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At 35, Martina became pregnant unplanned and experienced the "most difficult time" of her life. She even considered adoption. The employee tells us how she is doing today - 11 years later.
Actually, she always wanted to have a family of her own. Two or three children. "But the doctor told me I couldn't get pregnant," says Martina (name changed by editor), 46. "It was difficult to accept that, but then I came to terms with it."
When she was 34, she met Bernd again - a friend from school. "We liked each other very much, were drawn to each other. But apart from their feelings for one another, next to nothing was right - we were fundamentally different. "After three months of relationship, the two separated." It just had no future with us.
Pregnant despite being diagnosed with "sterile"
Four weeks after the breakup, Martina was standing with a colleague in the coffee kitchen of the office where she worked. "She asked me: 'Tell me, what have you done with your breasts? They are suddenly so big.' I shrugged my shoulders and then she laughed: 'Are you pregnant?' "I shook my head in the negative, but my mind raced: What if it was? I couldn't have children at all. And under these circumstances - just separated …? " In the evening she took a pregnancy test: positive.
"I didn't understand myself anymore. I should be happy, shouldn't I? But I couldn't do that. Instead, I thought about aborting it. "But that didn't feel right either …
"It was as if I had an ankle cuff - you can move, but only within a certain range."
Martina contacted the child's father. "He was really happy and suggested that we try it again together. He said we'd be fine. And I agreed." But the uncomfortable feeling remained. "I suddenly realized how freedom-loving I actually was. Up until then I had traveled a lot and when I felt like it, I locked the apartment behind me and was gone. It is no longer so easy with a child. And what about the USA? I got a job offer abroad. I couldn't accept that now … It was as if I had an ankle cuff - you can move, but only within a certain range."
No motherhood
Then there was my guilty conscience: "Over the next few months I kept meeting women who couldn't have children and remembered the feeling when my doctor told me I could never get pregnant. I wanted to be happy and thankful. But it just didn't work … "The employee didn't feel like a mother. Not even after she had given birth to her baby." I held my daughter in my arms, looked at her and said: 'What do we do now?' "Then the relationship with the child's father broke up." It was foreseeable, but difficult for both of us.
"It's not a story of suffering, but one about pure happiness."
Today Martina's daughter is eleven. "She is my one and only, my greatest gift," says the 46-year-old now. When the child was about four years old, everything changed fundamentally. "Especially my attitude. I became more and more aware that she was here because of me. I had given birth to a child - and now I couldn't let it down. " Out of a sense of responsibility, love eventually evolved. "I noticed that it was my head, my cage - not the child. I was still free, albeit in a different way. And most of all, I realized what a great gift it actually was to be a mother. Me." I am not a victim, but privileged. It is not a story of suffering, but one about pure happiness."
And she stopped comparing herself to other mothers. "Right from the start I had far too high demands on myself. I was never 100 percent absorbed in being a mom, wasn't someone who was at the playground with her for hours, but instead often integrated her into my everyday life. But that is okay - for me and also for my daughter. " She also spoke openly with her child about her experiences in the first few years. "I don't want to keep any secrets from her. And I want her to tell me what's going on inside her, too. Always. She knows she can count on me and rely on me - that's what counts."
