In my last entry , I’d written about why I felt it was better to be childless than have a disrespectful child who will be a source of distress to you later on in life. From what I’ve heard & witnessed, I think the pain of the former is much lesser than that of the latter. In this post, I’d like to touch the topic from a different angle. Women who managed to conceive a baby, but lost it due to a miscarriage or women who had a child but the child died prematurely at some point in life.

When you’re actively trying to conceive, it’s kind of funny and sad at the same time that you, as a Woman, aren’t the only one keeping track of your monthly cycle. Your Husband also figures out in his head when you’re likely to be ovulating, when your PMS symptoms will begin, what time you will be expecting AF and so on…Whenever I start getting PMS symptoms , I begin dreading inwardly but my ever-optimistic husband tells me that majority of PMS and early pregnancy symptoms are the same, so, I shouldn’t lose hope.

A couple of years back, when my AF unusually went up a few days, my husband and I both became excited and began making plans 9 months down the line without confirming whether I was pregnant or not. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a false signal and we were both disappointed. It taught us never to celebrate early as life is full of twists and turns, ups and downs, smiles and frowns.

Then, 2 other times, I went over a week and the hope in my heart also began to grow. However, it was short-lived and the period that accompanied was extremely heavy, with severe cramps, I passed plenty of clots and tissues, my abdomen hurt badly…very similar to symptoms of a very early miscarriage (typically at 5 weeks). On those occasions, I was sobbing continuously because in my heart, I was mourning the loss of my child. It was something unexplained and beyond my control, like some outward force was filling me with grief. My husband found it very strange that I was weeping for the loss of something I wasn’t even sure had existed in the first place.

My husband tells me to thank the Almighty as there are many people we personally know who are in a much worse condition than we are. He says our suffering is nowhere close to hardships they have experienced in their lives.

There’s an elderly couple who reside in our city who’ve lost 7 children in childhood and live alone today. They buried those 7 young kids with their own hands.

Then, there’s a woman who had 5 successive miscarriages but never had a successful pregnancy. She is childless to date.

Then, there’s a woman who managed to have twins very late in life, both her boys were born healthy, they lived up to 4 months and one night, they both caught fever and passed away suddenly. The mother was shell-shocked. Sadly, she too never had another child.

There’s another woman who can no longer speak audibly because her throat has become hoarse from mourning for her teenage child who died in an accident.

There is a couple who often narrate sorrowfully that they had 8 kids and all of them died because the wife gave birth to 5 still born babies and had 3 miscarriages.

And there may be thousands , perhaps, millions of other people around the world who’ve suffered from tragic incidents in their lives like ones I’ve listed above whom we do not know. So, yes, I agree that we must be grateful that the Almighty has spared us from such hardships and we should always seek protection against heartaches and calamities.

At the same time, we must remain positive and never lose hope. Just because we don’t have a child now, it does not mean we will never have a child. Worry ends when faith begins.