Welcome To Valerie Clark Photography

Savannah, GA Bump to Baby Photographer

Three years ago I married my husband. And just like any other couple, you dream about the future. You talk about how many children you think you will have. What their names will be, what the nursery will look like. When Michael and I got married I was very young. At only 19 many people judged our decision and we were told don’t have kids just yet. Enjoy your marriage. Everywhere we went we heard, ” you all cannot be thinking about kids already, right?” Little did they know that deep down inside all we wanted was a baby.

No one ever told me how compulsive trying for a baby may become. The period tracker, the ovulation kits, and lastly the pregnancy tests. At first, we told ourselves if it happens it happens. And for our whole first year of marriage, we stayed hopeful that it would. Shortly after we moved to Fort Stewart, GA I was told that I had PCOS. And then a few months later my husband came down on orders to deploy. We told each other we would try one last time before he left so we did. I tracked my period and ovulation as much as I could. And three weeks into his rotation I found out I was miscarrying for the third time in our marriage.

The last three months of that rotation I made it my mission to track my ovulation again. I ordered an ovulation kit off of Amazon that you could link to an app. Fast forward to after he came home from a 9-month rotation to Korea. I was sure I had my ovulation down like science. So we followed that for two months and nothing. Everyone around us that we knew that had come home from deployment were getting pregnant without “trying”. I could not help but feel discouraged. I hated my body. I became severely depressed. I did not want to leave my house. Getting out of bed was a struggle. I would look at my husband and I felt so much guilt. Every time I was three or four days late he would get so hopeful and he’d ask me to take a test. And when they were negative I knew that the next day I would get my period. And I would.

If there is any advice I can give to the women who are struggling it would be this. It is okay to be hurt. But don’t stay there too long. You have to remain hopeful that it will happen. Share your story with others. Build a community for yourself.  I am here for you just like many people are. You are loved. You are worthy. You are beautiful. You are enough.