my camera lens at tricky events like weddings, baptisms, parties etc.

In my time since losing my two babies to miscarriage, I've learnt that the moment you're in must be appreciated, and that learning to be mindful of every single moment gives me a bigger sense that yes, I am alive, that my life matters, and that just because I'm not a mother (and probably won't be now) it doesn't make my life pointless, worthless or unnecessary. It took the better part of ten years for me to reach a stage where I realised this.

I know so many GWs struggle with what makes life meaningful too. So I guess this picture captures one of those mindful moments where I felt the warm summer grass under my feet, where I realised how lucky I was to be alive, and where my GW retreat had given much food for thought, even all these years later after losing my two babies. It captures hope, it captures possibility, and it captures future steps. It also captures that beautiful sense of summer, where all feels well with the world.

I hope it gives some other women in this position the same sense of hope, possibility and future.

I would like to use my space to say how grateful I am to my friends David and Lucy. I met Lucy when I was in my first job and we found out that we lived in the same street. A few months later, I met David who was friends with my then boyfriend, now husband.

It was wonderful when Lucy and David started dating. They married a year after us. We had all talked about kids, sitting around friends who had already had them, we'd coo over toddlers, let them climb over our blokes and assumed we'd have our own. Sadly for me and my man, that was never meant to be. I found out that I was miscarrying and put into an ambulance as Lucy realised she was expecting. We were told not to try again by the GP.

So this is the crucial part of our friendship. The bit where it could go awfully wrong. It's not that I don't like Lucy anymore but that honestly I'm jealous, alone and grieving. I'm upset that David will look at her with adoration, her bump will grow and I'll have to stop seeing her as it'll be too painful and she'll hate me. I'll have this Lucy gap in my life and a bucket load of upset when I think of my past because she's in almost every important event.

But I hadn't factored in my amazing friend. She traveled from Scotland to tell me she was pregnant. Refused to abandon me and held onto me during those dark days like a limpet. When I said it was upsetting to see her bump, she kept in touch through Facetime but I found that I didn't mind the bump so much. When the bump became Anna, a fully fledged baby I did visit. All the visits were on my terms and in return I understood the upset that Anna's arrival caused to an ordered life and how terrible post natal depression is. It's not all been easy, but I know that if I say to her that it's crap, she'll listen and respect it. She can say the same back as Anna turns into a temperamental teen. All the same time, David was there for my husband too.

So if you are bursting to tell the world through Facebook, composing a teasing message, just click on your friends tab and customise your audience or better still, be like Lucy and visit the friends who might struggle with your news. Ring them, see them and listen to them. You might need a Rose in your life just like I need Lucy and Anna.

We worked together for a while and then began dating and got engaged after a year. Early on we decided on four children and a dog - the ideal life, a joke at the time. We were so happy when Sally got pregnant but philosophical when we had a very early miscarriage.

Then we found, after some years, that we could document our holidays by Sally’s miscarriages. The doctor tried to help and I (John) felt helpless watching Sally go through some really awful tests. Mine was easy - fertile or not? Apparently I was a bit of a slow mover but everything was fine. ICSI apparently was the answer so we went to the fertility clinic for IVF only to find that our PCT didn’t fund cycles so we remortgaged our tiny starter home. I worked extra shifts at work. IVF takes over your life. If you’re not going through it, you’re saving up or maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I was exhausted and Sally was heartbroken. Five cycles and no answers, no children.

We are trying to adjust to a life without children but even as a bloke, a bit distant from these things, stuff throws you, like a scan photo and cake at work recently. I had to walk around the car park and fight back tears. As men we really must talk about this more.

We met at university, went out for a bit, broke up for a few years and then finally got back together after tracking each other down on social media.

James was a step dad to his ex-partner's children. I know he adored them. It's even harder to cope then with knowing we won't have them as James is infertile. We've tried ICSI with no success.

