MARCH 8 — Infertility can be beautiful.  I thought that this morning as I watched my infant daughter try to crawl and laughing when she couldn’t.  

According to the National Institute of Child Health in the United States, infertility is common.  After about one year of trying, 15 per cent of couples are unable to conceive.  Although pressure is often on the woman, by families and by friends asking questions about why she "doesn’t have children yet,” only about one third of the time infertility can be traced to the woman alone.  

Infertility can cause significant stress on a couple as well as emotionally, perhaps more so for the woman who often has to deal with the majority of the pressure from family, and indeed from her own self.

Few people want to respond with what is obvious, at least to their partner and themselves, that they cannot conceive.  In many cultures it is still shameful to be unable to conceive a child.  

For most of my life, I have known I could not conceive children naturally.  As a young woman the only source of sadness for me in this was that I wanted to be a mother and the alternatives, namely adoption, were out of reach because of my age and financial limitations.  

The way I became a mother was less important to me than that I did become one, as I was raised to see the primary role of a woman as wife and mother.

As life turned out, at the very young age of 23, the barriers which had previously been blocking my journey to motherhood were removed and I became the mother of a beautiful baby girl, literally overnight.  

Without us knowing, a very sick baby had been born who needed a family and we were chosen to be that family  

I loved that little girl, and still do, from the bottom of my heart.  Eight months after she was born, a sister was added to the family also through adoption.  My love for them knew no bounds, and the walls of my heart just kept stretching as more children came in and out of our home as foster children.  

I didn’t get to keep them, but for a while they were mine and they called me "Mommy” and they were my children in every sense of the word.  

Because of this, I often completely lacked empathy when talking to someone who was struggling with infertility.  

I couldn’t understand the agony many women and couples faced. From my perspective, there were millions of kids in the world needing a Mommy, certainly I knew for a fact that a baby didn’t have to come from my womb to be my child.  

One night, in my early 30s I had a vivid dream about a child I knew I had given birth to. I woke from the dream in tears and in a rage.  

For the first time in my life, I felt pain so intense that I could not carry a child in my womb that I screamed out to God in anger.  

I wasn’t angry that I could not conceive. I was angry, livid with rage, that for the first time in my life I yearned for what I couldn’t have and I thought my heart would break.  

It was the pain that made me angry, pain that I had never experienced, more than my empty womb. Because though my womb was empty, my arms were not.  

The pain, the anger, and the yearning faded after some time. I began to believe that the reason I had gone through that was so I could truly sympathise with women who were in the same situation.  

I had my girls, nothing was missing from my life in terms of motherhood. I had nursed babies from the day they came home from the hospital, I had nursed them through critical illness, I had sometimes even had to breathe life into them. I had experienced motherhood and more.  

Until one day, just over a year ago, I received the surprise of my life. I was carrying a miracle.

I am daily in awe of the miracle I was given from my womb, but I reflect on the miracle of my oldest daughter’s birth, adoption, and healing from her major health issues, and I am no less in awe.  

The love that I have for this little girl is no different from the love I have for my beautiful older daughters. There are things that are different, personality traits, facial expressions, body features that are undeniably from my husband or me... in that respect there are differences; but motherhood isn’t different.  

I am so glad I got to experience motherhood through adoption first. It was a beautiful, amazing, breathtaking experience. It has had, and will continue to have, very difficult days.  

I am go glad I got to experience motherhood by giving birth second. It was a beautiful, amazing, breathtaking experience. It has had, and will continue to have, very difficult days.  

For me, and I believe for many infertile couples, infertility can be beautiful. Parenthood doesn’t need to look the way we always thought it should. Millions of children in the world need parents, many childless couples need those children; even if they don’t know it yet.  

I am forever grateful I got to experience carrying a child in my body, for without it I wouldn’t have my third daughter, but I didn’t need it.  But I did need adoption. I did need the two beautiful girls who came to me through another woman’s womb. I’m so glad I didn’t miss out on that, and without infertility I would have.    

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.