Category: infertility

pink flowers

(Secondary) Infertility Grief – When Does it Stop?

EricaLeave a comment

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***here is my disclaimer before you read this post – after you read it, you may find yourself thinking
A) Really? ANOTHER post on infertility? I thought she moved on, why can’t she get over this?
B) Wow, Erica is in a really bad place, she needs to get some professional help.
C) Boy, Erica is really self-centered. Doesn’t she see how great her life is, and yet here she is being overly dramatic…

Here are my short answers to the above questions:

A) Yes, another post on infertility. The grief process is not linear, and sometimes I may be doing okay, and other times I may really be struggling. Right now, I’m struggling.
B) I am getting help – I have a therapist and am also planning to meet with my doctor about taking medicine for deprssion/anxiety.
C) I do recognize that I have many wonderful things in my life to be thankful for. That doesn’t make this hurt any less. My grief is valid.

Lastly, there is no pressure to read the rest of this post if you’re not in the headspace to do so, or if your empathy muscles feel particularly weak at the moment. Writing this was helpful for me, and I thought I’d put it out there just in case it’s helpful for someone else.

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As exciting as it is for me to feel that I’ve very much healed from a traumatic experience with postpartum depression back in 2016, that victory feels overshadowed right now by what feels like a losing battle with grief.

I thought I was moving on. I thought I was healing from this. So why is it hurting so much again?

Back in January, I decided it was time to move on from the dream of having another child. It really felt like the right decision at the time. And I think it was.

I started pursuing other dreams and interests. I began training for a half marathon (I’m up to 8 miles now!), I got more involved in my church and in local community events, and it was all very good.

But last month, a last little bit of naive hope came bubbling back up to the surface, and I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, it could be possible for pregnancy to happen for us? What if we just casually decided to try again? What if, what if, what if???

I made a deal with myself: we could begin casually trying for a baby again if (and only if) I could keep my cool during the process. There was no need for me to convince myself that I was pregnant, there was no need to think that every little symptom meant something, and I definitely wouldn’t get all upset when my period started. I would go into it, knowing our chances were slim to none, and that would be okay.

You would think after living with myself for over 36 years that I would know that there was no way I could be casual about this. And no surprise, I definitely was not!

I am ashamed to confess how quickly I devolved into past habits. In two weeks’ time, I convinced myself I was pregnant, went out and bought brand new (expensive!) pregnancy tests, and was devastated when the results were negative. Immediately, all the bitterness and rage came back. And I couldn’t believe it. How was I back in exactly the same place I had been 6 months ago? I thought I had processed this grief, I thought I had moved on!

Maybe I never really moved on, maybe I just deferred my grief and pain for a while.

I’m honestly scared to face the ultimate decision of permanently moving on. Right now, I continue to try to defer that moment by telling myself “I’m only 36, I have a few more years.”

Will it get easier then? Or do you just live with this constant pain all the time? And how do you do that gracefully?

In the past month, I’ve had four friends that have become pregnant. One of them with their first, three of them with their second child. And to be honest, it hurts. It hurts a lot.

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The End of Our Infertility Journey

EricaLeave a comment

***note: I originally drafted this post in January of 2023, when the emotions were still very fresh. I have done a lot of healing over the past few months, but it has not been a quick or easy process. A lot of ugly parts of me have been revealed during this process – anger, bitterness, resentment – for the people who have stuck by my side during some of my worst seasons, thank you. Thank you all for giving me grace as I try to become a better, healthier version of myself.

This is the third, and what I believe will be the final, update on our infertility journey. In May of 2020, my husband and I started trying for a second child. In January of 2023, we stopped trying. After 2 and a half years of this emotional roller coaster from hell, we finally decided to quit.

There’s a lot more to the story, but if you just want the cliff notes, that’s about it. I suppose it’s not really the end of the journey, because now it’s time to take a detour on the path called grief. I wish that the journey was just over and I could go back to my life before. I wish I could feel like who I was before we started trying to have another baby, but I don’t know how to do that. We will be forever changed by this experience, and I’m just looking forward to the day when it doesn’t hurt so much.

Because I’m weird, or perhaps a bit obsessive, I tracked how many cycles I’d had since we began this process and figured out how many times we ended up trying (and failing) to get pregnant. So here are the stats below:

31 months total
35 cycles total
30 = # of times we tried to get pregnant
5 = # of cycles we took a break from trying
17 = Longest consecutive stretch trying for a baby

Over a period of 31 months, I had 35 cycles.
Out of those 35, we made an effort to get pregnant 30 different times.
There were 5 cycles that I purposely opted out of trying because I needed an emotional breather every once and a while.
Our longest consecutive stretch of intentionally trying was 17 cycles in a row.

