My husband and I met in our second year at college, became an item a few months into our third, and after all the meet and greets with the family, all of the “yeah what to do, your family loves me” texts, we finally tied the knot in 2005, after almost 6 years of courtship. Courtship lol. That is such an old-school word but it works.
So after the dais had been taken apart, the wedding presents had been put into groups of “keep” and “donate” (we never regifted ANY of our wedding presents don’t worry), the wedding outfits started getting tight at the waist, it was still just us. The two of us. Day in day out week after week, a year passed, then two.
Then came the questions. Innocently we answered them as best as we could (read: as politely as we could) but little did we realise that the questions would get more personal, more intrusive.
Many times it broke me. The constant invasion of personal space was too much for a newlywed to endure while month after month the pee stick continued to show that single line, to a point I swear it was mocking me.
“Have you checked? You know just in case you can’t conceive and all..”
“Maybe you should lose some weight”
“Why are you guys waiting? It’s not good you know to plan your first baby, then God won’t give you any at all.”
It also didn’t help that the first OBGYN we went to uttered the words, “you only have a 30% to 40% chance of conceiving.”
We switched doctors. We did the tests, the procedures, the pills, the injections. Nothing.
We did the urut ladies, the supplements, the traditional medicines. Nothing worked either. An urut lady told us to adopt because I had “things”. They/It did not like my husband.
That was the last we saw of her.
We left for the UK for hubs to pursue his studies. By the Grace of God, the pee stick turned positive. I made him buy 10 more. We were so happy. It made us feel “normal”.
Four weeks later we lost our baby.
We felt a sadness no one should have to. We picked ourselves up. Six months later we were pregnant again, 4 weeks later I miscarried again.
“Eh, you sure you ok? I mean your womb or you know, whatever don’t have issues?”
Why is it always the women with the problems? Have they not heard about male infertility?
Ours was put down to unexplained infertility because we had no issues.
It happened again one more time before we got Thing 1, and 1 time between Thing 1 and 2. The weird thing is, people’s perceptions differed. From “are u guys able to have a baby or not?” to “It’s okay la you guys already have Thing 1.”
“Maybe you can try again for a girl. You know so you can have a pair.” 🤦🏻♀️
We never know how life is going to play its card. From making plans to living life just us, it became just us +1, and currently, it’s just us +3, which changes the dynamics of this family.
It may have taken us 7 years to start our family, but those 7 years we spent just us was a great bonding time. It strengthened our relationship and made us closer. It gave us the chance to build the foundation we needed to make US solid.
The funny thing is my current ob-gyn told me, “your womb and all are fine. No PCOS, no bicornuate, retroverted uterus, everything was normal intra-op.”
Can you imagine for 15 years I worried for no reason, just for what the first ob-gyn told me?
So whenever I see young couples being asked about starting a family (usually from older people) I pull them aside and just tell them to shrug it off and don’t dwell on it. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t happen naturally, this is 2022, there are ways to make it happen. If you want to wait go ahead. If you don’t want kids, that’s okay too.
Humankind will never be satisfied. Just smile, excuse yourself politely and forget about it.
Or you can say, “we’ll get to it after this auntie, excuse us (giggle giggle)” and quickly run off while the shocked look on the auntie’s face hasn’t left the building.
After all, kaypoh aunties (and occasionally uncles) will always be around until the end of time.
SuriyaNoor is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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