We’ve been trying, me, I don’t know about my husband, but I have been trying to conceive, but as of now there’s nothing to show for my efforts. I’m the one who is worried about our situation. My husband doesn’t care about anything, and it bothers me a lot. We are a team. We are supposed to support each other to achieve common goals, but in my situation, my husband is going left while I go right.

His family doesn’t spare me the insults, the turmoil, and the reminder that, aside from being his companion, I am supposed to extend his lineage too. Every day it is one thing or the other: “Oh, when will you give us our grandchild? When will you wear maternity wear?” Making me feel I am the God who gives children, as if it is my duty. Everyone assumes I am the problem. I don’t know why that is, but any time couples struggle to have a child, it’s the woman who gets the blame.

So, they blame me. They make snide comments about me, the woman with the issues of barrenness.

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But what they do not know is their son is the problem, and his reluctance to heed the doctor’s recommendation is the reason why we do not have children all these years. Before we got married, we were cohabiting.

During that period of dating, and because we knew we’d get married in the end, we didn’t take any precaution. We got to business almost wherever we liked it, but I never missed a period. We were in pre-marital counselling when they asked us to go get some fertility tests done.

Apparently, the whole reason why I couldn’t get pregnant, even though we were actively working on it, is because the results showed my husband has oligospermia (low sperm count) and other issues that make natural conception very difficult.

Our faces dropped but lit up when the doctor suggested that, even though that was the case, we could have children through IVF. My husband said, “Yes, we can try that.” We returned home, only for him to say, “I am a man, an African man. I can’t do that white people thing. I can impregnate you, it is just a matter of time until it happens.” He was so sure of it that I let him be.

He has the resources for us to try IVF, he has it, but he is stubborn and set in his ways. He doesn’t want to listen to anything. The comments his family makes don’t even move him.

They throw them at me, and I don’t know how he thinks that it doesn’t affect me. It does. I cry myself to sleep every night. During the day, I am either lost in thought in a faraway land, or I am praying and crying to a God who answers prayers.

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I thought about it thoroughly. I have a plan about using donor sperm from a clinic. He’d think he is finally able to impregnate his wife, and then the pressure from his family will pass. It sounds like a good plan, but the only flaw in this is when he starts to question the paternity of the child, when he wakes up one day with a feeling and takes the child for a DNA test.

How will I tell my story? Will it make sense? Will you people judge me? I am frustrated, I’m running out of time, and I’m tired of begging him to do the right thing so that we can have a child of our own.

—Hannah

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