I don’t know if it’s helpful or not for me to see these numbers, but in a way I feel like it validates my experience. I can look at the numbers and understand a little more why it has been so hard. 30 is a lot of times to feel emotionally shattered.

So what happened? Why did we decide to quit trying?

In the last update I gave in October of 2022, I had just talked about how we had recently seen a reproductive endocrinologist and that potentially we could try one of the less-invasive treatments: intrauterine insemination (IUI).

After thinking about it, we came to the decision that starting in January of 2023, we would give IUI a try, up to three times. If it didn’t work, then we would plan to call it quits.

But not every couple is eligible for IUI. There’s a lot of factors at play – sperm count, number of healthy eggs left, fallopian tubes being open/blocked, etc.

When we last went to the doctor back in August, it looked like we were good candidates for this procedure. But before going through all the trouble of attempting IUI in January, we wanted to double check that everything still looked promising, so we did a few tests again. This time, the test results were not good. What our results showed is that things had changed, and we were now ineligible for IUI.

“Let us know if you’re interested in pursuing IVF.”

That was the last message we got from our doctor’s office.

But I had already decided that I was not going to pursue in vitro.

I’ll pause here for a moment because I just know someone out there wants to ask, “if you want another baby so badly, why aren’t you going to try in vitro?”

Infertility and the journey of trying to have a child is a very personal, not to mention difficult, journey. What’s right for one person may not be right for another person. And that’s okay. And when a couple decides their journey is over, it’s important to validate that decision.

For me, the mental and emotional toll of not getting pregnant every month is something I can’t continue doing. The past year I found myself struggling with depression often. At times, I found it hard to find the energy to get out of bed.

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woman with her head (literally) in the clouds

My Word for 2023: CURIOSITY

Erica1 Comment

Normally at the beginning of a new year, I come up with a word – a focus for the year ahead. But when January 1 rolled around this year, I was drawing a blank.

I was in a bad place at the beginning of this year. Well, really since earlier than that. But everything sort of culminated in January. I had poured my heart and soul into trying to get pregnant in 2022. I felt like God or the universe (or someone) had given me signs that it was going to happen. And then it didn’t.

When 2023 started, I was so angry. I felt like I was angrier than I’ve ever been in my life. Angry at everyone, I hated everything.

I told my therapist that I was tired of hurting, I wanted to feel better now, but I didn’t know how to make that happen. And she told me that maybe I was doing exactly what my body and mind needed me to do: simply being in a horrible, bad place and just feeling my feelings.

It reminded me of the practice of mindfulness. I needed to be aware, without judgment, of my feelings and just sit with them for a while. If I repressed them or tried to pretend that they weren’t there, I wouldn’t be able to move past them or heal.

Feeling my feelings was not the answer I wanted to hear. I wanted a pill, a drug, a quick fix to my problems. I had felt so many feelings already and it was exhausting! How could I make them go away?

We left that therapy session and I (jokingly) told Dean, “what are we paying her so much for?” She hadn’t solved my problems, she hadn’t fixed my pain. But I found out about 3 weeks later that she was 100% right.

For 3 weeks, I burned with anger at God and the world. I resented hearing about any new pregnancy announcements. I was lethargic and unmotivated about most everything – with the exception that I decided to start training for a half marathon. That was my one goal, my one distraction that kept me grounded. And I had so much anger that running was a good way to get it out, or at least to fuel my runs.

For 3 weeks my body worked through a lot of the hurt. I grieved. I processed. I survived a faith crisis (that’s a whole other story). And then suddenly it started to not hurt as much. I hadn’t “done” anything in particular. I had started exercising (good), I had done a lot of journaling of my feelings (also good), and I had shared and cried with some of my closest friends about my sadness and grief – and because they are wonderful friends, they listened without judgment and offered me grace and compassion.

I’m not going to pretend like it doesn’t still hurt, it does. But the constant feeling like someone has kicked me in the chest has gone away. The clouds have lifted and I’m feeling more like myself, the Erica before joining the infertility club.

Honestly, I had kind of forgotten who I was before becoming so obsessed with trying to get pregnant. It had taken over me. It seemed like all the fun, spontaneous, and happy parts of me had gotten lost, and the only parts left of me were the ugly, angry, and bitter ones.

In that same therapy session where I told my therapist I was tired of hurting, I also told her that I wanted to get another tattoo. “Another tattoo?” she said. She hadn’t even noticed the one I had on my wrist. I then told her that I kind of wanted a sleeve, but that I wasn’t totally sure what I would get – maybe I’d let my tattoo artist help me decide.

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