We try very hard to create new occasions. I struggle the most with Mother's Day and Father's Day. James gets a card from his ex's children because they viewed him as their dad for a long time and I agreed it was okay and put them first. I know that this is important him in his situation and there has to be compromise and balance. I could theoretically have children with someone else I guess but I stay with James because he is my soul mate and means so much to me. If he cannot be biological and lifelong dad to our kids, then I truly don't want anyone else. The donor option wasn't for us.

I tend to switch off all social media on Mother's Day. I've long given up attempting to reason that it's about returning to the 'Mother Church', it falls on deaf ears. We treat it like any other Sunday but much less internet. In fact it's not so bad as we read books, play a board game and walk our dogs somewhere which is almost always quiet as everyone else is crammed into a pub. We're out in the fresh air. As I work in an office and it's got flexi-time, I go in later the day after so my colleagues have shared their weekend updates and I don't have to listen to that. If I do hear about it, it's rather gratifying to hear them say how peaceful my weekend sounds. I get the impression that it's not as wonderful as the media makes out!

I am a firm believer in new traditions. We have the right to create new ideals if the old ones do not suit us. We go away at Christmas to the coast, our way of coping and I often think the alternative isn't too bad.

I never dreamed of becoming a mother. Growing up, my focus was finding a career and being independent. I didn't think much about marrying, either, but when I was 23, it happened. My husband and I agreed we didn't want children.

Slowly, as we grew older, that changed. I feel this an important part of my story because despite some ambivalence about having children, infertility has still been the most crushing experience of my life. We started trying to get pregnant when I was 29. I had been on birth control for many years, and after I stopped taking it, each monthly cycle became more painful than the last, and I wasn't getting pregnant. I finally visited my doctor to explore ways to manage my pain, and with an ultrasound discovered I had large cysts on my ovaries that were rupturing. Long story short, surgery revealed cysts, endometriosis and a large fibroid. In one year I had three surgeries and two miscarriages.

My last surgery was a hysterectomy. It was a difficult decision but I felt the need to end my physical pain, and decided against IVF for many reasons. I realized through infertility that we live in a culture that promotes and rewards motherhood, and women without children are often viewed as less than, ignorant, pitied or seen as selfish.

This is the hardest part of infertility for me: stigma and isolation. I don't belong. I am other. But "the pain will change you: it doesn't have to define you." Don't pity me. I am bigger than loss and grief. I am so sad and strong.

I work in human resources and I’ve experienced miscarriage and loss myself. My husband is infertile and our ICSI journey was not successful.

I have tried very hard to make sure that our company supports men and women who have been through the same journey. I am in a position to make changes and it’s the very least I can do. The policies in most places are woefully inadequate and human resource teams seem baffled by something that affects one in 5 couples. That’s a large part of the workforce - I don’t mean Facebook or Apple’s egg freezing policies. If that’s the best that a company can do, it’s not an answer. It’s not always successful and hugely invasive.

We have counselling in place. We ask pregnant colleagues to be respectful to anyone who is struggling to cope and keep an open, but confidential, door. We keep baby showers and celebrations to lunch times in places away from desks so people can decide to go rather than feel overwhelmed. I’ve been honest in my staff profile about my journey. If I can help just one person cope better than I did, I will. Companies have to show more empathy.

My troubles are with my wider family.

When I was a child, our large London family led by my great grandparents, East End born and bred, was stereotypically known for it’s warm heart and tough exterior. Family gatherings were weekly and soap opera arguments were common. Families were celebrated in birth and honoured with black horses in death.

As the years have gone by and my generation have moved to other countries, to pursue university, marriage or new starts. So the strong family unit has dismantled, about the same time my grandmother passed away and my grandfather sold the house in Bow to a developer. With our moving came a wider understanding of life and politics, and we demanded more wisdom from our family peers.

