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She felt alone in her grief but ever since Susan Fouché poured her heart out in an open letter on social media, her inbox has been flooded with messages of support and understanding.
Hers is a story of a woman’s desperate yearning to bear a child of her own, but who’s never been able to. It’s a story of quiet pain and lonely desperation. It's a story of loss, love and hope.
Susan (32) smiles bravely through her tears when YOU visits her at her home in Pretoria, Johannesburg, a few days after her letter went viral. She can barely believe her letter touched so many hearts, she says.
Susan and her husband, Johannes (35), knew each other since they were 15 years old. The childhood sweethearts started dating when she was in matric and got married about two years later. Their biggest dream was to have a little girl of their own.
“We always dreamed of a daughter with Johannes’ curls and my blonde hair,” she sighs.
After the wedding, they started trying for a baby, but a year passed, then two, then three. Each time there was even the faintest hint that she was pregnant, they got their hopes up, only for it to be cruelly dashed.
“There were signs every time, then we thank God for answering our prayers – we were finally going to become parents. And then the pregnancy test comes back with one line, not two. Never two. There’s nothing,” she recalls.
Doctors recommended various treatments, including healthier diets and later, hormone injections and treatments, but nothing worked.
“Each year you realise the new treatment isn’t working, then you try something else."
The last resort was going to a fertility clinic. Maybe that would make their dream come true, the couple reckoned.
Then came the devastation: in July last year Johannes died in a terrible motorbike accident, two days before their first fertility appointment. After 10 years, 6 months and 5 days together as a married couple, the love of her life was gone.
“He would’ve loved to be a dad, and he would’ve been an incredible dad,” Susan says, sobbing. “When he died, I learned that one doesn’t just grieve the person who died, but also for that person’s future. Everything you wanted to do together, your dream of the future as couple, gone forever.”
There were often times when she was furious with how things turned out but she got through the dark days by relying on her faith.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, the greatest battle I’ve ever had to fight. But if you don’t have the Lord, what do you have left?” she says.
Susan is trying to heal her broken heart, which is why she wrote the open letter.
“Putting pen to paper helped me, and I hope my story can comfort others in one way or another,” she says.
In her own words: Susan's poignant letter
If God doesn’t call you to be a mother
It’s 3 October 2021, and my husband and I are sitting in church, anxious and exciting, praying on the inside.
All the signs look promising, and I’m seven days late.
Maybe the Lord has answered our prayers this time. Maybe, this time, we’ll be getting the good news that we’re expecting a child.
That night, I can hardly sleep. My very being is a rollercoaster of desperate expectation. Prayers run through my head in a constant loop. Tomorrow I’m testing, tomorrow I’ll know . . .
Years of getting our hopes up and having them dashed have taught us both self-control. We don’t test before I’m not at least a week late. We’re trying to protect our hearts by not getting ahead of ourselves. But every time, to no avail.
That morning, I slip out of bed and rush down to the bathroom.
The test shows me what so many failed tests have taught me to believe is the only thing these tests will ever show me: there’s nothing. There’s no new life. Not this month. Month in, month out, year in, year out. The result is always the same: there’s nothing. One line, not two.
Never two lines.
I pull myself together and go to make coffee. When I see my husband, I shake my head once, telling him everything in that gesture. He holds me as the devastating loss of something we’ve never had descends. This day is just one of many repeated over the years.
This is childlessness.
Childlessness is walking in a shop and having your insides carved up every time you see someone with a baby. It’s your heart weeping every time you see a woman with a bump. They make it look so easy.
Childlessness is the prayers in the privacy of your bedroom. “Lord, please think of us in our weakness, see the desperate yearning in our hearts and, if it be Your will, grant us this joy. If it be Your will, bless us with a little one.”
It’s my husband tenderly pressing the vulnerable body of my brother’s child to him – my heart melts when I see him like that.
It’s my husband touching my belly with his strong hand and whispering he can’t wait to see me with a bump. It’s quiet prayers and silent conversations in quiet rooms. It’s doctors’ appointments, blood tests and brochures. It’s hoping for this treatment and then hoping for that treatment. It’s pills, healthy eating and vitamin supplements.
It’s dreaming of a holiday because maybe, just maybe, it’s stress that’s causing this childlessness.
Childlessness is the quiet longing others are afraid of asking you about, so they rather don’t ask.
It’s me picking up my phone on 20 June 2022 and calling a fertility clinic in Pretoria to make an appointment after receiving this beautiful message from my husband that morning: “Good morning, my love. I’m safe and drove well. It was 12 degrees, so quite pleasant.
"Remember to call today for the appointment. Mention that we’re busy with IUI (artificial insemination) and when your first day was and that you’re already taking the medication they gave you.
“Just be calm – they’re just people and you don’t have to feel anxious to talk to them. I hope you’ll have a good day, my love. Make yourself coffee and be calm. I love you so much, my only one.”
I’m given an appointment for 22 June at 7.30am. We’re so excited! Then, the unthinkable happens.
I find myself sobbing as I explain to my mom to please cancel the appointment on my behalf as the shock causes a sudden nausea to wash over me and turn my insides to ice.
He never became a dad. And my belly never swelled with his baby.
“The Lord as done great things for us; We are glad! Restore our captivity, O Lord, as the stream-beds in the South. They who sow in tears shall reap with joyful singing.” Psalm 126:3-5.
