Hello Infertility, I’m Depressed

My dream for a child of my own started when I was 11 years old.  I wasn’t even aware at the time that it was a dream. I thought I was just helping my mother see a dream of hers fulfilled.  My mom told me that she and my dad couldn’t have any other kids. The doctor told her that because of her back problems, she should not carry any more children.  My mom then shared her dream with me that she wished that she also had a son named Jonathan. I said, “Okay, Mom. When I get older, I’m going to have a son and name him Jonathan.”   The beginning of the dream.

Throughout my teenage years, in my mind, Jonathan got a sister named Maia.  Jonathan and Maia would have to wait to become reality as I navigated the jungle of single life (aka my twenties and thirties).  It wasn’t until I was 40 and single that I realized that my mom’s dream was a living hope and expectation inside me. When my husband entered the picture, he helped breathe new life into that dream.  When were dating, he told me that his desire was to have children with me. The dream seemed set on the path of becoming real.

We started trying to get pregnant on our wedding night.  The first time I realized I was not pregnant was a shocker.  I just assumed it would happen. But it didn’t. And then I wasn’t pregnant again.  And then again. And again. The medical community doesn’t diagnose you with infertility until you’ve been trying for about a year.  Yet when we reached the year threshold, I still wasn’t ready to give this experience that name. Who wants that label plus all that comes with it?

Emotionally speaking, there’s way more to this ish than meets the eye.  Infertility is more than just not getting pregnant. It is an accumulation of every positive and negative thought, hope, expectation, and belief you’ve ever had.  For instance,

1. Any and every nagging fear I have about myself and life rears its ugly head:  good things happen to other people, not you; you are damaged goods; you’ve ruined your husband’s hopes and dreams,……….
2. Although Jonathan and Maia don’t exist in the physical, the fact that they have been created in my heart and mind makes them real.  It’s the disparity between what’s real in my heart but not in my life that makes each month I find out I’m not pregnant particularly painful.
3. Company advertisements love to promote the image of families.  The problem I see is that they are also promoting the concept that family is normal and if you don’t have what they are portraying, you are lacking.  I fight against that idea often.

Throughout this journey, I find myself asking the same questions I was asking when I was single: what happens if it doesn’t work out for me? Will I really be okay?  Or will I just pretend to be okay so I don’t have to deal with the compounding disappointment? Will I feel I have been cheated in life if I merely observe the dream in others and never live it myself?    When I was single, it took a ton of trial & error to get to the point where I was at (predominant) peace with either outcome. And now that I’m facing the same questions with infertility, I strangely have come to the same conclusion.  I say ‘strangely’ because I feel a peace in the midst of the monthly disappointments and all other stressors involved.

How am I at peace, you ask, and what does that peace look/feel like?  I’m at peace because of my faith (spiritual) and the extensive work in grief recovery (emotional) that I have done.  Every one of my life situations must be filtered through one abiding truth: God is good, and not just to/for others; He is good to me.  He wants the best for me. If for some reason, my dream remains unfulfilled, His plan is nonetheless for me to experience immense love, joy, peace, and happiness.  Peace looks like feeling the twinges of pain when they come, remembering that those moments will pass and indulging in as much joy as possible in the process.

Dear People Who Are Experiencing Infertility:  

My intent with this blog is to encourage us all to grieve AND live.  There are no easy answers in navigating this journey. If someone tells you, “all you gotta do is….”, please discern that they don’t know any better.  The peace I have can still be quite a challenge on a given day. It is my never-ending hope that while we are walking on the road towards our unfulfilled dreams, we don’t get lost down the path of bitter disappointment whose ultimate destination is depression.   Our mental and emotional health and well-being is too precious for anything less.

Please share comments and your own stories.