I am not a father because my partner lost our baby at 6 weeks and we cannot conceive. We don’t have the money for IVF and as she approaches her late 30s, so time slips away. The bank were unwilling to lend us funds and when I spoke to my family, they were cynical that it would work and the topic never came up again. When I speak about our pain at family events,the subject is changed quickly. We’re expected to attend family events including christenings but often don’t because we cannot be true to ourselves.

Most of my family are on Facebook and social media. My brother, my cousins, aunts and uncles. Without exception not one of them has engaged with my timeline when I share something about infertility. Pictures of my cats yes. Any article about loss from the media. It is only ever our friends who comment. Never those who have grown up with me and known me for 39 years. It's staggeringly rude, complacent and yet incredibly common accordingly to my partner.

Ironically we’ve been tagged in photos of the family as we stood to the side and I wished my father was stood with me and my son. Swallowing down the anger at being party to such an event, I feel heartbroken and betrayed by this selective use of social media.

If you are a relative of someone who has gone through loss, don’t let your discomfort prevent you from reading about their work finding out how they are coping and talking to them. Engage with them and let them speak, trust that they know their own pain better than you and that they aren't the same person you grew up with. Miscarriage and infertility changes people, it disrupts relationships not only within their marriage or partnership but at work, with friends and of course families. Yet it never fails to surprise me how many families take for granted that blood binds can overcome all the hurt. It only overcomes when tolerance, patience and empathy are understood.

I will share this message at our next ‘do’ and be proud I spoke out.

I got married last weekend to my wife and I wanted to share the news here. I kept meaning to write. I didn't think I had story to tell really but we think we do. I hope you will publish it. I was married before to a man who was lovely but I think I lied and I feel bad about that. I wasn't happy. I cut myself and drunk too much and my husband couldn't cope with me. I couldn't deal with me either so I tried to take my life. I was in psychiatric care for a while. I don't know how long really but I started to come to terms with who I am because of it.

I'm gay and it didn't matter how long I was married for, it wasn't going to change. No amount of pretending I was happy being domestic with him would change the fact that I didn't really know who I was, or unhappily having sex and I didn't see a future for us. I was actually scared we'd have kids - but I want to be a parent - because I didn't think I'd ever leave him. It felt like someone was shoving a pillow over my head and beating it. Worse thing is that he the kindest man I know. Really kind and I do love him. 

My husband is my best friend now we are divorced. He was at my wedding. He married again and has a daughter who I am god mother to and I adore her. It's been bloody hard work trying to get used to that. It was ten years ago to the day when I was carted off to A&E and maybe that's why I am writing today? 

I can't say for certain that we won't adopt, my wife and I. We are worried about our age as we're both in our 50s and it's scary. I don't know how I feel about it.

My great regret is my family. They thought I was going through a phase. I still can't convinced them and I got sick of trying, and sick from trying so we have no contact. A cousin is friends with me but I can't bear to hear their news because I feel guilty.

But I am trying to be happy. It's complex but I'm really amazed I'm married and someone actually loves me for who I really am. 

I am Natalie and I am a photographer.

The video on this site made me remember the times when I was hoping that IVF would work for my partner Tea and I.

One of the teenage worries about coming out was how could I be a mum. In 1980s Tunbridge Wells we didn't talk about it. 

I wanted to be pregnant and carry our child. We found our way through the whole process of sperm donation and we thought that was our biggest battle. In the process of our prep work at the clinic I found out that I wasn't able to use my eggs. They were the eggs of a woman three times my age. I was devastated but I pinned my hopes on donor eggs, barely able to believe that Tea would put herself through egg collection but she did and we managed to have five embroys. Two survived so we put them back into Tea not me. I felt cursed if I'm honest and my head was a mess about it. 

We didn't make it. The test came back negative and it was a massive shock. We walked about for days unable to cry. We didn't tell anyone either so we had to put on a brave face. Maybe writing this is my confession?

