After David and I lost Will at 18 weeks pregnant, I felt like we would never make it to parenthood. Actually, it was worse than that. I'd felt like were were allowed to taste parenthood and then it was ripped away from us forever.
During this time it was hard for me to be around babies. It was hard for me to hear about other people's babies. It was hard to see other people's success stories.
Don't get me wrong. I was very happy for people who had babies. Whether they were fertile-types who got pregnant on their first try, or whether they were like us and had to use the most advanced technology available to conceive a child, I was happy for them. I was glad their dreams had come true. I would not want to take any of that joy away from them.
But it was really hard for me see them experiencing that joy. Whenever possible I tried to avoid it. I declined an invitation to a reunion with some friends -- even though I would have loved to see them -- because nearly all of them had new babies or new pregnancies. Hearing about their babies and pregnancies made me spontaneously start to cry, and I didn't like to cry in front of other people.
I did go to a family reunion where I knew one of my cousins would be and she had a due date that was similar to what my baby's due date had been. And then when I arrived at that event, there was yet ANOTHER cousin who was pregnant with that similar due date. And there were babies everyone. One small toddler who had had water on the brain was there, and was joyful and running around. His mom said he was her miracle baby. And I thought, I had a miracle baby, but he is gone. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom crying at that event. It was very very hard to be there.
I remember in the month or two after we lost Will I did a phone interview with a company for an article that I wrote, and there were a few people on the conference call. One of those people was telecommuting, and I could hear her baby in the background. She had no idea what had happened to us.
She told me how old the baby was, as the baby cooed in the background. THAT was a very difficult experience. I was trying to keep it together and be professional. But part of me wanted to tell her what had happened to me, so she might be more sensitive about sharing her joy in front of me.
You see, even though I didn't want to take away anyone else's joy, it was hard for me to see it. They were enjoying their dreams and mine had just been lost, perhaps forever. Seeing their joy was a reminder to me of just how much I'd lost.
So when I got back on the roller coaster, doing the frozen embryo transfer (FET), and then became pregnant again, there was part of me also that did not want to display joy. When my pregnant belly began to become obvious, I tried to be very careful about going into and leaving my acupuncturist's office. All her patients were struggling with infertility and I didn't want to make it harder for them.
And the same thing with the online community I belonged to. I was very leery of sharing my joy in the infertility section of the site.
This is something that is very hard about infertility and infertility treatment that is not often discussed. While it is so helpful to participate in support groups, online or otherwise, those groups are eventually going to fragment. That's because some people will be successful right away. And while everyone else is cheering for their success, those who are still undergoing treatments are not in the same emotional place as the pregnant ones. For some people it will take much longer than for others to achieve success. And the truth is that some people will never achieve success using assisted reproductive technology (ART) -- either IUI (intrauterine insemination) or IVF (invitro fertilization) or something else. They may go onto adopt or decide to live child-free. Two women may have become fast and best friends at the start of the journey. But their friendship may become a source of unbearable pain for the one who experiences a loss or is unsuccessful in her effort to have a baby.
While we all start on the path together, we eventually may take different paths. And this is a part I hate. My success is hard for other people -- who are still struggling with loss and infertility. Even if they love me and we had a great time together, we are in different places. They are happy for me, I know, but my success hurts them. Being around me hurts them. It sucks sucks sucks. Even though I miss them, I have wanted to minimize that hurt as much as possible.
So, knowing how hard it is to see success if you haven't been successful, I have struggled with the idea of creating such a personal blog that combines my stories about infertility and my stories about exclusively pumping. In my heart, I have been wary of drawing people here who are suffering through infertility only to find baby pictures and stories of the challenges of breastfeeding. I apologize to anyone who has found herself here and is feeling badly about seeing these things together.
At the same time I wanted to tell the stories about these very personal struggles. While they fall under different topics, they are part of the same long story to me -- my quest to become a parent and then to be a good parent. These are the most important and significant stories of my life.
And if you have stumbled here, I hope you find them helpful or entertaining or inspiring or useful as you travel your own path.