Cannot Have Children

Cannot Children - Mormon Doctrine Studies - Posted: 28th Aug, 2008 - 3:39pm

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22nd Oct, 2005 - 4:43am / Post ID: #

Cannot Have Children

To those who cannot have children:

While looking for some topics I came across this quote from the Journal of Discourses that I am sure will be of comfort to those who are without their own prosperity, especially mothers.

QUOTE
Let me here say a word to console the feelings and hearts of all who belong to this Church. Many of the sisters grieve because they are not blessed with offspring. You will see the time when you will have millions of children around you. If you are faithful to your covenants, you will be mothers of nations. You will become Eves to earths like this; and when you have assisted in peopling one earth, there are millions of earths still in the course of creation. And when they have endured a thousand million times longer than this earth, it is only as it were the beginning of your creations. Be faithful, and if you are
not blest with children in this time, you will be hereafter.

-- Journal of Discourses, Vol.8, p.208



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9th Nov, 2005 - 12:33am / Post ID: #

Children Cannot

I know a couple of sisters from Church who cannot have children and they have expresed me their feelings and I can feel their sadness and frustration. I found this definition on how a person may be feeling:

It's Like Being Overdue

by Monica Carpentier

A pregnant friend of mine was lamenting about being overdue and I thought to myself that "overdue" was a perfect way to describe infertility. You feel so overdue to have a baby. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that in many ways, infertility is similar to pregnancy. It's just that instead of morning sickness, you have heartsickness. Instead of physical exhaustion, you have emotional and mental exhaustion. Instead of having occasional emotional outbursts that bewilder your husband, you have lots of emotional outbursts that bewilder your husband. Instead of craving ice cream and pickles, you crave anything containing folic acid as you know it would be good for "the baby." Instead of making you clean the house, the nesting instinct makes you buy adorable little baby outfits and wrap them up in tissue paper and tuck them in the back of the drawer. Instead of being afraid that you'll make a terrible mother, you are afraid you'll never be a mother. Instead of getting bloated, you keep your tear ducts hard at work. So, in a strange way, infertility is like being pregnant. It's just that instead of carrying your baby in your tummy, you carry her in your heart. May the Lord bless us with comfort, strength, and hope.

https://home.sprintmail.com/~adamszoo/infer...ty/overdue.html



9th Nov, 2005 - 9:53pm / Post ID: #

Cannot Have Children Studies Doctrine Mormon

I think it is probably hard for any woman who wants to have children and can't, but doubly hard in the Church. So much of what we are taught revolves around children and raising them. The focus is so much on the family that if you can't have one of your own, it must be difficult. I know just being divorced can be difficult at times because of this, but not to have children and want them, I think would be even more difficult.

That scripture offers much in the way of hope, but I am not sure how much it really helps in the near term.



28th Aug, 2008 - 3:39pm / Post ID: #

Children Cannot

I read this wonderful yet touching article by Erin Stewart. She has only one child and because of health issues she no longer can have more. She describes the pain associated with this and the hard decision of adopting.

QUOTE
"I recommend you do not get pregnant again. As your doctor and as a husband, I would say no."

And just like that, a man in a white coat reaches into my future and rips it apart. All my plans of four kids, spaced two to three years apart -- gone -- replaced with a question mark.

I was diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy a month after Nicole was born. It's a fancy term for unexplained heart disease caused by pregnancy that left me with a weak heart and at risk for heart failure.

I knew the diagnosis meant any plans of more children were seriously in jeopardy, but until the doctor said it, I still held out hope. And while my doctor says it's my body and I can do what I want, he also questions why I would want to push my luck.

So, there it is -- the prognosis. And here I am, now in a strange state of mourning the loss of something I never actually had -- grieving a hypothetical future, an intangible idea. I haven't lost a child with a name and a face, but the loss is real, nonetheless.

It was real when I gave my maternity clothes to the Salvation Army instead of neatly storing them in the basement for the next one. It's real when I see a family of four who all have the same nose and jaw line, and I have to fight the sting of envy.

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It was real when I finally made the call to an adoption agency, which I put off far too long because it seemed to be the final wind to snuff out my hopes of a "normal" family.

Adoption is painfully real.


When I made that phone call, I realized I had not fully prepared myself for what I would say when someone answered: "Um ... Hello? I want a baby." It's not something they teach you in the parenting books.

I cried when we went to orientation at the adoption agency and the couples around the room were introducing themselves. Suddenly, it just seemed so real; I was one of those couples sitting there, listening to a man talk about how to get a baby. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, watching myself nod politely as he talked about birth mothers and legal fees.

But inside, I was a mess.

Would anyone pick us? What if I don't bond with an adopted baby? Could I love an adopted baby as much, or at least the same way, as I love Nicole?

As I sat there nodding and acting calm, the man showed a picture of a white family -- one child looked just like the parents and the other child was Hispanic. It looked like a riddle from the Sesame Street segment of "one of these things is not like the other."

But as I looked closer, all I could see were four smiling faces with arms wrapped tight around each other. They all belonged to each other -- biological and adopted...


Continues: Source 2




 
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