When I watched a programme years ago about the journey of a sperm through the women, it seemed impossible that anyone would get pregnant and made me wonder how humankind has survived. I suppose it made me think that we were so much closer. I mean, a petri dish, and then pop them home and we're done. But it isn't like that at all because we knew we were waiting - does that make any sense? The consultant said that lots of pregnancies are lost without the parents knowing because they were not necessarily expecting to be expecting but we were. 

Tea and I are still together and we're thinking about fostering. It has been five years since we went through our IVF cycle and we're still sore about it and sometimes we think about what if I'd carried the baby but we can't hold any resentment. When I did, we split up for a while and I had to sort that stuff out. If you resent you just become this island and the whole idea of walking away and starting again was horrible. Tea felt the same so we're doing our best to keep going. The social workers have some concerns about that and I have to agree. I am not sure yet and I worry I won't be but at least we're talking about it.

It felt like it took a long time for me to find my husband.  I spent my twenties doing what can best be described as ‘faffing around’.  I was a party girl, I loved having a good time, I was an adrenaline junkie and really felt like I lived my 20’s.  I completed a university course, worked two winter seasons as a hotelier in the Alps and then went off back packing around the world when I was 27.  

As I hit 30, time caught up with me and I no longer wanted to be the party animal.  I wanted a loving husband, a baby and probably a dog – in that order.

I met my husband salsa dancing, he was not my usual type at all but immediately I knew that meant something special. We met nine years ago and dated for three years before we were married.  We both had strict principles and didn’t even start trying for a baby until after we were married, we were both clear that this was important, we wanted to do it properly.  So we were married in November 2012 and assumed we’d be pregnant by the following spring – because that’s how easy it happens, right?

How wrong we were.

In the first twelve months of marriage we moved house and hadn’t conceived, I assumed my timings were a little off.  Then we lost my father-in-law suddenly and we were consumed with grief.  As we recovered we headed to the doctors to see what the problem was and then the second blow; my brother was killed in a car crash at just 33.  I was heartbroken and didn’t know how I would carry on.

Six weeks later we were told that my husband had no sperm in his sample and the most likely cause to be confirmed was mild Cystic Fibrosis.  We would need ICSI to conceive.

To date we have been through three rounds of ICSI, each one failing.  It also turns out that I don’t respond very well to drugs, I have a low-ish ovarian reserve and the quality of my eggs are pretty poor.  We are still deciding on our next move.

In the past three years I have been to the very bottom of what I thought was possible to survive (including recently a bout of shingles) and am slowly climbing my way back out of this hole of grief and loss and infertility.  

I am rebuilding myself with the help of the infertility community, learning about grief and mental health and using writing as an outlet.  Learning that expectations can be wrong and sometimes you have to let go of how you thought your life would be and accept the way it is.  I have become a volunteer for Fertility Network UK and am looking forward to being involved in this year’s National Fertility Awareness Week.  

Grief and infertility have changed me fundamentally.  I have had to face realities that I never imagined I would and yet I am still here and still fighting.

Progesterone and me

I’m not much of a writer, I don’t keep a journal or write a blog but after listening to the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 yesterday asking what pill or medication changed your life suddenly took me right back to last year.

It was a Tuesday morning in May, a couple of months after it had happened, the morning after another sleepless night I truly was at rock bottom, this had been going on for weeks, in tears and hysterics I was now climbing the walls.  I wanted it to end right there and then, this was no life and I wanted it to go away.  I looked up at my poor husband he had his head in his hands saying I just don’t know what to do.

As I shuffled into the doctors surgery, still crying I thought entered my mind, how had I got here. Just a few months ago, in January I was a hardworking fertility nurse with a love for running and cookies, now as I walked through the door with my husband I could barely stand up.  The physical symptoms had improved but the mind symptoms including depression, flash backs, insomnia and severe anxiety were just non stop.  The GP was lovely. I didn’t expect her to have a cure or the answer but she was kind and listened, she also gave me some new medication which meant I didn’t have to try the dreaded sleeping pills again.  I didn’t expect these pills to do much, but this medication gave me the first few hours of sleep in months, the one thing I needed and it gave me time to break the cycle.

