Childless & Redefining…

By: Brandi Lytle, of Not So Mommy…

Wobble Warning:  Discussion of TTC, infertility, dreams lost, redefining, and more…

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mom.  As a little girl, I used to carry my Cabbage Patch Kid in a baby carrier strapped to my chest.  And my absolute favorite toy was my doll, Victoria.  I had no doubt that I wanted kids.

Let’s start building our family…

So, three years after getting married, my hubby and I agreed that it was time to start building our family.  And two years after that, we determined that it was time to see an infertility specialist.

Appointments, surgeries, medicines, and invasive treatments with a doctor and nurse present were certainly not how I had pictured getting pregnant.  But this route seemed to be our only hope to have a biological child, so we tried and tried and tried some more.

This isn’t working…

But ten years, seven failed IUI treatments, several adoption meetings, and countless tears later, we still weren’t pregnant.  My hubby told me that he didn’t want to try anymore.  And I was utterly crushed.

But I believe in our marriage vows.  And infertility…  Well, it was the sickness.  It was the bad times.  I was not going to let it ruin my marriage, however.

Accepting my childless life & Redefining family…

So, I decided to embrace my infertility and begin accepting my childless life.  For me, that meant I resolved to “stop trying to obtain the ‘perfect’ life in my head and instead embrace the blessed life that God has given me.”  To do that, I fully embraced my roles as wife and dog mom, deciding that we were already a family of three.

One year into fully embracing our infertility, we decided to become host parents to a foreign exchange student.  And by the end of our six-month hosting experience, we were a family of four.

Redefining through blogging & connecting…

Four years into accepting our childless life, I decided to start blogging about how I was redefining, in the hopes of helping someone else who was struggling through infertility and being childless not by choice.

Through my blog, I have connected with those who are still trying to conceive, those who finally got the little their heart so desired, those who are struggling to accept their childlessness, and those who are ready to move forward….

As I have connected with this amazing community, I’ve come to realize even more that we all simply want empathy for our struggles.  For the childless not by choice, this empathy is wrapped in acceptance.  We so desperately desire an acceptance that we really did try everything.  We really did want kids.  We truly did not give up on our dreams.  We just had no other choice than to accept that having a little simply wasn’t our path.  So, we had to let go, redefine, and find joy despite…

Brandi Lytle, founder & owner of Not So Mommy… and creator of the olive green Childless Not By Choice Awareness Ribbon, is a wife, dog mom, aunt, host mom, infertile woman living an imperfectly perfect life in South Carolina, USA with her husband, Dane, and fur baby, Maddie.  She is redefining what momhood means to her and strives to focus on the bright sides of being childless.  Her hope is to inspire others to accept, embrace, redefine—discovering a Plan B that brings them joy!