I love my life – now I have made peace with not having a baby

If you try hard enough, we are often told; In the end you get what you want.

But sometimes the hardest and bravest thing to do is to stop trying.

After years of hoping to start a family, including the painful ups and downs of fertility treatment and a devastating miscarriage on Christmas Day, Caroline Stafford found the only way to find some kind of peace again was to accept that it wasn’t going to happen and build a different future.

But that meant overcoming what he calls the “don’t give up” narrative.

Like many people, Caroline and her husband Gareth, whom she met at school, were almost certain to have children when the time came.

“We spend our whole lives trying not to get pregnant. As soon as I tried not to get pregnant, I assumed I would get pregnant,” she says.

Almost one in five women in the UK are childless.

There may be a variety of reasons for this, including personal preferences. However, some find that the family life they dream of does not come true.

Caroline and Gareth went to the GP after not being able to get pregnant for a year. An IVF tour in the UK was followed by further tours abroad; It’s a process of anxious appointments, medications and injections.

She also watched her friends get pregnant and have babies.

“We were absolutely delighted for them, but the truth is, it was the worst thing to hear,” he says. Ready to Talk to Emma Barnett.

For anyone in Caroline’s situation, even the sight of a parent with a stroller can be painful, a source of gnawing jealousy.

This feeling was eating him up and changing who he was.

“Your worldview becomes smaller and often more negative.

“I started to not really like the way I felt about other people,” he says.

Her friends would tell her not to worry, that it would happen eventually, or that she should stop trying because then she would get pregnant.

Then, six years ago in November, it suddenly turned out that his friends were right. Not trying seemed to pay off.

She and Gareth lived in a large farmhouse in Rutland. They had just moved into a small cottage in a village; It was a kind of acceptance that the big family they dreamed of wouldn’t happen.

As the festive season approached, they started sharing this good news with their friends and family.

Then on Christmas morning Gareth went out to tend to the dairy herd. When she returned, she had lost the baby.

“It was the timing and the way it happened. It felt so brutal.”

His memories of that day are blurry.

But they both think this is a turning point.

“It was like we both knew it was time to try to let go,” she says, but that in itself required a lot of effort.

“I didn’t know if I was right at that point. But we were just starting to move forward,” he says.

He devoted himself to work. She had started her business selling biscuits stamped with personalized messages during her second round of in vitro fertilization treatment.

At first he would get angry if people said he was the baby of his business. He finds that comforting these days. After all, it’s something he’s been nurturing for a decade.

She now has a team of 14 at the bakery, ships her biscuits all over the country, and has partnered with a mail-order flower company.

For Gareth, quitting meant completely rethinking his business. He is about to start a new job as a groundskeeper at the golf club.

People ask her if she’s considered adoption, but she says it’s “not the path we chose.”

“Adoption isn’t just another way to become a parent. It’s an important decision.

Ten years of in vitro fertilization had changed Caroline’s relationship with her own body.

“I was focusing on the one thing he couldn’t do,” he says.

He took up long-distance running and instead of berating his body for failure, he began celebrating what it could do. He has now run four half and full marathons, while Gareth is sixth.

“I love the life I have.

“I don’t feel that immediate sense of loss anymore. It’s a different, gentler sadness now.”

As time went on, he found a greater sense of peace. Even this brings pangs of guilt; He wonders if coming to terms with his childlessness means he doesn’t want it enough or isn’t trying hard enough.

He knows it’s a “don’t give up” message that still haunts his conscience.

“Growing up we are taught that effort equals results, but often it doesn’t work that way.

“Life can still have meaning, and it can still have a purpose, even if it looks very different from what you expected.”

If you or someone you know has been affected by pregnancy issues, please visit: BBC Action Line To find information about organizations that can help.

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