Just how did all this start? I never wanted children until I met my husband, I can’t explain it but after we had been together a few months it all seamed possible with the right person.  I always knew it would be a challenge but we could never imagine what was in store for us or the path that lie ahead.  After many months of tests, and failed IVF treatment we found out that at the age of only 35, I had premature ovarian failure which was a real shock.  We took some time out to consider our options we knew we wanted to try everything we could to have a family and our final attempt would be an IVF cycle using donor eggs.

A special lady was found for us at the start of last year, we were honoured and humbled and a few weeks later we were delighted to learn that I was pregnant.  The odds were stacked against us but we truly believed our life was about to change forever.  Only a few days later I started to feel very unwell and as the days went by I got sicker, to the point that I thought I might not recover.  The symptoms were horrible effecting all different parts of my body from pain, a severe skin rash, burns, swelling, flushing, weight loss, sickness anxiety and panic attacks, what was going on? I had a severe reaction and was unable to tolerate the hormonal medication needed to support the pregnancy and sadly then suffered a miscarriage, we were devastated.

Many weeks passed, I still felt unwell and had a range of symptoms and struggled to come to terms with what had happened. Eventually after some persuasion I went to see a specialist who diagnosed severe progesterone sensitivity and auto immune progesterone dermatitis.  A rare condition that would require recovery and complex medication.  Any future pregnancies would be high risk and require complex planning.  

This was a devastating blow as we still had 1 frozen embryo in storage.  How could we make this work, after months of recovery and bumps in the road I came to terms with the fact I couldn’t.  My husband didn’t want me to go through it again and I didn’t want to use a surrogate, so we made the brave decision to donate our precious embryo to research ending our fertility journey.

Until we made the decision to donate the embryo there was a rollercoaster of emotions running through my head, what did I do wrong, why couldn’t I do what a women was meant to do, it was hard enough knowing I couldn’t have my own biological child but not to be able to carry a pregnancy and my husband’s genetic child, how useless was I, I couldn’t find anyone else who had this condition, where did I fit in, what did the future hold without children, how would my marriage survive now that I was so different? I pleaded with my husband to leave and find another woman to have children with, after years of failed treatment he was left with a sick hormonally crazed wife and no baby, hardly what he had signed up for.  He kept hugging me and refused to leave.  He has always been my rock, kind supportive, patient and positive, a believer in the good.

They say time is a great healer, I never believed it until now.  Looking back over the last year I have juggled doctors, new medication, struggled with hormonal symptoms, memory loss and cognitive impairment.  I went for CBT counselling took up meditation which was a great help managing the anxiety.  Finally after an unsupportive employer I decided to take some time out, finish my studying, to slow down and destress, something I felt very guilty about, but this made a big impact.  I am due to start a new job in the next few weeks and while every day isn’t a walk in the park, I am starting to feel like I am enough and I am accepting my path.  It wasn’t what I wanted or would have chosen but there is nothing I can do to change it.  In a way donating our embryo whilst upsetting and final almost felt like a release, a time to start a new chapter and a change to move forward and reboot.

What does this new chapter look like, only time will tell and there have already been some positives.  We got a dog, we love her, we went on holiday and spent time together, I also realised how amazing our family and friends were in supporting us through all of this, the time they spent with us, the chocolate, the hugs, the phone calls endless support.  The experience has made me worry less about the little things, so what if I don’t wear make up or have the most up to date jeans, and yes I fall up the stairs and tried to unlock the wrong car or reversed into the house, oh the joys of menopause! But this is me and this is who I am.  Me and progesterone, we just can't work together and I have accepted that, but now I am on a new chapter and who knows what the future holds.