People joke that some women are fertile, but me, I am what you would call fertile to the max. The kind of woman you kiss and she gets pregnant. It has followed me like a shadow all my adult life. I married young, barely twenty, still a virgin and full of dreams about love and forever. The very first time my husband touched me, I got pregnant. I did not even have time to learn what marriage was before motherhood knocked. When that baby was just five months old, I realized I was pregnant again.

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My body did not wait for permission. It simply produced life. That second pregnancy could not continue because of health complications, and the doctors warned me that my body needed rest. I was scared of myself at that point. Pregnancy felt like my calling, whether I wanted it or not. So I put in an IUD quickly, because everyone said it would slow things down. Some even said it made women sterile. The moment I removed it, guess who was pregnant again. My body never forgot how to create life.

That marriage eventually ended. Not with fights or bitterness, but with a quiet understanding that we were two people who entered marriage too early and for the wrong reasons. We divorced peacefully. I moved on with my life, carrying my children, my experiences, and my strange relationship with fertility. I had my daughter at twenty-three and my son at twenty-eight. I thought I understood my body. I thought I understood life. I was wrong.

I was thirty when I remarried. The man I married the second time was different. This was not survival love or youthful excitement. This man was the kind of man you sit and have hot chocolate on a winter Portland Maine night and talk about nothing until dawn without realizing time has passed. He was comfort. He was peace. He was laughter when life felt heavy. I could see my entire future with him, growing old together, watching children grow, arguing gently about nothing important. Having his own child would make everything perfect. That was my belief. That was my prayer.

Two years into the marriage, something strange happened. I was not getting pregnant. At first, I laughed it off. My body had never needed an invitation before. Months passed. Nothing. A year passed. Still nothing. I was thirty-one and confused. Me, of all people, not pregnant. I went to a fertility doctor expecting bad news about myself. Instead, I was told I was still as fertile as ever. My womb was fine. My hormones were fine. My body was doing exactly what it had always done. That was when the truth hit me quietly but heavily. The problem was not me.

How do you look at the man you love, the man who is your friend, your safe place, your heartbeat, and say, you are the reason I cannot give you a child? How do you tell him he might be impotent without crushing his spirit? I could not. I would not. In our society, a man’s ability to father children is tied tightly to his pride and identity. I knew what that news would do to him. So instead of breaking his heart with the truth, I made a decision that still keeps me awake at night.

I decided to do the unthinkable. I had an affair. Not because I wanted pleasure. Not because I was unhappy. But because I was ovulating and desperate to give my husband his own child. I chose a friend. It was wrong. It was devilish. I knew that even as I did it. But in my twisted reasoning, I believed the intention mattered. I believed I was lifting a man up, completing him, giving him what nature had denied him. Of course, I got pregnant. My body did what it always did. When I saw the positive test, I cried tears of joy and shame at the same time. I was ready to tell my husband, but guilt sat on my chest like a heavy stone. I prayed for forgiveness. I felt dirty. I felt undeserving of the happiness growing inside me.

When I finally told him I was pregnant, the joy on his face broke me. He was so happy. So proud. In that moment, I told myself the sacrifice was worth it. Yet every smile reminded me of the lie I was carrying. I had never been promiscuous in my life. I had lived carefully. And now, here I was, committing the greatest betrayal in the name of love.

But life has a way of humbling everyone. While I was drowning in my guilt, my husband was dealing with his own. Unknown to me, while we were trying and failing to conceive, he believed the problem was me. He adored my children, but when school vacated and they went to their father, the house became too quiet. It reminded him that he had no child of his own. It wounded his manhood. So he too stepped outside the marriage, hoping to prove something to himself. Hoping to fix what he thought was broken.

When he told me, forgiveness came easily. How could I judge him when my own hands were dirty? But the situation refused to end there. His mistress called him and said she was pregnant. She threatened, “If you do anything stupid, I will tell your wife about it.” He decided to tell me first, and he did. Now he says he wants to do a DNA test on that child to be sure it is his. That is where my fear lives. Because what if that DNA test proves he cannot father children? What if the doctors confirm what I already know? What if that knowledge pushes him to question everything, including my pregnancy? What if he decides to do a DNA test on our child too?

Marriage Through the Eyes of Millennials and Gen-Z

I cannot sleep. My mind runs in circles. I pray, I cry, I bargain with God. I ask myself if I should confess now and face the storm or stay silent and hope it never comes to light. I fast and pray that the thought of testing my child never enters his mind. All I wanted was to lift a man up. My intention was pure, even if the deed was devilish. Now I am trapped between truth and destruction, love and honesty, peace and chaos. I do not know what to do. I only know that I never meant for any of this to happen, and yet here I am, waiting for a catastrophe that feels inevitable, praying that love will somehow survive the truth.

—Muthoni

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