There is a parking spot at my local grocery store, it has a sign that reads “reserved for expectant mother’s only”. I have passed that sign many times. And never could park there. For some reason that sign has always stuck out in my mind as a good summary of my infertility journey.
There has been a lot of waiting
Waiting to park in that spot, to plan adventures, vacations, to relate to people who were parents and to create a family together.
As you can imagine this waiting took its toll on both of us. I waited to be a mother and my husband waited for me to stop postponing making plans in our life. Infertility can take over your life. It is slow, when you start there is hope; after all science has come a long way, there are options. But year after year it breaks you down. It strips you of your pride, your hope and your faith in your own body. We dealt with unexplained infertility for 5 years. No doctor had any answers for us as we suffered loss after loss. It is a very isolating experience. You enter a world of infertility with it’s own language which no one speaks but those in it. Your suffering is invisible to others. This is perhaps the hardest part. Our culture is quite naive when it comes to infertility. There is not a lot of education about it or acknowledgment.
We celebrate successful parenthood, we do not acknowledge almost parenthood.
There is also the unsolicited advice; “you should just relax”, or the assumptions; “God it must be so wonderful to not have any kids you can do anything you want”. Infertility is not the only place this happens, we all have an assuming mind and we all have invisible pain. So it is important to remember all of this; you cannot know another person’s circumstance and perhaps it is always best to consider that your assumption is not the whole story.
There comes a point on this journey where you have to ask yourself will I let this process break me or will I reclaim my life? For us it came later. First there was the fight in me, the anger and frustration, and then there was this slow acceptance. You could say I lost hope but also I came face to face with my attachments to what was supposed to make me happy. Maybe we would just not have kids? And if so then what? Would I say my life was no longer meaningful?
So this is where I started really thinking about option A vs B. And how our expectations and wants are not always useful to get attached to. I have always wanted to be a mother, I have witnessed births, it has always been my element. This was my option A. This is just something I expected. But my expectation and desire for these things was draining the inspiration out of my current life. I had to face the question; is this worth it and what else is there? That is my option B. Could Jason and I enjoy a life of rock climbing, our work, and adventure? Could we fill our lives with other people’s children? The more I thought about and wrangled with my expectations, I started to loosen my grip on option A and my life opened up again.
This is resilience, the ability to take ownership of where your life leads you. When I sit with people as a therapist, I am always deeply compassionate towards their loss and struggles. After all, I have had my own. And yet at one point, for each one of us, the question we need to ask is how do I know I will be ok? There is no rush with this question. It took me years, therapy, meditation and a medication to get there. Right in the midst of this whole journey my dad got cancer. It was terrifying. I remember the night I googled “cancer in the bones” and realized that usually meant it had metastasized everywhere. It was stage 4. I lay there wondering how will I survive if he dies? I could not imagine a world in which he was going to die and I would be ok. But the truth is we only have two choices in life; be ok or wither and fade. Apparently I am ok. and I realized that despite the pain of infertility I had to be ok. I tell my clients this too. We have to be ok. So, what can you trust in yourself, your situation and others? I guess I could trust that I have a partnership and a shared commitment to making the most of our lives. I also started seeing option B’s as really exciting. We could adopt which we had both said we always wanted to do. In fact that was our pivot. We pivoted towards that option and fell in love with the idea. My life felt really content.
As I write this blog post, I am, unexpectedly, pregnant. But I have a very different relationship to being pregnant than I did before. Yes, I do park in that silly parking spot, but being pregnant is now a miraculous surprise added to a life that is already really fulfilling. This is where we each want to get to. I understand that it seems impossible at times, but this is my goal as a therapist, to give you the ultimate choice in how you want to engage with your life. For anyone suffering a silent pain, I hear you. And I hope you can feel my arms wrap around you in your suffering. It will get better, perhaps you can trust my words as a starting point. Go through the grief so you can also see the light.
I hope this is helpful for at least one person,
From my heart to yours,