After reading a comment she’d made on another MM post, I asked Beth to write this guest post. Two years ago, at the age of 18, she found out she may never have children. This is her story….

I’m definitely a Charlotte. My friends call me a Carrie and yes, Ms Bradshaw and I share the same penchant for a witty line, an adoration of Vogue and lord knows I would build a house of Manolo Blahnik boxes if I could, but deep down I’m a Charlotte. I’m all about the traditional values; love, marriage, children and a twin set of pearls.

At 20 years old I want a career, and a fabulous one at that, but family is and always has been my priority. I’ve always wanted children and the time to care for them- to sew hundreds of sequins onto ballet costumes, to bake cupcakes for end-of-term parties, to cheer from the sidelines of the football field.

I was always proud of my Charlotte-esque aspirations until last year when I became more like Char then I ever wanted. I found out that my bottom line matches hers; I may never be able to have children of my own.

2008 should have been fantastic; I had just breezed through my year 12 exams, secured a spot in my preferred university course and was living the high life of a newly eighteen year old girl. Everything was perfect except I had this excruciating abdominal pain.

I bounced from doctor to doctor, test to test, for a month without finding an explanation for the pain until one doctor took my complaints seriously. I owe him my life.

10am: Doctors appointment. 12pm: Tests. 4pm: Called into the clinic. 6pm: Admitted to hospital.

By 9am the next day I was in surgery. Within 24 hours my life had been saved and irrevocably altered by the same operation. I had a lethal abdominal infection that was leaking poison into my blood and organs at a rate that, had it been left unattended, would have killed me within 24 hours. As my mother likes to reminds me, I’ve always been a bit of a drama queen.

There were many awful repercussions of my surgery; the hospital stay, the months of recovery, the medication, the pain, the boredom, the scars, but worst was the news that the poison from the infection had been concentrated around my ovaries. My chance of conceiving had dramatically decreased. I have very few, if any, viable eggs.

Children were always part of the plan and to alter my expectations has been difficult, particularly when fertility and conception are not paramount issues among my friends. When you’re 20 years old children aren’t high on your priority list; in fact most of my girlfriends spend their time preventing pregnancies, swallowing a little pill everyday and sometimes dashing to the chemist the morning after. It is these same girlfriends whose reactions fall into one of two categories when I try to talk about it.

Category 1 Response: “Ohhhhhh darling don’t even worry. You still have a chance right? Yeah, it’s super slim but with modern medicine?! You never know what they’ll be able to do by the time you want to have children. And if none of that works there’s IVF, adoption, surrogacy…”

Category 2 Response: “Well at least you don’t have to worry about taking the pill anymore. Hello one night stands… Joking, but seriously at least you don’t have to stress.”

Though they mean well neither of these statements are particularly helpful, they simply make the process of accepting my situation a lonely one.

I never expected to be so obsessed with the idea of children, yet I find myself morbidly fascinated with the one thing I can’t have. I wonder what it feels like to be pregnant, to give birth, to have a child of my own making. Every time I see a family in a movie, read an article in Cosmopolitan about contraception or look down at my horrible lateral scar I’m reminded of a life I’ve already had to give up.

For the most part I try not to think about it, denial is a comfortable and effective pacifier. The consequences of my infertility are all so theoretical that often the gravity of the situation often escapes me. Some days completely forget about it, some days I’ll spend hours throwing myself a pity party.

I’m young and I have so many challenges ahead of me that I’m taking each as it comes. For now I plan to enjoy the time I have been given, the life I could have lost so easily last year. I know that in so many respects I am lucky and that I have options; a family is a family, no matter how it is created. But none of that takes away the fact that I will never be able to look down at my child and gloat that they have my baby blue eyes. In an age of abortions, morning after pills and RU-486 debates, fertility and natural conception are issues that are often so neglected and unappreciated by young women.

I live in hope that, just like Charlotte before me, I will get my own fairytale ending; a wonderful man who will love me and our family no matter what form it takes. Or perhaps in my very own movie miracle ending I will be the exception, the 2% chance that would enable me to conceive and bear my own children. Regardless, I live day-to-day knowing one thing: I will, no matter how it happens, be a mother.

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Thank you Beth…….