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I'm not sure I'd apply the term 'involuntary childlessness' to people who chose to not have children and later regret that decision. I married my wife at 22, a
by tathougies 9y ago
I'm not sure I'd apply the term 'involuntary childlessness' to people who chose to not have children and later regret that decision.
I married my wife at 22, and we started not preventing at 23. Two years, three early miscarriages, three later miscarriages, and one stillbirth (our most recent pregnancy) later, we don't have any living children. Doctors still can't explain why our unborn son died. In the last ultrasound before he died, he was kicking, swimming around, with a great heartbeat, normal morphology, and a healthy placenta. The next morning, my wife woke up with a bad feeling, and we learned his heart had just stopped. Nothing turned up on the autopsy -- everything normal. Just sudden cardiac arrest.
My uncle had a son die of leukemia at age 7 or 8 (before I was born). They were lucky to have another daughter, but we have a few older friends who had one or two children that ended up losing them to freak circumstances or disease, and were then unable to have another.
These are actual stories of involuntary childlessness, not people who made a choice to wait until it was too late.
And before people pipe up with adoption: (1) we had decided to adopt before we married, but were too young at the time; (2) we started the adoption process as soon as we reached the age threshold; (3) adoption takes a long time and is expensive (but we are more than willing to wait and pay the legal fees); (4) because of our age, we can only adopt younger children; (5) there are not many young children available for adoption because there are more parents willing to adopt than children needing homes, which is a good thing; (6) we would love to adopt an older child as soon as the state would let us. But none of this takes away from the fact that we would like the doctors to figure out the miscarriages and stillbirth -- we want all our children to have a good set siblings and the healthiest start possible.
- dkural 9y agoDid you & your wife get carrier screening?
- tathougies 9y agoYes, we do not carry much (the only flag is alpha thalassemia on my side), and nothing in common, which makes sense, since we are completely different backgrounds. We've had genetic testing on the babies too... all normal.
- jdtang13 9y agoWow, really? I had no idea that there are more parents willing to adopt young orphans than there are young orphans.
- tathougies 9y agoYes... it's a bit more complicated than that as well. Often times, if a baby is abandoned (on the street or in a hospital), the foster care system will not 'free' that child for adoption until the child is two years old. Not every person is able to foster (that's a very involved process), even if they would be able to adopt. These children basically languish in the system in the hopes that their current set of parents (the ones who abandoned them) will come back, and the law does not move fast. I do not know whether it's a good or bad thing in general, but for the children it fails it's pretty awful.
- nostrademons 9y agoThe article leads with two stories of people who just waited too long, but about 2/3 down there are a couple stories (and blog links!) of people who actually were involuntarily childless - Lizze Lowrie, who had 6 miscarriages by age 33, and Rev Sonya Dorah, who was raped as a teenager, contracted chlamydia, and ended up infertile as a result.
- tathougies 9y agoThat's good to hear... in full disclosure, after reading the first 2/3, I got tired of reading it and decided to rant :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Balgair 9y agoJesus. That's rough as hell man. Any strategies for coping with the losses? How do you both do it?
- tathougies 9y agoSex, crying, and ice cream... I don't really have anything better to offer. We tried seeing a therapist but they (basically) said 'that really sucks', and the ice cream and sex were working better anyway.