Recently, I was asked to do an interview promoting an upcoming episode of Better Homes And Gardens. Within minutes the journalist had turned her attention away from the show and was soon asking questions about whether or not I wanted to confirm or deny speculation that I was pregnant, or was trying to fall pregnant.

For the first time in a long time I was left floundering for words. I understand that she was just doing her job, but I didn’t want to deny or confirm anything.

I cringed when I heard myself trot out the saying: ‘We have only been married for two-and-a-half years and are perfectly happy with where we are at.’ While being true, it wasn’t quite the ‘whole story’, and I have never been good at being deceitful.

Now I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to explain the reason for my evasiveness. It had only been a fortnight since we’d found out that we are unable to have children.  

A fairytale start to married life
While realising that we would have to address the subject at some stage, I guess we were hoping that it might be further down the track after we’d had a bit more time for it to soak in, and to adjust to the news.

Todd and I, like so many newly married couples, have had such a dream start to our relationship and marriage that we never for one second imagined that the fairytale wouldn’t continue to unfold as we had hoped and talked about. We both look after ourselves, we exercise, eat well and live healthy lives, and just assumed the natural progression of love, marriage and babies would all fall into place.

Even when we discovered that things might need a little assistance, we threw ourselves wholeheartedly into the world of IVF, and at no stage did we doubt our belief that things would eventually happen the way that we longed for.

Whatever it takes
We took a lot of heart from what the wonderfully supportive staff at the IVF clinic told us. Believe me, going through IVF while working non-stop on air was at times challenging in itself.

I don’t think I’ll forget in a hurry some of the bizarre places I would find myself injecting hormones into my stomach – like airport toilets, or hidden in my car having ducked away from watching my sons Jesse and Joe play sport. But we would have done whatever it would have taken to have a baby.

Devastating news
Even after a couple of unsuccessful rounds of IVF, nothing quite prepared us for the news our doctor eventually shared: that we were in that small percentage of people that IVF wasn’t going  to work for – that our dream was over. I don’t think either of us  will ever forget the way we felt on that car trip home.

Over the coming days and weeks both of us seesawed between being incredibly devastated, frustrated and even downright angry at times. But once those feelings  passed, and they did, we realised that we, more than anything, only had things to be grateful for in our lives.

We have Jesse and Joe, who at 13 and 12 respectively are two of the most incredible children you could ever imagine. We both have supportive, loving families and friends, a host of nieces and nephews, a beautiful home and careers we’re passionate about.

Overall we feel very lucky. I mean, we might not have the whole ‘dream scenario’ that we had planned, but we’re pretty damn close to it.

Moving forward
So why am I writing this now? To end all the ‘are they or aren’t they?’ discussions. While we fully accept what life has dealt us, to talk about it endlessly is incredibly painful, and deeply personal. Sometimes the fairytale doesn’t quite end the way you expected it to, but you must be allowed to move forward. 

One of my sisters sent us this quote recently, which we really like: ‘We are only interested in the future as that is where we will be living.