I always knew I wanted to be a mom. It was one of those certainties that never changed, no matter how much I did.

What I did not know though, was how hard and long my road to motherhood would be. As time went by and we could not conceive our baby, my heart became filled with fear and dread at the thought I might never have a child that I so deeply wanted.

With every negative result on the pregnancy test, my heart sunk more. We weren’t ready to give up our fight for our child, but it was to be a long and hard one.

Throughout all this, we met many people - usually strangers or mere acquaintances - who, smiling widely, asked:

When will you have kids?

Isn’t it time for some little people in your home?

Do you guys plan for an addition any time soon?

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These questions hurt me deeply. Many times they came right after a difficult medical procedure, or a negative result on the pregnancy test. They left me speechless and embarrassed, as I faced another day of yearning for my child.

The most hurtful reaction we ever got was from an old woman in the seaside town where we went on vacation.

We are lovers of animals and have three dogs. Not that we planned to have so many, it sort of happened. We bought our first dog, and soon after found a small yellow pup abandoned in the street, and adopted her. A year later we met an extremely molested dog, and took her in to heal and give for adoption. She became a part of our family, conquered our hearts, and we made a decision to keep her too.

One morning we were passing by this old woman’s house, on our way to the beach. She knew we had dogs, even though only one of them was on vacation with us that time. We walked by her fence and said good morning.

As we passed, she asked:

When will you have babies?

I smiled, and shrugged my shoulders, as if to say, Who knows, or We’ll see.

As I passed, she yelled after me:

It would be better for you to become a mother and have babies instead of all those dogs.

As we got around the corner, I broke down.

A week before we went to the seaside, I went through the hardest IVF procedure yet (4th one) that resulted in another negative result. We went to the seaside to relax and recover, before trying again in the fall.

Words have power. We should learn to use it for the good.

Here is one of the two miraculous results of our long fight for a child, and her three dogs.