This year was hard. Like, really hard. It was arguably one of the hardest years I’ve experienced so far, second only to 2018, when we lost a baby in the second trimester and I received some daunting and unexpected diagnoses.
We put up our Christmas tree on the second Friday in December. It’s a beautiful tree that was handed down to us from my aunt and uncle 2 years ago when they bought a new one. We took out all of our ornaments – my husband’s childhood ornaments, a photo ornament of one of our dogs from 2012, an ornament with polymer clay caricatures of my husband and I and our dogs from 2015, our ornament from the year we were married, the memorial ornaments for Josephine, our daughter who we lost in 2018, and more.
We trimmed the tree.
Then I lost it.
Overwhelmed by grief, which I’ve learned comes in waves that often I can control, I sat and stared with tears in my eyes. Maybe it was because as we took out each ornament, I was reminded of the passage of time and how long we had been waiting to hold our child in our arms. Maybe it was because I had turned 39 a week earlier, and felt incredibly stuck while the world around me moves ahead. It could have been because I had been flooded with pregnancy announcements that day. I opened a Christmas card from a colleague announcing that they were expecting their third child – and I remembered when they announced their first – long after I had started trying to get pregnant. Another announcement from a friend my age who, because of recent remarks, I knew hadn’t been trying for long if at all. And then a woman who is a facilitator of an online infertility community announced her pregnancy out of the blue. I am happy for these people, but I cannot help but feel sad for myself. And scared for them because I have experienced how pregnancy can go wrong.
So I cried. I’m positive that I’ve cried more in the past two years than I have in all of the previous years of my life. My husband asked what was wrong. I told him. We talked about how there’s no going back to our previous lives before we experienced our most devastating loss. But I have to figure this out. I need to learn how to live with grief and anger and regret, and still find joy in spite of it. Joy can exist alongside these feelings, which will never leave entirely. I have learned how to control my reaction to triggers, which is different. I have learned how to squelch the wave of sadness that starts to consume me, the heat that starts in my heart and moves up to my face and rises to the top of my head and prompts my eyes to well up with tears. I can control it. And I know when I can let it go. Letting myself indulge in these feelings has helped me to process the events of the past 3 years. But I have still been bound by immeasurable sadness and while reconciling my grief, my life in the past year has been consumed by fertility treatments. I have thrown myself into a community that shares details ad nauseam of treatment protocols, doctors, specialists, unconventional treatments, and natural and holistic interventions. It can be helpful, it can be educational, and it can be therapeutic to connect with others experiencing infertility and loss… to a certain extent. Our case is truly unique and complicated. And our treatment journey is accompanied by the lasting trauma of recurrent pregnancy loss.
When it comes to the infertility community, I often feel like I’m in a category of my own. Like, if my infertility was an earthquake, it would probably be a 6 on the Richter Scale – strong and inflicting moderate to severe damage, and can have a lasting detrimental effect outside of the structural damage initially inflicted. Significant time, energy, and resources required to recover. Earthquakes of this magnitude are not common or frequent. I am surrounded by infertility earthquakes ranging from 1-3 on the same scale. While they still may be scary or painful initially, they are easier to overcome, and the recovery is cheaper and often faster. I know it’s strange to compare infertility to earthquakes, but I was born in California, so the analogy makes sense.
The fact that I stand out in this way can make it hard to connect to and relate to what others experience and share. It creates an environment for me that is similar to what I experience and how I relate to people outside of the community. And it’s not just one-sided. When I start to share my experiences, sometimes I feel other infertiles pulling back. Like, if I were to be talking to them in person, they would begin to withdraw and pull away, maybe looking at me like I have two heads. It’s as if some believe my plight is somehow contagious.
While various virtual communities have been useful platforms to learn from others’ knowledge and experiences, we agreed that I don’t need any more information at this point. I need to focus on our journey. Being mindful of what I consume, including on social media, is a big step for me. Choosing not to take part in forums and communities that aren’t helping me, and could in some ways be compromising my mental health, is a choice that has been a long time coming. I needed to ask myself how I’m benefitting from participating in groups where the focus is on success, with the assumption that success means getting pregnant. What happens when people don’t get pregnant, or what if you’re not sure you will stay pregnant? We don’t get to post our “sensitive content” posts, or receive accolades for succeeding, or hear how inspiring our story is, or get to tell the rest of the group, “Don’t give up hope, ladies! Your time is coming!” And when you’ve been on this journey for a few years, it becomes increasingly hard to just “stay positive” or “visualize what you want” or “trust that the universe wants you to succeed.” We begin to wonder, after processing hundreds of “sensitive content” posts and out-of-the-blue pregnancy announcements that hit you like a ton of bricks, if it will ever be our turn.
Haven’t we worked hard enough?
Haven’t we prayed hard enough?
Haven’t we sacrificed enough?
We have.
Of course we have… and then some.
We are all deserving and we are all worthy. But what happens to us when we never achieve this narrow definition of success? When and how do we quietly exit stage right, and what does that feel like? How do we recover?
Toxic positivity is a buzz term lately, and I am glad that it is gaining some awareness. More thoughts on this to come.
I may not get pregnant in 2020. I may not have a baby in 2020. Our treatment journey will continue into 2020. I will experience pain and grief to some degree. I will also be open to change and to new opportunities while respecting my own boundaries, and start to rediscover my life outside of infertility and loss.
A Life Reclaimed 