"You Can't Have Kids"

The thought of motherhood is something I have dreamed about since I was younger but when I was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, things changed.

Dilated cardiomyopathy is when the left ventricle isn’t pumping efficiently making it harder for it to get blood to the rest of the body. Along with some other limitations, the doctors told me that I could not get pregnant. They were quick to tell me not to get pregnant because my heart would not be able to handle a pregnancy. If I did get pregnant, they told me they would have to terminate the pregnancy.

Being told I can't have kids

When I heard this I was heartbroken. I was only 25 when I got this diagnosis, so this was hard information for me to grasp. It was like the air was let out of the room as I was getting this news. You go through grief, uncertainty, countless google searches, and heartbreaks.

I couldn’t stand the thought of not being able to give birth and I felt like I took and big step backward when I heard this news. "What guy would want to be with a woman who can’t have her own kids?" I thought. And I agonized having to bring this up in relationships. What if he wanted children and I couldn’t give him any children? I worried about being rejected in relationships because I couldn’t have any. This news had a major impact on my dating life as well as my outlook on myself.

At first, I was filled with grief and getting emotional every time the subject of children came up, especially when I first found out. I felt that I had lost my worth because of my diagnosis. It sounds crazy, but these were real emotions I was feeling back then. I would see pregnancy announcements, baby showers, and everyone celebrating their new bundles of joy on social media. This would send me into depression and leave me in tears. Something I used to struggle with is comparing my life to others on social media. It does nothing but rob you of your joy when you compare, but I will go through this in another article.

What people don’t talk about is this side of cardiomyopathy for women, while men with heart failure don’t have this issue (well most don’t, I won’t generalize here), they may be able to have children regardless. Women on the other hand, have to carry the child so that makes it hard on the heart. I have a lot of male friends with heart failure actually all of them have no problems having kids.

Thinking about my options as someone with heart failure

As I got older and the fact that I couldn’t have children became numb to me. I wouldn’t feel anything because I pushed it so far away in my mind. I finally made peace with the fact that there would not be any mini-me’s running around.

Now I’m 34 years old and I have been a heart transplant recipient for 3 years. I have not revisited the whole having children topic with my team because you need 2 people to have a baby and I’m still single. I know that there are many options out there such as adoption and surrogacy, but I’ve decided that my future husband and I will make the best decision for us and our future family. Surrogacy has become a popular option for women experiencing infertility or different chronic diseases like heart failure. I’ve always wanted to adopt a child so there’s always that route, but I’m not closing the door on having the baby naturally. Whatever happens, I will be content.

“It’s not over til it's over.”