Wendy Elliott spent years helping mothers bring their children into the world. None of her patients knew how much she wanted to be a mother herself, or the difficulties she had becoming one.
Elliott, of Jaffrey, grew up with a large family, and always imagined she’d have one of her own. But fertility issues plagued her attempts.
“As a maternity nurse, I was dealing with people having babies all the time, and there I was. I couldn’t get pregnant,” said Elliott, sitting in her screened in porch, occasionally glancing out on her view of Mt. Monadnock. “It was a very hard time.”
It was three years worth of hard times.
But then Elliott and her husband were able to conceive and successfully bring their son, Sam, into the world. And as soon as she had one, Elliott knew that she wanted another.
But it wasn’t that easy.
“My first one took three years. After that, it was another eight,” said Elliott.
Eight years, four doctors, multiple operations and treatments that the family couldn’t afford.
“We went into debt for years, trying to get pregnant. But I wanted to be a mom again. I knew I wanted at least one more,” she said.
After one last doctor, Elliott was put on a new medication to improve her fertility, and within a month got the news. Finally, after a lot of pain and debt, she was once again pregnant, this time with daughter Amanda.
“The doctor called me on the phone and told me the news. I was crying. My husband was crying. We just cried and cried and cried,” said Elliott. “It was worth it.”
Almost immediately after Amanda was born – only a gap of eight months – Elliott, fearing that as she advanced into her 30s, conceiving would only get more difficult, went back on fertility medication and again, nearly immediately, was able to conceive her third child, Drake.
“It wasn’t always easy,” said Elliott. Her husband worked days and Elliott worked night so that she could be involved with her children’s lives. Her long-awaited children were both born premature – Drake weighed only three pounds. Amanda had inherited her father’s dyslexia and found school difficult. “No, it wasn’t always easy. Not for me and not for them. But I don’t think it always should be easy. Some struggles are good.”
Her daughter, Amanda MacKinnon of New Ipswich, said she agrees with that view. “Maybe unlike some moms, she pushed us to do better. When the school system failed to help me overcome my dyslexia, she made me read and do activity books on top of homework,” she said. “She took my older brother’s car keys away when he got another speeding ticket. She sent my younger brother to a technical high school so he could learn a trade since academics was not his thing.”
Elliott, a military brat who had been raised all over the country as well as in Japan, said that she didn’t want that kind of disruption for her own brood, and she and her husband settled down in Townsend, and spent 30 years in the same house. She spent days ferrying her children to Pop Warner football and soccer and baseball.
And you can’t argue with results, said Elliott, while looking at photographs of her children – all grown, now starting their own families and making Elliott a grandmother.
“I believe all my kids are remarkable,” she said. “But really, they’re just like me. They’re average people. But that’s not a bad thing, either. The best thing for your children can be an average life. They’re hard-working people. They married hard-working people. They’re moral people with good value systems, which is paramount.”
Now retired, Elliott and her husband moved to Jaffrey eight years ago to be closer to their now-adult children and their growing collection of grandchildren, some of whom Elliott watches three times a week while their parents are working.
“You realize when you’re a grandparent that you probably over-reacted to all those stupid little things when you were a parent yourself,” said Elliott. “I have much more patience, now.”
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.