One way or another.

It started a while after my 33rd birthday. Out of the blue, I started gaining weight. When I stopped fitting into my favourite jeans, I went on a strict diet. I started to pay attention to what I ate. I was concerned.

In the meantime, restructuring began in the company. I can't remember anymore when I stopped sleeping well. I was perpetually afraid. I was afraid for my job, whether I would be fired, what my career would look like. I was afraid for my relationship - despite my diet I kept getting fatter, I didn't feel like having sex. I became irritable. Everything irritated me. I thought it was all due to stress at work. My relationship at the time didn't stand the test of time.

As you can guess, the break-up only exacerbated my malaise and - worse - made me think of going to a doctor other than a psychologist. However, the recurring anxiety attacks afterwards, when the restructuring ended and I kept my job , seemed irrational. Also, these heart palpitations. I started with an endocrinologist. I was suspected of having hypothyroidism. A set of tests and nothing. I ran from doctor to doctor. At the time, I didn't think. Neither I nor my doctors that I would be affected by menopause at such a young age.

I passed it in front of my mother.

It was one of the saddest times in my life. Before that, I didn't even realise how important femininity was to me. And fertility. That's when I decided not to get involved with anyone anymore. "I'm going to become an old maid without children!" "I'm going to enjoy life, going on holidays to adult hotels with my favourite girlfriends!" - I thought.

I don't remember how it happened that Robert appeared in my life. He turned up at one dinner party organised by friends, then another. We had a nice chat. One day we bumped into each other at the mall. "A quick coffee?" - he offered. I didn't refuse. We agreed on another and another. Then it was cinema, squash, go-karts, tennis, theatre... We became friends, then a crazy night happened and another. I realised it was something more. I got scared and started running away. I avoided him. Robert wasn't letting go. Eventually I had to tell him the truth.

"I went through the menopause. I can't have children. We shouldn't be together." These were three short sentences. Short, but powerful and painful. His facial expression said it all. I felt he was going to leave me. He said he loved me and that he had to think it all over. He said he would come back.

For a long time I could still hear in my ears the sound of his footsteps and the closing of my flat door. I had a feeling that this was the last time I would hear them. He was back. As he promised after a few hours. With flowers and a ring. We both cried when he said we would get through this, but we would have a baby - as he said "one way or another".

Then there was a happy engagement and wedding. In the meantime, an idea - adoption. As we went through another foster parent course and filled out more and more paperwork, I felt that something was missing and would be missing. Don't get me wrong. I was looking forward to becoming a mum, but I knew I was missing out on this time of pregnancy, of stroking my belly, of feeling my baby's kicks. It was hard for me. I went back to therapy, first to my therapist from when I didn't yet know I wouldn't be able to have children. It turned out that she had a friend who was a psychologist at an infertility clinic. And that was a hit.

First of all, I felt understood. Ms Agata knew my problem, she already had patients who were struggling with infertility. I felt that these meetings were helping me. She was the one who suggested that I go to a specialist in infertility treatment. At first I thought it was crazy - after all, the menopause is a permanent loss of infertility. There is no chance for me anymore - I thought.

I was very wrong. The doctor offered me adoption. Adoption of an egg cell. Thanks to the donor, we were able to become parents. Robert a biological one. I was physically and emotionally able to become a mum.

Thanks to oocyte adoption, I not only had the chance to become a mum, but to experience everything that goes with it - both the wonderful moments when you watch your baby on the ultrasound screen and listen to its heartbeat, and the minor inconveniences of pregnancy, which are later remembered with tenderness for years - the morning nausea or heartburn, for which grandmothers and aunts predicted that the baby would have a luscious head of hair.

I made no secret of it - I had my doubts. But the desire to experience motherhood - from start to finish, as it were - was stronger. It won. Twice.

Today we are the happy parents of Lena and Stasio.