Confessions: I could be infertile, it has ruined my finances and three marriages

I am 27. I have been married three times but all the marriages didn’t work because I could not make any of my wives pregnant. I sought medical attention but nothing changed. I have wasted a lot of money and this is haunting me. Please help me.

Paul

What the readers say:

Never allow yourself to be anxious when in the battlefield. Body mechanisms always adjust to prove you right. Be patient, remain in control. Anxiety will only complicate matters. At the same time seek specialised medical attention. If all these fail, though they shouldn’t, you can adopt by accepting your situation. So many are currently like you or worse off for different reasons.

Tasma Saka 

Paul, your story sounds disturbing to you. You said already you’ve been in three marriages and nothing is working; you need time to relax and figure out the real situation. You went to hospital and nothing changed. You haven’t mentioned the doctor’s finding. Is it you with the problem? By saying ‘nothing changed’ could signal that you were found to have a problem. Trying for a child is a long process and you cannot talk of impotence. This could go even up to one year. I tend to think you haven’t given yourself this period. Try it. Back up a little, you could be suffering from low sperm count. This is a condition that is manageable. I hope you don’t masturbate as this is the chief culprit. Good diet is key here and mental preparedness cannot be gainsaid. Otherwise you need to relax and find out where the rains are taking advantage of you brother.

Ouma Ragumo-Sifuyo 

Paul, you and your wife need to see a counsellor to help you walk through the difficult moment you are going through. I suggest you still seek medical advice from a different facility for treatment. It may take sometime before you recover fully. In this journey, you need an understanding partner who will be willing to stick by you even in such challenging situations. Remember Abraham? Be prayerful and trusting in God. Wishing you all the best.

Kevin Moen 

Boke says:

Dear Paul, 

Children are a gift from God and a desire to have your own is only normal. I want to believe you have sought credible medical assistance. Credible to mean the right specialist for your condition.  

There are a number of fertility centres in case you have not visited one please do so before you resign. It is also important that you involve your family  in the whole process. So that you are all  on the same page. This also calls for patience and understanding.  

Your other options will depend on the doctor’s diagnosis. I believe you will follow through the doctors’ advice. If it turns out that you were right about your situation, then have a candid talk with your wife to agree on your next course of action. I do not know how your wife is handling this reality but I can tell you she needs help accepting this reality. Especially if it is established that she has no problem getting children. The reason why I encourage you to enlist the services of a counsellor for both of you.  

The marrying and remarrying is just compounding your frustration and draining you emotionally. All is not lost, you can still adopt children legally and enjoy the gift of being a father. Do not deny yourself this divine experience. However, both of you must come to an understanding to enable you  explore this avenue. Imagine there is a child who desperately needs a father out there and here you are hopelessly trying to get a child. This might not be popular among your folks but this is not about them.  

Hilda Boke Mahare has a background in Counselling Psychology  

Simon says:

Paul some things in life take time and for such things, the greatest tool you can ever have is patience. It is never the same for everyone and there is no fixed time limit for having children. I also hope this is not the reason you have been moving from one woman to another because there is no direct relationship between changing wives for the purpose of having children. This is essentially because the issue may not be with the women and it may even not be with you but in other things such as timing. Bearing children is a process and processes sometimes take time to materialise.

The good thing about this is that you have sought help from doctors and it seems everything is ok with you. With this being the case, I would encourage you to adopt a long term approach to things and a positive attitude. The more you despair about the situation, the more difficult it gets and the longer it will seem to take for anything to happen. A positive attitude will give you a better outlook to life and a greater appreciation of the people around you with or without children. The point at which you will learn to appreciate and accept people and things as they are and not as they ought to be, that will be your turning point towards achieving the goals and desires of your heart. 

Lastly, I would urge you not to put too much pressure on yourself. The harder you push yourself, the more difficult things will get for you. Take it easy and one day at a time. Settle on one woman and try and work things out for good. Most of all, learn to appreciate her and to love her and maintain your focus on her, not on the children aspect. This will not only relieve you of the pressure but will also put them at ease then everyone will be working on their own timelines and towards the same goals. Remember that if pushed against the wall, the women in your life can deliver “those results you want” in many other ways. To get the results you want from others you will have to remain genuine with them and they will be genuine with you.

Simon Anyona is a relationships counselor